How Constraints Create Cathedrals

[00:01:36.79] Alicia: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Future Commerce Podcast. Obviously, I am not Brian nor Phillip. This is Alicia Esposito here, Director of Content and Media Strategy for Future Commerce. And I am very excited to be taking the reins for this special episode with a good friend of the pod, Future Commerce as a whole, Alex Lunkov. Alex, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me today.

[00:02:00.63] Oleksii: For sure. Thank you for having me. I'll start with the funny thing. Actually, my name is not Alex, it's Oleksii, but friends call me Alex. And Future Commerce, as you mentioned, are friends, so you can call me Alex. I'm a business analyst and really commerce consultant. I work in fractional capacity with my clients, but also I am a part of Global EPAM team delivering software for our clients. I have ten years of experience with Adobe partners. And now with EPAM, we work kind of with different commerce platforms across mobile, web, whatever. And my clients were like Wimbledon, BB&R, and multiple Ukrainian brands from Forbes. And yeah, I really have some thoughts around working in corporate versus fractional. I think we'll go deeper into that.

[00:03:01.15] Alicia: Yeah. We've been very lucky to have you as part of our little committee, so to speak of writers and just this past summer alone, you contributed two incredible pieces that I want to unpack a little bit further because I think they both really hit profound notes as far as what a lot of the industry is thinking and feeling today. And the first piece you did with us was called When Algorithms Build Cathedrals. And it was a reflection of sorts of the Saint Sophia's mosaic. And what really struck us on an emotional level is how we turn this idea of a mosaic, 9,000,000 glass cubes that were orchestrated and configured together into something transcendent and something that really takes people's breath away, right? I would love for you to share kind of how you made that connection, that emotional connection that you had to this broader idea of what's happening in the world of commerce.

[00:04:08.99] Oleksii: It's a very old story, as old as my career for ten years. But when I have some project that I'm working on, like either a deck or article in that case, I always face this wall of where do I go next. And for this particular article, I had some thoughts. I had a message that I wanted to convey, which is you need constraints to produce better creative results. But I was not sure how to kind of how to tell the story. And I live actually across the street from the cathedral. And I was looking at it, and I've never been there, actually. And I went there, and it was amazing. As I said, the beauty there is unmatchable. And I was sitting on a bench in the park after the tour, and I was thinking, isn't that remarkable how people, hundreds of years ago can do that work? And now we have all that amazing technology, and sometimes we produce like nothing remarkable. And it was this bridge between, actually, that does make sense because as Phillip said in one of his pieces, we removed all the friction, and we wonder why we don't feel anything. And I think this is exactly, very... It's the same thought put in different way. But for me, it was that in order to create something truly remarkable, we need really great constraints. And sometimes in modern world, we don't have them, so we need to find them. And this cathedral and this mosaic is the example of what happens when you do have constraints.

[00:06:14.00] Alicia: It's super profound. And the piece really came at a time when there was so much hype surrounding AI because there was so much narrative around the boundaries being completely broken and possibilities are endless when you have this tool or this resource at your side kind of being your companion. And although this idea of like constraints likely depends on the person and their role and how they go through their day to day. But are there any practical constraints that come to mind for you as we think about commerce teams and how they are currently doing their work that kind of present an opportunity for that human intention and that human thoughtfulness to really shine through, knowing that they likely have AI very much and are incorporating it into their workflows more and more?

[00:07:11.40] Oleksii: Yeah. Actually, that's a really good question. And among the things I never use AI for and actually, for example, I really appreciate my tone of voice, and I don't want that to be lost in translation between my draft and AI output. So I really try to preserve that. What other things I'm not delegating any fact checking to AI. No. {laughter} Thank you. I always try to find links and resources and double check all the information. So any factual information that you see in my content and in my work, I for sure check that. Also, we don't need to be ashamed in teams, for example, when doing work that we use AI. I think there's still this narrative, you put less work in that, so it must be worse. And I think we need to stop doing that because I think LLMs are here to stay. I think we need to destigmatize the usage of AI. And I think the way to do that in a proper way is to understand the limits of technology when it comes to LLMs, for example, numbers, facts, stuff like that. Because as you said, during the summer, especially when the AI hype train was at peak, it was like robots are one day away from taking over the world. They are not. And especially, I think it became obvious after ChatGPT 5 was released, it was this huge backlash that people expected ChatGPT 5 to be magical, and it really wasn't. And I think now people start to understand that, okay, AI has its limitations. So I think embracing the limitations, but also embracing the fact that it is here to stay, will help us navigate this narrative of AI in our daily life.

[00:09:20.49] Alicia: Yeah. I think those are some great points. It's funny, as humans, we sometimes venture into extremes and it's like the pendulum is swinging. I hope we're starting to get closer to that middle ground and there will be less think pieces about the em dash. But you're right, there are typical patterns or clues, especially for copywriting, where you can tell, and that's where the human intervention comes into play. So it's really interesting to see how teams correct themselves or test and learn, I guess, from their process to figure out what works for them. But then at the same time, we're also having really fascinating conversations about, well, if we have all this efficiency, what do we do to really elevate what makes the brand meaningful? Because again, it's kind of a balance, right? It's like a yin and yang story. And that's where we're seeing a lot of dialogue occur around cultural relevance cultural participation. You did another fantastic piece for us, one that is still getting views and clicks and shares on social media, where you essentially connect ancient trade caravans to modern cultural transmission.

[00:10:41.62] Oleksii: Yeah.

[00:10:42.18] Alicia: So these brands are not just distributing products, right? They are cultural ambassadors who are sharing ideas, cultural theories, and concepts.

[00:10:57.00] Oleksii: Yep.

[00:10:57.40] Alicia: You use the example of PlayStation teaching you about Japanese culture, and then the cultural sharing continues as you experience the brand and the product experience, so to speak. So I would love for you to expand upon that, your first person experiences, but also how you're seeing brands really embrace this concept and apply it in a way that makes sense for them, but also for their consumers as well.

[00:11:30.67] Oleksii: I love this saying about personal brand, which is in order to build a personal brand, you need a person to be behind that brand.

[00:11:40.75] Alicia: Yeah.

[00:11:40.83] Oleksii: The brand actually is, I think, it's channel of channeling something. And in case of personal brand, it's channeling the person. In case of business, it's channeling the business. So unfortunately, in my opinion, there is no single, easy answer here. I think you really need something to be translated through the brand. And that something might be a service that is unique, might be a product that is unique, might be something else that you really want to translate through the brand. And I think it's up to you as a business owner to define that something that you want to translate. However, I think in the modern world, and it comes especially strongly, I think, in my first piece about cathedrals, we are lost in that sea of sameness. And it is very easy for a good brand with a good story to be lost in these best practices ecommerce when they try to do, for example, ecommerce, right? They lose their authenticity. And yeah, they are just lost in the channel. I think there is a piece on Future Commerce about medium is the message. And I think that's true. However, you need to be very attentive and pay very close attention as a business owner for the channel that you're using to translate your brand, not to interfere with your brand, and your brand still be visible through that channel. And in ecommerce, which I do for a living, those best practices are very obvious, like performance core web vitals, accessibility, like PDP, search merchandising, like SEO optimization, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So there are a set of best practices, and it's just very fine line between you have to do them, but at the same time, what is unique about your brand? And now let's think how do we translate that through the channel. And I had pleasure to work with brands like BB&R and Wimbledon where they do have something to translate and they do have this channel. And now the challenge is how do we do that? And I think the answer is 100% unique for each individual case. But for starters, you need to understand what is your brand, what do you want to translate, and what are the channels, and how do you want to engage those channels for your brand to stand out still.

[00:14:53.20] Alicia: And when you say BB&R, that's Berry Bros. and Rudd right?

[00:14:55.76] Oleksii: Yes. Actually, that's...

[00:14:58.16] Alicia: Yeah. No. No. It's good because I wanted to call out for our listeners that this was a very rich canvas for you to work with. That's 300 years of heritage.

[00:15:10.57] Oleksii: I think that's the oldest retailer of the wine in The UK, which is something.

[00:15:16.89] Alicia: Oh, we love talking about wine here at Future Commerce, especially Brian.

[00:15:20.49] Oleksii: Yeah. Brian.

[00:15:21.87] Alicia: Yeah, so what I want to ask you about personally in that experience is, you have this, again, rich history to work with, this very rich brand. But then it's like, okay, well, how do we put all of this into a digital experience without losing the essence, losing the aura, and over optimize, so to speak?

[00:15:45.20] Oleksii: First of all, you don't. {laughter} Some things will inevitably be lost in translation. That's just a fact. Some things might be restored later on because as you said, that's balance, and you're trying to find it. And none of us are perfect and will overshoot or undershoot in some situations. But you're right. We're trying our best to preserve that brand heritage through the channel that we are working with. So for ecommerce channel, actually, yeah, that was a new build on Adobe Commerce with Composable Commerce, with new storefront, etcetera. So one thing that we did was with recommendations and merchandising basically. And we enabled their support team to provide really human touch to each customer through recommendations. So we gave the capability to essentially receive kind of concierge service through the website where you can subscribe and then you get real human recommendations and newsletters and stuff like that. So it was not just standard Amazon type of ecommerce. In that particular case, the less is more. So yes, we had less AI personalization. But at the same time for that particular client and their particular customers, that was a plus that when you buy $500 bottle of wine, you do want personal touch and not AI chatbot. So that's that. But also on the other spectrum of the balance, keeping everything together with the performance, accessibility. Of course, brands like Wimbledon and BB&R, Barry Bros. & Rudd, they have their style guides. And actually, funny enough, I just thought about that, nor Berry Bros. nor Wimbledon have very good contrast in their brand identity. So it was a challenge to work on accessibility for them on the storefront because I think Wimbledon has gray on white and something like that. So you have to work with the constraints and you have to adapt typical brand identity to the channel that we are working on, which was ecommerce in that case. But yeah, it is a challenge, definitely. And some things will be lost. But again, as I said, every client and every case is a story that you need to unpack and try to understand what it is that makes them unique and what do you want to translate.

[00:19:05.13] Alicia: Yeah. I think that's a great point. And in the case of Cult Naked, which is another brand you dig into in your piece, it's definitely more pop culture leaning, more about understanding the product fit and product opportunity within the cultural moment or cultural zeitgeist. But there's definitely like a balance there, right? Because you don't wanna be seen as a brand that is simply chasing trends or inserting yourself into pop culture moments where there's not really a relevant tie in.

[00:19:39.67] Oleksii: Yeah.

[00:19:39.91] Alicia: So what are some notable callouts for our listeners around what makes Cult Naked so effective in the work that they're doing?

[00:19:48.47] Oleksii: Yeah. I actually want to touch on the fashion brands in general because I work with a lot of them. For fashion brands in particular, like fitting rooms online, the guides, the sizing guides that are accessible not only... For me, as a man, for example, if I want to buy a present for someone and I look at this page with sizing guides, I don't understand them.

[00:20:18.64] Alicia: Yeah. {laughter}

[00:20:19.84] Oleksii: For fashion brands, actually, it's very big opportunity to make that all accessible, not only from the standpoint of technology, but from the standpoint of how we communicate what we want to communicate.

[00:21:39.21] Alicia: In a way, incorporating all of these tools, whether it be virtual fitting room, customization, sometimes even rich media can almost turn an ecommerce site into like a third place of sorts. You've talked about third places in the physical realm, but I'm curious of your thoughts of like how that can be translated to ecom because there are so many rich capabilities and tools now to make that experience even more relevant, engaging, and distinct from a brand perspective?

[00:22:14.51] Oleksii: Today's world is focused on AI. But if you remember, I think it was one year ago, something like that, metaverse was huge. And actually for brands it still is. So just recently I saw a friend of mine doing some virtual lecture for somebody in the metaverse. And actually another friend of mine is the architect, but his side hustle is developing digital products for brands who have offline presence. So they install kiosks basically in brick and mortar stores, and then you can interact with the brand in the digital space as well, being in their physical space. So it's kind of ridiculous sounding. But it's really, I think, it's very important. First of all, not all of the brands are gonna have a third place. I think that's a luxury. But if you want to do that as a brand, I think you need to explore. And exploring happens when you try to combine different technologies, different ideas. As I mentioned at the beginning, writing about AI, but going to the cathedral, having brick and mortar store, but playing around with digital spaces within that physical store. So I think experimentation for brands really opens up this opportunity to meet the customer where they are. Nike, for example. You don't expect every sportwear brand in cultural content, but Nike is in cultural conversation. Because, for example, they launched this new campaign not Just Do It, but Why Do It? Did you hear about that?

[00:24:17.14] Alicia: Mhmm. Yes.

[00:24:17.78] Oleksii: And that's an example of, hey, this is just a sportswear brand, right? No. They are tapping into this culture which is unhealthy productivity. Just do it. Right? And they challenged themselves and say, hey, how can that be said in another way which is more relevant to today and addresses the current problems that we have in our society maybe. And they say, "Why Do It" and come up with this campaign? And now this is a cultural moment for the brand. Right? But that would never have happened should they stay in this sportswear lane. So I think that's kind of one of the examples from top of hat that can be huge for brands.

[00:27:17.51] Alicia: The technology creates the impact, especially for smaller brands. You refer to Nike, but, you know, Nike is a behemoth. And there's a lot of capital, a lot of resources to support these ideas, the ability to act really quickly on new opportunities. But we're seeing even smaller and mid sized companies use AI, for instance, to really turn a moment into an opportunity. And as we kind of close things out, Alex, I would love your take on what the future will hold. And now we're at this point where we're starting to see more practical applications and even hear more practical conversations around how AI is being used, how it will be used. And there was this recent data point around how 95% of generative AI pilot projects fail. So that was kind of a glaring statistic for everybody to kind of sit on. I'm curious your thoughts on one, what is separating the leaders from everybody else in this space? What are some practical, actionable tips that you would recommend in this era of AI? And what does it really mean for the future of the commerce organization? What things are you seeing really bubble to the top in terms of how teams are structured and how they're operating in order to, I guess, capitalize on all the things that we've been talking about today?

[00:28:48.03] Oleksii: Yeah. That's a really good question. I do think that the future I always tell this story that currently AI adoption is this huge spike on the top and then very long tail afterwards. And I think the future is to bring up that long tail to be up to speed with the current technology and with the way how things are working in this modern world. I think that the biggest opportunities lie in really understanding the technology. And I think, to your point, 95% of AI implementations fail exactly by that reason. They don't really understand the limitations and possible good things that technology can bring. We all understand, for example, cars, right? We all understand how we build around that. We all understand internet. We all understand websites. But we do not understand the AI yet. Yes, early adopters, they do. And this is why they succeed. Because they understand the technology really, really well. And I think the future for every business, but especially small and medium sized businesses, is in not just saying AI can do everything and please implement AI in my business, but really understanding the needs of the business and what technology can do for you. Because technology is here to stay, and LLM is a great piece of technology. The question is how do I use that to solve my business needs? And it all starts with business needs that you have and how you understand the technology. And I think that's probably the biggest point that you need to focus on, in my personal opinion.

[00:31:02.40] Alicia: I think that totally makes sense. And it is opening up all of these new questions and I guess even opportunities around how teams are going to be run and who belongs to these teams. I mean, there have been a lot of think pieces, articles around the job market and where is it going. I feel like that's even more profound in this industry because on one hand we're seeing so much squeeze, especially among like digital and marketing teams. But then we're also seeing discussion around like, well, where are the opportunities for people within these teams to shine and differentiate themselves against the tools that they're using and relying on? And I know you have some perspective around the opportunity for fractional leadership and that whole movement. So how does that kind of come into play here as we think about the future of commerce?

[00:32:00.03] Oleksii: I think for fractional leaders in particular, I think there are a couple of things in play that play nicely together and enable a lot of people to start exploring this fractional type of work, which is first, the productivity of a single person increased dramatically. It used to be that business analysis task. For example, you're a stakeholder and I talk to you and I try to collect real estate business requirements, for some website or whatever. It used to take me weeks, multiple calls. Now I can schedule a two hour call with you. AI notetaker is gonna be with me. And after that, I will spend maybe one hour more and I will have all the user stories and everything ready. I will not write a single piece of user story. It's all gonna be done within one hour. It didn't used to be that way.

[00:33:10.54] Alicia: Yeah.

[00:33:11.02] Oleksii: So first, the productivity increased for a single person dramatically. However, business processes didn't change for a lot of businesses. So we have this situation where a single person working for a business increased their productivity dramatically if they want to and if they are smart. But then the business is much slower. So the processes within business, for the most part, stay the same. And now we have that person with a lot of free time or like, that's one piece of that. Another piece is the job market crisis. I think that crisis is for it's a little bit self imposed because we said that AI will do everything, then laid off a bunch of people. And now we understand that AI will not do their job, and we need to think how we move forward. But a result of that is that people look for new ways to essentially make money and be employed, right? So we have that in play as well. And also, if you talk to senior leaders, they always consulted other businesses. They always had some side projects. They always... Take Phillip, for example, Somethingdigital and his work on Future Commerce. That was his fractional involvement in Future Commerce.

[00:34:45.71] Alicia: That's true.

[00:34:46.51] Oleksii: Yeah. It grew into the business. So it's not so much a new reality. I think that's more... The word fractional, I think, is embracing the reality that already is with us. Plus, we have things like AI enhanced human productivity, plus a really volatile job market where on one hand specialists want to have additional incomes. And on the other hand, businesses don't want to hire full time because they have a lot of obligations in that particular case. And they want job done, but they don't want to commit long term. So I think that's a perfect opportunity for a lot of people to explore how they can fit into the market in fractional roles.

[00:35:44.26] Alicia: Yeah. It's definitely a very interesting time and creates a new opportunity for people to focus their time, their effort, their energy on these creative opportunities and the creative thinking, I guess you could say, that exist. The limitations exist within technology and AI. So it's interesting to hear how all of the things we talked about today kind of work together, meld together, and influence each other, as we consider what the commerce experience is today and what it could be in the future.

[00:36:18.48] Oleksii: Yeah. 100%.

[00:36:20.95] Alicia: Fantastic, Alex. Well, I appreciate you taking time to sit down with me and kind of unpack all the great content that you've created for us, share a bit more insight into what you're seeing in how teams are operating, the challenges, the opportunities, and where we may be going in the future. Thanks so much for taking the time out to chat with me today.

[00:36:38.99] Oleksii: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:36:40.68] Alicia: And to all of you listening, of course, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, the show as a whole. Head on over to your preferred podcast player, whether it be Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or of course, our site has our stream as well. And be sure to subscribe. We have new episodes coming to you weekly, sometimes more than that. So if you subscribe, you will get the latest and greatest delivered right to your device. But for now, that is it from us. Thanks again to all of you for listening. We will see you next time.

[00:37:08.51] Oleksii: Cheers.

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