Welcome to Future Commerce Rewind, where we revisit our deepest and most enduring conversations. This week, we're playing back our April 2025 conversation with Andrew McLuhan, grandson of Marshall McLuhan and director of The McLuhan Institute. Andrew joins Phillip and Brian to explain why his grandfather's ideas still hold up: the side effects of a technology tend to become its main effects, and the Global Village was never as idyllic as it sounds. AI has become a companion, an advisor and a shopping assistant. McLuhan's asks the core question: what do our new tools extend, and what do they change about us?

• Get your ticket to VISIONS Summit: NYC
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• 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!

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Can anyone tell the staged from the real anymore? On today’s After Dark: We’re growing increasingly certain that everything is fake now. Amazon drones delivering your package to the deep end of your backyard pool? Curiosity bait. A bunch of Kindergarten moms actually keeping up in a group thread? A Suno commercial. That behind-the-scenes footage? AI-generated – but you watched it, didn’t you? PLUS: The minds of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim have converged to craft what’s anticipated to be one of the most compelling documentaries we’ve ever seen.

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Nikita Walia and Elliot Vredenburg of U.N.N.A.M.E.D. Studios took to the VISIONS stage at MoMA last year to enlighten a room of retail executives and brand marketers about the realities of worldbuilding. Their theory: a brand’s final form is decided by the public—and the strategist's job is to navigate that story, not control it. And they use Mercator, Buckminster Fuller, Guy Debord, free public Wi-Fi, and an acne sticker to back up their claims.

• Branding isn't worldbuilding because worldbuilding just imposes another set of rules
• A three-hundred-page brand book is obsolete the day it ships, and rebrands every five to ten years are theater for stakeholders
• The public decides a brand's final form, not the guidelines deck
• Regenerative brands are always rebranding
• [00:00:25] "Counter to what you've heard today, branding is not, in fact, worldbuilding." — Nikita Walia
• [00:04:34] "This is sameness being sold to us as a form of consistency." — Nikita Walia
• [00:15:45] "It's not about being right. It's about being useful, and useful in motion." — Elliot Vredenburg
• [00:17:09] "A regenerative brand doesn't need to rebrand every five to ten years because it's always rebranding." — Elliot Vredenburg

• The Mercator projection (1569) and Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map
• Superstudio, The Continuous Monument
• Guy Debord and psychogeography
• LinkNYC
• Burberry, Daniel Lee, Demna's Balenciaga, Pierpaolo Piccioli
• Starface

• Read Alicia Esposito's companion essay, The New Meaning of Brand Building: Cartographies of Meaning
• Watch the original session at VISIONS Summit: Cartographies of Meaning
• Hear Dami Lee's VISIONS session, The Stories Behind Our Spaces
• Listen to Building Culturally Intelligent Brands with Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel
• Revisit The Anti-Blands, Existential Brands, and the New Dadaism
• Read Surface Culture: When Brands Mistake Wallpaper for Authenticity
• Check out Future Commerce on YouTube
• Check out Future Commerce Plus 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!

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.