VISIONS Summit NYC 2025
Reflections from the Summit and my trip to NYC last week.
I’ve been a longtime reader of Future Commerce and so it was great to get to head over to VISIONS Summit last week. I was also one of 10 guests to get invited along to the pre-conference tour, intention setting, and lunch where we discussed world building and life changing moments
Here’s what I learnt during the conference and my trip more broadly.
The old world of building brand was like map making. But map making is flawed because it’s created by those in power, rather than reflecting the true culture of the world’s inhabitants. Plus borders are artificial. This old brand definition is shaped by rigid boxes. This world means brands have to rebrand every 5 years to reflect the new culture.
The new way to think of brand should be to see it more as a compass: a set of principles that guide the brand through an ever-changing world. No rebrand necessary. And also from my POV, suits all forms of social a lot better.
and Elliot Vredenburg of U.N.N.A.M.E.D. This was by far one of the best talks on brand I’ve ever seen.
Both of these came from the talk by
Substack remains hot – but very difficult for brands to crack into because it needs personality and a point of view (not a restrictive tone of voice). This was part of an excellent panel where I got to fanboy a little given I’ve read gen z for dummies – After School by
on and off for a long time. She was joined by who writes a great link roundup daily, Daisy Alioto who runs a new media empire called DIRT, and Erica Chen who leads strategy at Future Media Futures Group.
For me the Substack excitement was exactly as Casey said: it’s like early days blogger or tumblr. To me it feels like one of the few bastions of optimism and hope in a currently pessimistic world.Commerce is culture. And some of the best examples of time machines come from corporations. From Future Commerce CEO Phillip Jackson.
Rhizomes are structures like spaghetti where there is no central core and branching like you’d get with a tree. Cities, worlds, cultures can often reflect rhizomes.
Tuplamancy is a form of meditation where people mediate other beings into metnal existence, which are so powerful that getting rid of them has been called akin to murder
Humans animate things by default. We imagine cars, toys, objects as being who respond and have a point of view
Fridge cigarettes are a real thing*
New York remains one of the most exciting, full-on, buzziest places I’ve ever been.
I met up with The Breakfast which remains one of the most exciting social products of the last few years IMO. The app helps facilitate meeting people for breakfast. Not dating, not even networking, just offline meetups. In a future where AI optimise the hell out of everything (and people I bet become worse communicators) this is going to be even more useful and powerful.
*OK I didn’t actually see this but given the huge swathes of new brands launching legal uppers and downers and everything in between, it does not surprise me.
Some of the Substacks of people I saw who are worth following:
🔗 When you’re ready, here’s how Ballpoint can help you
→ Profitably grow paid social spend from £30k/m → £300k/m
→ Create full funnel, jobs to be done-focused creative: Meta, TikTok, YouTube
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Email me – or visit Ballpoint to find out more.
NB: We support brands spending above £20k/month.
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