2PM - No. 782: Black Friday Down

Meta’s eCommerce implications / WWD: The 20th century’s period of suburban hyper-development relied on this principle. Commerce followed. This Zuckerberg quote sounds like a mixed-use suburban development for a reason: the concepts are quite similar. "We call this the metaverse […] work, learn, play, shop, create.” Just like the exurban areas of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Houston, and Atlanta: the same human behaviors can happen on digital real estate. [1] "Over the next decade, the spending power of today’s teenagers will increase significantly, and this cohort’s expectations will define the future of experiential eCommerce within the metaverse. As digital natives who grew up interacting online and living much of their life through mobile devices, they’ll expect the entire shopping journey to be personal, interactive and customizable. Here are four factors that will play a major role in defining the future of experiential eCommerce."

Here's the takeaway: Facebook Inc’s rebrand to Meta raised eyebrows and prompted eyerolls, but now that the dust has settled, its impact in advancing brands’ involvement in the metaverse is becoming clearer.

Brands including Nike, Adidas and Gucci are establishing their presences in the metaverse, laying the groundwork for not just brand protection (via slews of trademarks) but also direct participation. Shoppability varies across brands’ current metaverse initiatives, but the set up is apparent for future shopping capabilities. In the featured column for WWD, Neha Singh writes that the metaverse is the new mall.

When selling brands on the potential of the metaverse, the key is the spending power of Gen Z. Already, brands and retailers are thinking about how they can meet this generation where they are and capture their attention. They’re the first digitally native generation, and the answer increasingly points to online communities and digital worlds. The investments today – which still feel unnatural for most brands – will lay the groundwork for how the next generation not only shops but how they interact with brands. If past online communities were built on Web2 social platforms, the future community is in the metaverse. Built for more than just shopping and scrolling, Web3 enables more immersive communities and interactions for not just brands and their customers, but fans of brands. It’s the culmination of build up in how important community is to brand and customer relationships.

Shopping will have to fit in seamlessly, and the best examples of how brands are figuring this out can be found at Nike and Adidas. They’re each building respective worlds in the metaverse to establish loyalty. Nike is holding off on direct purchases; Adidas is diving in. The data from these experiments will not only set up their own future metaverse malls, but they’ll shape the rest.

Twitter's Jack Dorsey expected to step down from C.E.O. role

Social Media / New York Times:  From 2020's In Defense of Jack Dorsey: Twitter has avoided a number of the headwinds facing today’s top corporate conglomerates: (1) media’s pivot from advertising data to transactional data (2) antitrust scrutiny of conglomerates (3) a growing chorus of data policy concerns. It’s precisely Dorsey’s outside-of-the-box thinking that may serve his companies well as the shift towards linear commerce continues. "In recent years, Mr. Dorsey has become increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies and the principle of technology decentralization. He said in 2019 that Twitter would help to build a decentralized form of social media that would allow users to set their own algorithms for promoting content and moderate their own communities rather than relying on a tech company to make those decisions."

Updated For November 29: The DTC Power List now includes revenue estimates for the majority of brands. It can be used as a CRM for industry comparables, industry developments, sales leads, or story leads. It grows more detailed by the week.

Amazon poised to pass UPS and FedEx to become largest U.S. delivery service by early 2022

Logistics / CNBC: In no. 769, we explained that UPS was surpassed and FedEx was in Amazon's sights. It seems that this may happen faster than projected. "Its shipping operations are growing fast. Bank of America analysts predicted Amazon delivered 58% of its own packages in 2019, making it the fourth-largest delivery service nationwide, according to Digital Commerce 360. By last August, Amazon was estimated to be delivering 66% of its own packages. Amazon’s in-house delivery operations have become a major advantage during this year’s holiday shopping season, which has been particularly challenging due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a global supply chain crunch and labor shortages."

Product safety allegations again dog eCommerce giant Wish

eCommerce / Fortune: This seems like an overreach because this would likely never happen to Amazon if the same scrutiny was applied. "Last week, several French ministries asked Big Tech firms to stop Wish's website from appearing in search results, and its app from being listed in mobile app stores, because of serious and widespread product safety concerns. Google and Apple both removed the Wish app from their French app stores, and rival search engines such as Microsoft's Bing and France's Qwant delisted the website from their results, before Google also took the search-engine step."

The future of restaurants looks a lot like eCommerce

eCommerce / QSR: This is a great one to read if you were interested in StarDAO. As commerce and loyalty continues to resemble eCommerce, restaurants are in position to benefit. "In a rush to survive the pandemic, restaurants adopted digital tools at an incredible rate. They learned delivery programs and curbside pickup, to-go and third party. And now that we've arrived in this first summer of a post-pandemic economy, with its rich consumer demand, the time has come to turn those tools from the defensive positions we fortified to keep our restaurants alive during COVID and retool them as offensive weapons built to expand our share of revenue."

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