Feeling Special

I gave a presentation in 2016, in front of about 1,500 people. I spent nearly an hour explaining to the audience how running an ecommerce brand would become comparable to running a sports franchise.

The audience was not impressed.

I do recall a pair of Associate Athletic Directors working for FCS Colleges reaching out to me to suggest I "had it right" - they suggested their world was heading in this direction as well. My industry didn't agree, these people who weren't in the industry believed in the thesis.

Here we are, in 2026.

As you can see, AI has a way to go. That's a catastrophic effort at creating a cartoon for me. And you need to see the cartoon to understand AI limitations. How will you know when AI completely butchers your marketing efforts? It's going to happen, and it's going to be spectacular.

Last year I stood in a luxury store with an Executive. The Executive told me to watch the customer. The customer was spending somewhere north of $5,000 ... and she had a glow that reached from Phoenix to El Paso. It was the kind of glow an Eagles fan might feel after beating the Cowboys 34-28 on a last-second touchdown pass.

The customer felt special.

The theoretical Eagles fan would feel special.

It isn't hard to see the future of ecommerce bifurcate.

1. AI-Agents shopping on your behalf at AI-Marketplaces. That's cold and boring and sterile.
2. Brands who make customers feel special.

To get back to the sports analogy, you're probably going to hire a General Manager at some point in the future.

• AI-Marketplace Director reports to this person.
• AI-Agent Director reports to this person.
• Ecommerce Director reports to this person.
• Creative Director reports to this person.
• Website Operations reports to this person.
• Digital Marketing Team reports to this person.
• Merchandise/Marketing Communicator (Director) reports to this person.
• Analytics Team reports to this person.

The General Manager (GM) brings everything together. She's not unlike Billy Beane in Moneyball. She has three major job functions.

• Partner with merchandising/inventory leadership to put the best products in the best situations to have the best outcomes ... similar to what a baseball GM does with A / AA / AAA / Major League players. There's a development plan for each player. There needs to be a development plan with winning/new merchandise that is marketing-driven.
• Lead the company into the future with AI, setting aside all the hype and grifting, focusing on what matters to customers.
• Make customers feel special. This doesn't mean offering somebody 40% off. This doesn't mean triple-loyalty-points. This likely means creating digital and offline events that fill an emotional need with the customer. This isn't fundamentally different than six Saturday home game afternoons during the College Football season.

There are going to be new companies that create the AI-Marketplaces of the future. We have no idea who those companies are (they likely don't exist yet or they have 11 employees), we don't know what AI-Marketplaces will look like. We don't. Anybody who tells you they know is a Thought Leader. We will need a General Manager position to cut though the grifting that will happen or is currently happening. 

The GM needs to also make customers feel special.