Luxury brands are the ultimate exercise in brand storytelling. A Chanel handbag is not necessarily more functional or beautiful than a Coach, yet it is seen as a better status symbol, which is simultaneously inferred from and validated by its higher pricing as well as its worldwide brand recognition. People aspire to luxury brands because they convey social status to others; thus, the real value of luxury consumption is to be seen, to signify to the in-group that “yes, I am one of you.”

As our lives move online, the reach of luxury consumption naturally exploded, subsequently sending it through…

At the beginning of the year, we witnessed the mainstream breakthrough of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) after digital artist Beeple grabbed headlines in March as one of his works sold at Christie’s for $69 million. Before long, household brands from Taco Bell to Charmin were jumping on the bandwagon and releasing their own NFT collections to ride the hype. Yet, one month later, cryptocurrency prices tanked (in one of their many routine fluctuations as a speculative investment vehicle), and the hype around NFTs cooled off with them. …

Social commerce is poised to take off in the U.S. after years of anticipation and laying the groundwork, thanks in part to the pandemic-driven boom in ecommerce and increased social media consumption. As the mall-ification of Facebook and Instagram continues apace, independent social commerce platforms are also emerging to help brands sell directly to consumers. Meanwhile, new features from other popular platforms are set to give social shopping another boost, which should prompt more brands to re-evaluate their social strategy.

When we talk about social commerce in the U.S., there tends to be a conflation of concepts. Is it “an…

Google built its sprawling empire on the foundation of its search ad revenue. Its enduring dominance on the global search market has resulted in its very name being used as a proprietary eponym for online search. Over the past few years, Google has been able to hold onto its market share, despite various contenders threatening to unbundle search. Yet, its enduring market dominance has also attracted intensifying regulatory scrutiny, prompting a larger conversation about its role in the market and opening an opportunity for a new crop of privacy-minded search engines to make a play for users.

Google’s Enduring Dominance in Search

In our 2019…

After writing about the diverging paths that the major social platforms are taking to secure their futures, I started to think about the broader shifts happening in the attention economy today that are disrupting the way brands capture eyeballs and engage with consumers. There are a number of factors at play that are changing audience behavior — technological, social, cultural, etc. Taking a deeper look at the status quo, however, a counter-trend of convergence and bundling is emerging as well, as digital platform owners endlessly copy each other’s best features in fear of being left behind. What does this mean…

Fintech has always been part of the ecommerce infrastructure. After all, running an online shop requires digital payment solutions. Some ecommerce platforms, such as Amazon and Shopify, develop their own integrated payment solutions, while others like Squarespace and BigCommerce rely on fintech partners, such as Square and Stripe to provide payment solutions for merchants. Regardless of their different approaches, all of these companies, excluding Amazon, are B2B companies that typically don’t have a direct bearing on the consumer.

We tend to think about B2B companies and B2C companies separately, and what enterprise companies do typically recedes into the backend, invisible…

We are now well over a decade into the social media era, during which the cultural zeitgeist has become increasingly shaped by public discourses that unfold across social platforms, resulting in various social, economical, and political implications. Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the public opinion on social media has decidedly taken a turn for the worse in recent years, as more and more people start to question social media’s net negative impact on society and mental health. …

The consumer attitude and expectations towards financial services are changing rapidly. From digital goods like NFTs, to meme stocks to DogeCoin, the way that younger generations are approaching personal finance management is marked by a distinct mindset shift away from conventional investment vehicles.

Meanwhile, the rise of digital-native alternatives led by neo-banks and fintech services, combined with the rise of the creator economy, is further changing consumer behavior and expectation around personal finance management.

For financial brands, this compounding shift of mindset and behavior spells great opportunities as well as enormous disruptions. To capture this new generation of retail investors…