Authentic relationships ft Scott Silverman from CommerceNext | CommerceNext Ep 6

Chris Parsons: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of The Last Click. I'm the host Chris Parsons. I have a very special guest, ⁓ a longtime friend of mine. We've known each other in the industry now for probably twenty years and just stayed connected through ⁓ through LinkedIn. I'm ⁓ fortunate here to have Scott Silverman with me. Scott, thank you for being a part of the podcast today. ⁓ thanks for having me. Appreciate it. I'm flattered. ⁓ I I I've you a long time. I tried to model myself after folks like you you and And Michael LeBlanc and and Jim and just ⁓ really network and give back to the community. I think you guys are ambassadors of that philosophy. ⁓ thank you. That's nice. I I I love the people in the community. That makes it easy to wanna give back. You care about the people and you kinda help connect them and see them grow in their careers. So ⁓ yeah, that's I that's where it really comes from. Yeah, I I often tell people that you can go to a conference and you can truly listen and which is great, you can listen to those those presentations, but it's the it's the side conversations, it's the lunches together, the evenings and like really taking advantage of a network and then following up with them. Even if it's not weekly, it's fine, but following up with them and not just like leaving it sit there and LinkedIn in your endless connection list but Having a the way to just really foster those relationships through time is ⁓ is something that I think is so valuable for folks. Yeah, for sure. And you become like friendly. That's right. Like not just beyond not just for work, but like you care about their lives and their families and you know, you're gonna always getting caught up when you see them again. It's it's great. Yeah, yeah. So with ⁓ with Commerce Next things have changed a little bit, but this has actually been a great event. of suppliers. I was at a conference ⁓ a few months ago and ⁓ was ⁓ an imbalance of ⁓ more retailers and not enough technology to ⁓ go and investigate. And this one this one has two three rooms of of different suppliers and technology out there and everybody has the label of AI on ⁓ on Right. What what are you seeing over the two days? Well there I think there's so many options right now for retailers and the the the like to entry of trying a new technology. ⁓ It's really the technology, it's like ⁓ how ⁓ time can invest as a retailer or a brand to really take it advantage of all these different products and services. But ⁓ I think the build versus buy question is kind of over. I mean, you just buy. There's like there's so much out there and and it moves so fast, right? I mean, every every segment it's like crazy. Like the companies that were the leaders, they're ⁓ there's always like the next generation coming in. So yeah it's a fun time right now with all the AI stuff, but ⁓ it's how do you really ⁓ try to understand what they actually do versus what they say. I think the solution providers have a tendency to overex say that are doing a wider range of things ⁓ and they a hard time accepting that they're really good at one thing and ⁓ that ends up making it hard for the retailers because everything seems like it overlaps. So I ⁓ that's like advice to a lot of the solution providers is Like say that what you're really good at and you can always expand later, but if you're trying to break through, I think you need to be you need to be able to explain what you do quickly and be able to say why you're really good at it. Yeah, I love that. I mean we have the same conversation as a retailer, right? Like you could try to be everything to everyone and you fail, but if you can make your brand message succinct enough, that's where you start to have success. And you can have grow more categories and expand your assortment over time, but Be good and stand for something. Yeah, a hundred percent. ⁓ ⁓ with the conference being here in New York, it's ⁓ is it how what's the size comparison to the last couple of years? Because it seems I've been away for a few years, but it ⁓ seems like there's a a really great audience and energy this year. Yeah, it's a it's a community that continues to grow. Commerce does stuff all year round. They have like later in the year they're here they'll be back in New York doing ⁓ like Two two smaller events back to back, folks stump post purchase and AI and retail. They do dinners and webinars throughout the year. So that community builds on itself and then this event in June becomes a place for everyone to really come together. Yeah. And then when ⁓ when you think about the next few years of events like this or or any others that you might go to, you see the formats changing? I I I've been at some recently where everyone's trying to do more fireside chats or ⁓ deeper conversations versus ⁓ the last few years we got heavily into panels, but ⁓ what find with panels is like you have ⁓ maybe people on stage and everyone gets two minutes there and they're trying to squeeze in their thoughts. Do you any format changes coming or ⁓ any innovation? I mean the the dirty secret is ⁓ as a organizer, you're trying to make ⁓ easy. You wanna the smart, interesting companies to speak. And these are really busy people. And so I think a panel is an easier ask than say, come and do a 20 minute solo presentation. So you still want to be able to get their point of view across, but it's hard. and then you have some you know the really big companies, you're dealing with all of their investor relations, PR. it's hard to get them to share some good stuff. ⁓ I think I'd like to see in the conferences, it's such like there's so much going on with AI. both the the of the innovation and the power of the technology and the AI models ⁓ continue be like it's like a new generation every six months or whatever. ⁓ And you have all of the like concerns, know, like ⁓ is there that's gonna go into an LLM that's gonna get you in trouble or you know, what are you doing you the you're letting AI do too much or it's hallucinating and ⁓ I I feel like there needs to be ⁓ almost like some one on one education, people are really willing to kind of, you know, open up ⁓ and talk about like how they've been, ⁓ you like how they've been burnt and w trying things and I think this is one of those times where everyone needs to share more, do more ⁓ of that ⁓ to ⁓ help everybody else navigate through this. It's I always I've always found that the industry is one where there's a lot of people that like companies that compete one another, especially in the early days of the internet and e commerce, that still would share. Because if you you don't ⁓ no benefit of allowing your, you know, all your competitors to make really expensive mistakes. Like if you can help people prevent that and compete in other areas, I think everyone it it rises You know, all ships will rise. Yeah, I agree. I talk often about collaboration in our industry that we would be the customers would be better off if we would all collaborate more versus being so competitive with one another. I think there's enough room for a lot of us to grow and if we sat down and really trying to solve some opportunities, whether that is I mean we've been talking about personalization for twenty years, haven't solved that, ⁓ replenishment and getting inventory flowing is always a an opportunity. And now with with AI, which is just I find it's technology that's in enabling if you want to find a solution for replenishment or you want to price things better, you can leverage AI and these language models, not to overcomplicate it or simplify it too much. AI I almost think is a branding problem right now. Well, yeah, I I i in a many respects. I mean I I think on the consumer side there's a branding problem that, you know, goes back to like, you know, wherever they're putting data centers and the impact that's having on communities, people feeling like they're gonna lose their jobs and then you know, on the retailer and the industry side it's about know, just like over promising, you know. Like where's where's the retailers NVIDIA or, you know, moment where their you know their valuation has grown exponentially because of AI. It's you know, we're still waiting for all of that to catch up. Yeah, that's a great point. I often talk about Scott the three C's of marketing and it the three C's for me was something I learned twenty years ago in college and it was content, community and commerce. And ⁓ then you went through this transition for search where content was king and now today I've heard so many conversations or over the last day and a half anyways about how to create content for AI. And it feels like It's it's the same three principles still, content, community commerce. If you go back and you look at your content and create it properly with the right descriptions, videos, ratings and reviews, ⁓ will be discovered. ⁓ I think we put too much emphasis on the AI part of it, the AI will discover you versus if you have a good content strategy, ⁓ will be found in forums search, ⁓ search, ⁓ What do you what did have you heard much about people talking about really content still is kind? Yeah. I I think you're r you're right on. I and I think it's even ⁓ it's like it more important if not, you know, j just as important or more important than it's ever been, it's being relevant. And ⁓ sometimes relevancy gets ⁓ created different places. Maybe it's on Reddit or you know, or Wikipedia or somewhere else, but you still need to have that relevance and ⁓ I think the AI engines are pretty good at kind of sniffing that out. I I think like I i n maybe I'm getting a little beyond my level of expertise, but I feel like like the the like the days of winning from arbitrage might be behind us. I think the the the AI engines are leveling that playing field a bit. Yeah, I agree. I and I think it's a great opportunity for smaller companies right now that may not have the big media budgets to really dive into something that they can control and leverage their audience with influencer content or advocacy and ⁓ create some more forums and blogs that are far more affordable than competing on paid and really they can find relevancy. Right. Well there there I think there's ultimately gonna be paid and all of the engines as well. So we're already seeing that and I think they're still ⁓ figuring that out and the retailers are figuring out, you know, how much budget to allocate there and, you know, what the reports are looking like. So that it's I'm surprised that there it hasn't been I know I'm I'm I kind of like wondering when's that coming. You know, when's is g when there's there gonna be the conference season when That's the dominant topic is paid, you know, a AI agents and and how do you manage that? Like when we ha when Google came onto the scene and when you know Facebook came onto the scene and everyone was figuring that out. But yeah, probably it's probably next year. Yeah. I think it yeah. Well certainly if we see all these IPOs happening, there's gonna be a lot more pressure for revenue generation from from you know ⁓ Open AI and Anthropic and these others. Yeah, and then we'll have more conversations about the last. click attribution and now where's it coming from? Right. Well yeah I think attribution is the conversation that never goes away. Never goes away. Scott, thank you so much for being part of ⁓ today's ⁓ podcast I really appreciate it. It's great to catch up with you. How can folks connect with you? ⁓ they can find me on LinkedIn connect with me there. that's the best way. All right I'll add your description and information your link ⁓ in the description of the podcast ⁓ and thank you it's been a pleasure All right. All right. Thank you.