Join us for a live session from The Whalies in LA with Bryan Cano, Head of Marketing at True Classic, on a recent meteoric rise to an $850M valuation. Bryan reveals how True Classic is democratizing AI adoption across their organization by turning every employee into a technology architect and maintaining human empathy that drives authentic brand connection. We explore how tactical innovation serves a grander vision: transforming from a men's apparel company into a cultural force that builds confidence and community for decades.

Maybe AI Can Make Us More Human

Key takeaways:

• AI democratization beats top-down mandates: True Classic's most successful AI implementations emerged organically from employees identifying their own repetitive tasks, then building weekend solutions that eliminated Monday-morning drudgery
• The three-pillar AI framework: An approach that includes Generative (content creation), Operational (workflow automation), and Insights (proactive business intelligence) provides a comprehensive structure for organizational AI adoption
• Century-scale vision transcends tactics: Brands seeking longevity must graduate from channel arbitrage to culture creation. By moving beyond riding existing cultural waves to generating entirely new categories, they can win and keep customers for years
• Empathy becomes a competitive advantage: As AI handles data analysis, human intuition and emotional intelligence become the irreplaceable differentiators in brand strategy and customer connection
• [00:17:20] “AI isn’t going to eliminate our jobs. It’s going to push our brains to the absolute limits. We’ll have to use our imagination more than we ever have.” – Brian Lange
• [00:17:49] “It’s going to make us more empathetic… As marketers, we’ve obsessed over the data. AI lets us return to thinking about the customer—their life stage, their needs, their emotions.” – Bryan Cano
• [00:27:09] “Just how Apple made technology accessible, we want to do the same for style and confidence. We want it to be effortless.” – Bryan Cano

Associated Links:

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1. AI is now the default creative and analytical partner—prompting, planning, and predicting across workflows.
2. The boundary between job functions is vanishing. Designers analyze data, data scientists shape stories. You no longer need to be a specialist to do specialized tasks.
3. Context collapse is real. But AI is rapidly learning how to avoid it.
4. Generalists who can flex across roles (with help from AI) are the new MVPs.
5. Curiosity beats credentials. The only requirement is a mindset that’s open, iterative, and unbothered by a little ambiguity.

• “It gives you back hours and hours and hours of time... and it’s $100 a month. That’s ridiculous.” – Pini Yakuel
• “I used to look for excuses to use AI. Now it’s part of my all-day, every-day routine.” – Phillip
• “You can’t be creative if you can’t lie. And now the computer can lie.” – Pini Yakuel
• “Instead of having positions, we’ll have roles. You might be 80% designer—but you’ll need to do data too.” – Pini Yakuel
• “Hire for attitude, not skill. New skills can always be acquired if you have the right mindset.” – Pini Yakuel

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What happens when everyone becomes a brand for fifteen seconds? And what happens after brands become nothing more than ambient frequencies in our endless scroll? Today, we’re running back the highest-rated talk from VISIONS: LA.

Emily Segal (K-HOLE, Nemesis) presents groundbreaking research on the post-peak vibe era, exploring what comes next when brands can no longer hide behind mood boards and atmospheric storytelling. From “strawberry girl summer” to “rodent boyfriend energy,” we've reached the absurdist endpoint of vibe-driven commerce…but what emerges from the wreckage of algorithmic sentiment monitoring?

• Post-Peak Vibe Reality: We've moved beyond brands as storytellers to brands as frequency emitters, where TikTok and Spotify algorithms understand our emotional states better than therapists, creating a landscape of "slop"—low-grade AI material that looks the part but doesn't feel authentic.
• The Algorithmic Gaze: Vibes aren't just cultural phenomena—they're how we see the world through machine learning's eyes. When we catch a vibe, we're processing information like an auto-encoding algorithm, making certain perceptual elements more obvious while obscuring others.
• Heritage as Just Another Vibe: Even attempts to escape contemporary vibe culture through "authentic" heritage branding ultimately become vibes themselves. There's no outside to the constant vibe machine, and stealth wealth still leaves traces of exposure.
• Three Paths Beyond Vibes: The future belongs to brands that are either impossibly dense with human labor (too substantial to reduce to vibes), exceptionally simple (pure speculative energy), or deliberately incoherent (escaping algorithmic detection entirely, like dazzle camouflage for brands).

Join the visionaries forming tomorrow’s culture through commerce at VISIONS Summit: NYC. Step into the future for 50% OFF with discount code AFTERVIBES.

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• Emily Siegel's Substack: nemesisglobal.substack.com
• Register for Vision Summit NYC with code "aftervibes" for 50% off at FutureCommerce.com/visions

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

In this kickoff episode of Decoded, Phillip Jackson sits down with Pini Yakuel to explore the concept of "positionless marketing" — a radical rethinking of how marketing teams operate in an AI-powered world. Drawing inspiration from the evolution of positionless basketball, Pini argues that marketing, like sports, is evolving toward roles defined by agility and capability, not titles or silos. The conversation weaves through leadership, startup culture, and how Optimove is enabling marketers to work faster, smarter, and more autonomously.

1. Positionless marketing is a mindset — It's about autonomy, adaptability, and eliminating bottlenecks, not just rearranging the org chart.
2. Modern teams thrive when roles are fluid — Inspired by positionless basketball, today’s marketers succeed through cross-functionality and creative flexibility, not rigid specialization.
3. Gen AI is the new creative exoskeleton — Like an Iron Man suit, AI tools enhance marketers’ abilities, enabling faster, smarter, and more creative execution.
4. Speed is the native language of startups — Startups operate positionlessly by necessity, while legacy orgs must dismantle silos and empower self-service to keep up.
5. Positionless isn’t chaos—it’s craftsmanship — The best managers focus less on blocking and tackling, and more on elevating outcomes by distributing capability and unlocking human potential at scale.

• [00:12:25] “Let’s look at the Renaissance man... the celebration of the wide gamut of human talent — that’s what this could be.” – Pini
• [00:24:53] “It’s not that departments will disappear. It’s that the type of work they do will start to change.” – Pini
• [00:26:23] “Almost every person in our exec team started their job at Optimove by writing SQL.” – Pini
• [00:30:12] “A team should be small enough to be fed by two pizzas — and fully autonomous.” – Pini (on the Bezos principle)
• [00:34:07] “You’re already positionless — that’s why you get to focus on what actually matters: the work.” – Pini, on Phillip’s agile team setup

• Learn more about Optimove’s platforms
• Learn more about Positionless Marketing
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• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
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Massive acquisitions—from Skechers to Touchland to Foot Locker—aren’t just headline fodder; they reflect deeper shifts in how value is defined in commerce today. Phillip and Brian explore what this means for brand identity, consumer behavior, and retail strategy, while diving into everything from Ghost Nutrition’s licensing fallout to how Ozempic might reshape fashion trends. It’s all a signal: the future of commerce is being redrawn across culture, tech, and even your closet.

• The recent wave of M&A is less about scale, and more about strategic repositioning.
• Ghost Nutrition’s licensing phase-out may challenge the brand’s original cultural cachet.
• City Furniture proves sustainability investments can directly boost profitability.
• Weight-loss trends like Ozempic are subtly altering fashion preferences and product demand.
• Context—not trend—is becoming the driving force in personal style and shopping decisions.
• [00:01:41] Phillip: "Everything is an ad unit. That’s the new wild future we have for you."
• [00:05:15] Brian: "Skechers was also acquired this month... $9.4 billion."
• [00:27:04] Phillip: "If you want your Ghost Nutrition stuff, you better stock up."
• [00:47:00] Brian: "Context is taking dominance again ... That’s our next move in fashion."

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Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

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Wooden nickels, gilded sovereigns, and a juke-joint cash drawer. We peel back the layers of Ryan Coogler’s SINNERS to show how currency turns into control—and why plantation scrip still echoes in today’s loyalty points. Get the full breakdown and bonus notes with Future Commerce Plus.

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Live from Los Angeles, Phillip and Brian explore bizarre and brilliant intersections of commerce and culture of late, from commerce themes in Sinners to pope merch to DIY luxury. In an episode that’s part futurist insight, part sacred absurdity, they connect the dots between retail psychology, meme theology, and trade policy. PLUS: Phillip and Brian head to The Whalies with Triple Whale. Coming up on the show, catch their live interview from The Whalies with Bryan Cano of True Classic!

• The Commerce of Catholicism – Pope transitions now drive digital engagement, pilgrimage surges, and resale markets. Welcome to the Vatican's Shopify moment.
• Tariffs as Theater – The recent 90-day tariff reprieve reveals how uncertainty fuels deal-making and could permanently reshape global economic alliances.
• Contentification of the Sacred – From Conclave to meme lore, the papacy is now part of the entertainment-industrial complex, raising questions about the role of narrative and brand in modern faith.
• DIY is the New Luxury – Phillip’s journey from $300 Instagram pants to $6 Goodwill masterpieces signals a cultural shift: recession-core meets personal branding.
• Slop is Dead (Maybe) – Brian drops a bold claim: participatory lo-fi media has peaked. What’s next? Meaningful myth, meta-modern storytelling, and high-context digital ritual.
• [00:06:27] “Once you hit the limit with your product, you start to look at category expansion. You have to ask the ‘why’ questions.” – Brian
• [00:52:45] “The way we relate to culture is through the commerce experience of it—when an American lens is applied.” – Phillip

• The Senses: I Vatican’t Believe These Prices
• Insiders: Language Games

• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce+ for exclusive content and save on merch and print
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more about what we are witnessing in the commerce world
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on futurecommerce.com, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!