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The Commerce Collective Podcast
How to turn Flywheel Retail Insights’ digital trends for 2026 into an action plan
00:36:01
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- [00:01]
Hannah Donahue
Where are we most exposed if we don't act on this trend? So for each major trend in the report, I would have leadership ask themselves, if we do nothing, what happens to our business in 12 months? What does end of the year look like? If we're sitting in December and we didn't do anything, what does that look like for us? That question ultimately will surface the urgency and prioritization more naturally. And it also surfaces any political or organizational issues that might be holding you back. You start to hear we lose share to competitors who are doing X, Y and Z, or we miss the customer who's shifting to this new channel, or we can't measure all of our retail media effectively anymore. That exposure surfaces the real priority and I think helps bring clarity to drive the action that's needed.
- [00:54]
Emma Irwin
Hello and welcome back to the Commerce Collective Podcast. Happy New Year.
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I am still your host, Emma Irwin,
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and in this first episode of the year, we're going to cover what we always Flywheel Retail Insights Digital Trends to Prepare for in 2026 report. At the end of this episode, you will walk away with actionable insights on
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a selection of trends from the report
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and an understanding of why preparing for or building on these trends and shifts
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will move the needle for your business.
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Without further ado, let's meet our trusted guest.
- [01:22]
Hannah Donahue
Thank you for having me. It's always one of my favorite conversations of the year. My name's Hannah Donahue. I am our SVP of Commerce Intelligence here at Flywheel. As we continue to build out Flywheel's intelligence capabilities, we really saw an opportunity to unite Flywheel's former consulting, Retail Insights, custom client analytics, AMC consulting, a lot of those capabilities with TPN's commerce intelligence team into a unified Commerce Intelligence organization. As some of the listeners may have recently heard, our announcement that tpn, which is Omnicom's flagship retail and commerce agency, is going to join or has joined Flywheel. I'm really excited about this, and so we were able to bring those all together and this team's really going to be dedicated to helping our brand partners grow by optimizing for today, but also at the same time building for tomorrow. Our goal is to really stay at the forefront of the industry. We want to bring awareness and clarity to those top commerce challenges and opportunities, and that's really what we're here to talk about today. So I'm really excited to go into the year in this new role in this new capacity and just excited to get going.
- [02:32]
Emma Irwin
Of course, you know this one. I just want to Know what's the last thing you purchased online apart from all Christmas gifts?
- [02:38]
Hannah Donahue
Gap and cat and Jack jeans for my kids. They're growing like weeds and they're always riffing holes in their knees of their jeans, so it feels like I'm just constantly buying them. So that is my latest.
- [02:52]
Emma Irwin
All right, as I mentioned in the opener, we're going to walk through a selection of trends from Flywheel Retail Insights Digital Trends to Prepare for in 2026 report. Why are they there? What do these look like in action now and in the future? What do you do to get ahead of them? You'll hear about agentic commerce, clean rooms and the power of your data. How value, private label and affordability will impact your strategy both online and in store. Consolidation and partnerships at scale. And we'll briefly even hit on ctv. And of course, we will wrap up with what Hannah thinks is the most urgent trend to act on from the list. But you'll have to stick around for that.
- [03:25]
Okay, let's get into it. Today we are here to cover the Flywheel Retail Insights detail Digital trends to Prepare for in 2026 report. For the third year in a row, this is consistently the highest performing episode that we put out each year. So I'm excited to keep that momentum going and with how fast things in the industry change. We obviously have so much to cover here. We could in fact do 10 different episodes about the 10 different trends in the report, but we don't have time for that. So I'm going to have you to kick us off. Can you just give listeners the quick overview of this report? Like why is it created? The methodology? You know the drill?
- [03:58]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, absolutely. And no, no pressure on, on this, on this EP in third year. So our Retail Insights team really started publishing our annual trends report a few years back. We were seeing a pattern. Brands and retailers were constantly reacting to trends rather than proactively planning for them. And so we saw an opportunity to help them really get ahead of this. They'd see something starting to gain traction, scramble to catch up. But then often you end up missing the window of opportunity where they could have moved with more intention and strategy up front. Then you layer all the complexity and noise that there is in the industry today. There's so much information being funneled to brands and to retailers and we're always getting the question, what should we prioritize? Where should we invest? Brands have finite resources, be it time, people, dollars. We saw an opportunity to really help them prioritize their investment and use it more smartly, helping Them figure out where to place their bets, where to focus their attention and where they may need to upskill as well. So it's a favorite one every year to look at and then also go back and see how it changes every year.
- [05:09]
Emma Irwin
Amazing. I know you just hinted too like a lot of brands always feel like they're chasing trends instead of getting ahead of them. How should someone like a VP of commerce use this report to kind of set their 2026 plan in a way that truly helps them get ahead, like go beyond reading the words and actually put it into action?
- [05:25]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, it's, that's a really key question because the report identif 10 trends but not all of them are going to have the same impact for every, for every leader. Not everyone is going to be equally urgent. For every business there's different category nuances. So what I would recommend is first map to your business model. Understand which of these trends directly impact your consumers and how they shop. So you know, you could see if you're looking at a CPG brand or a digitally native brand that might be different from wine to the next. Next, you really want to identify where your signal gaps are. What data insights or capabilities do you lack that would let you move faster, that would help you get there quicker and with more impact. You know, if you're, as an example, if you're not in data clean rooms yet, that's a priority. It's table stakes now. Third, I would say you need to build partnerships, not just projects. These trends that we're seeing are not just solo efforts anymore. They can't be done in a silo. They require partnerships, often with your retailers and potentially with other platforms. And so we'll talk a little bit about, I imagine, consolidation and partnership later. But that's a key piece that I would recommend. And then lastly, I would say start now, let's start. You can start small. You don't have to tackle all of them at once. Pick one or two that are the most high impact trends and run a discipline pilot. See what you learn, measure it, learn from it and then scale what actually works. Don't try and boil the ocean right away. Be strategic in how you tackle them. And I think that avoids potential inertia where there's so many, you don't know where to start that you don't start at all.
- [07:06]
Emma Irwin
Got it. Perfect. Okay. I'm going to move us into trend number one, which is agentic commerce goes mainstream. And you know, we can't have a report without mentioning agentic commerce, of course. So but it's interesting because I see all of this kind of varying discourse on agentic commerce and I'm also like questioning is it agentic? Agentic. I've heard it both ways. But, but seeing all this discourse on, especially on like LinkedIn of where it's at on the adoption cycle. So my question for you is why are we confidently predicting that this is the year that it goes mainstream? Like what changed last year to make this year why it's in the report.
- [07:41]
Hannah Donahue
So first capability has matured. Platforms have really started to make serious commitments to agentic commerce and we really anticipate further advancements in agentic commerce protocol. So we're not talking about experimental chatbots anymore. We're really, these are significant platforms that are investing engineering resources, marketing dollars, they're creating partnerships, it's a real priority. And the capabilities are much stronger than they were previously. You think about ChatGPT launching instant checkout and continuing to expand its retailer partnerships. We expect more advancements in multi product and multi merchant checkout in the future. That creates the room and space for this to advance in a different way in the year ahead that, that we're really excited about. And then if you take a look at what Amazon and Walmart amongst others are obviously doing, they are really embedding Agentix search directly into their platforms. They're in market, they're scaling. And so that would be the thing I would say first, the second I would say is that consumer adoption is accelerating. We are seeing shoppers shift to zero click searches and, and if the consumers are moving there, that also makes the environment more, more ripe for this disruption and that's a fundamental shift in the path to purchase. And then the third thing I would say is that economic incentives are aligning more especially around ad opportunities. So retailers are really seeing agentic commerce as a way to own the consumer interface more directly to collect that data. And platforms are launching sponsored ad opportunities. And so when the economic incentives align as well, there's, there's potential there. And so I think as you start to see sponsored ads and media activations become more prevalent on LLM powered platforms, you'll, you'll start to see this go forward. So the combination, it's not just one thing, it's a combination of all of those together that we think will really make 2026 look different on, on this trend in particular.
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Emma Irwin
That makes sense. I'm curious, do you routinely use agentic commerce? I feel like the RSVP of commerce intelligence is a good, like figuring out where we are on the adoption cycle of people. But like are you any interesting personal observations if you are, if this has become a normal behavior for you?
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Hannah Donahue
Yeah, I mean I do use it frequently for product discovery and research and weighing choices. I'd say that's, that's where I use it the most right now. You know, I used Rufus over Cyber Week to consider different deals, look at price history as they've. As they're now. Including that I like to see and this is part of me being a little bit of a nerd but like I like to see what prompts it suggests. So last night even I was playing around and you know, Rufus has their new things to try section and it offered the prompt what does my order history say about me? And it was kind of scary how spot on it was about my family, our lifestyle. It incorporated the service that we buy, the products we buy on Amazon, the food we buy at Whole Foods and so it had a pretty spot on picture. Yeah, there were a few things that I would say maybe not quite but for the most part it was pretty spot on. And so when you think about the potential and what information is there and available now and you connect that to agentic commerce, it's really becoming interesting. It is starting to go mainstream but let's be honest, we are still in early innings. It is not at full, full, full adoption yet but it's moving really quickly and I'm certainly enjoying the ride. And as multi product checkout becomes available I think that becomes even more interesting as that accelerates.
- [11:29]
Emma Irwin
And I'm definitely curious to see how like that kind of behavioral data collection through these different chatbots kind of impacts, let's say Amazon for example, like the personalization of your homepage during deal events. And how much more spot on can it get? Because min already like scarily spot on before Rufus even came into the picture. But I'm curious to see like oh, will it start describing me as someone to myself and like products for XYZ and it's something about myself.
- [11:55]
Hannah Donahue
What you were saying made me think about. The only thing I'd say is sometimes it does miss what I actually want because the product information it's reading isn't completely right. So I think, and again that's, that's a whole part of agentic commerce. And what, where we're encouraging brands to focus is if, if the details and the data isn't right, that's where the consumer experience can get a bit wonky. But so that's the thing that I would be paying attention to, you know if your product title, description, images, reviews, any of that information is incomplete or poorly structured, the agent isn't going to surface you or will surface you incorrectly. And I would say, you know, the comparable to that would be like, like having a store and your shelf tag is missing or wrong. But at scale and in ways it's much more invisible to you because you don't know you're just not showing up versus at the store you're looking and you can see it right in front of you.
- [12:53]
Emma Irwin
In the scenario where I am the brand partner that you're working with and I'm listening, I understand that I need to do something and it's like, I understand kind of like everything you just said, but do you have any kind of more practical tips for where do I even start to get all of this in line so that I am surfacing?
- [13:11]
Hannah Donahue
Absolutely. So I think the first thing is just audit your searchable content. Look at how your product information appears in an AI search experience. Act as a consumer or a shopper or a user yourself and go in for your categories. If you can't today describe what an AI agent sees when it looks at your product, that's sort of the first problem to solve. You want to make sure that you get your product information complete, accurate and structured. The next step, and you can do that fairly quickly. Then over the next, I'd say, you know, call it 30 to 60 days. Prioritize attribute data. Work with your teams to get the right data in place, structured in a way that the LLMs can ingest it, and make sure that your critical attributes are populated across your top retailer partners in where they need to be so that again, when alarms scrape some of that information, it's there. Start with your top performing SKUs. Again, the theme of today is don't boil, don't boil the ocean. You know, be, be structured in how you approach things. And this might sound technical because it is, you know, it is so specific on the data side, but it's really the difference between your product being available and showing up in those prompts and being invisible. Then from an ongoing standpoint. So if you start with those two things from an ongoing standpoint, I would say start exploring those platform relationships and how this theme and halogentic commerce, how you're working that into some of your joint business planning efforts, where it's going from joint business planning to really more joint value creation. And that can be done on an ongoing basis. Partnerships take time. That's not something you know you're going to snap your fingers and have tomorrow. But that is something that I would definitely recommend considering.
- [15:02]
Emma Irwin
Boom. Okay, I'm going to move us into the second trend that we're going to cover and it's a convergence of two different trends from the report but they, they go together really nicely and that's data clean room shift from niche to necessary, as you already mentioned kind of at the top of the episode. And then non public data becomes a competitive edge, starting with data clean rooms. I feel like I have said the word data clean rooms on this show a zillion times. Like I might as well just get a tattoo of it at this point. But I'm kind of like why do we still have to convince brands that data clean rooms are necessary?
- [15:33]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, I think you know, data clean rooms have been on the horizon for years. I mean long time, that's not a new thing. But as you said Emma, exactly like adoption has been slower than it should be. Why? I think there are a couple things. First, you know, there is complexity. Clean rooms aren't plug and play. They do require coordination with retailers. They require understanding of data governance. They require deeper technical capabilities. And so for many brands that's not an easy thing to put in place right away. The second is around cost or resource constraints. Brands are stretched thin right now and so that can come into play. The other one that I would call out can sometimes be measurement inertia. Brands have measured things and measured media for the same in the same way for a very long time. Shifting what and how you measure and how you determine media effectiveness is a big thing to change for brands when they are so familiar and built in tracking specific media metrics. And so that, because when you start to do that it can shake up where budgets flow and so people tend to resist that. But the reality is that the shift is accelerating. This is undeniable. And the measurement advantage, once you experience it, once you're effectively using data clean rooms is, is really there. And the brands that will struggle the most in 2026 will be the ones that are delayed on data clean rooms. They won't understand where their media is actually driving incremental growth or how the insights available to them through those data clean rooms can play out in their media strategy or their product and portfolio strategy. So there are good reasons why it has been slow. But, but the time to act is, is really now.
- [17:25]
Emma Irwin
If that didn't convince you, I don't know what will. So on a similar note, like let's talk about non public data becomes a competitive edge. What do you mean? By this. What does the report kind of highlight on this one?
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Hannah Donahue
Yeah, so, so most AI LLMs are trained on public data. If it's on the Internet and it's publicly available, the LLM has likely already what's on there. That's great. It's, you know, so as a brand that means any of your publicly available information, be it on your own platform, on a retailer's platform, anywhere is accessible to the LLM and, and as a result your competitors LLMs that they're leveraging as well in some of their agentic models. But non public data, that's what you have that others do not. And so we're talking about things like internal sales data, you know, which of your products are the most profitable, which have the highest lifetime value, which have the strongest new to brand rates. Second, be customer insights, if you've done proprietary studies or audience creation, be it preferences, behaviors, feedback that you've received, operational data, things like your real time inventory levels, your supply chain efficiency and then any proprietary research that you've done as well. These are just a couple examples, but those aren't scrapable by LLMs. And so for brands it becomes really important to think about how you use this as a strategic asset and as a differentiator when you're partnering with retailers and LLMs in the future because it's a unique value that you can bring it's data, data is critical, data is a differentiator in this environment and really strategically leveraging that data becomes even more important. So I think the only other thing I would say is that the question that's being raised this year is how can brands with rich non public data feed that into LLMs or their retailer partners? In an agentic environment brands are going to figure out ways to surface that and brands that don't have that advantage, they're competing purely on public data signals and public data. And so those that have that additional layer of non public data are, will be able to advance their strategic partnerships both with the platforms and the retailers themselves. And so you're moving from sort of transactional to much more joint value creation. And so similarly, you know, you mentioned it Emma, in a clean room environment, the more public, sorry, the more non public or proprietary data that you can bring, the more signals you can include, the more context you have on the audiences that you're bringing in and again, ipso facto able to make more insightful decisions and more targeted decisions as a result.
- [20:15]
Emma Irwin
Amazing. All right, I'm going to move us into the next trend from the report that we're going to cover which is value affordability. And private label takes center stage, starting with value. What is different about this value cycle compared to past moments of economic pressure? So much so that this is in the report.
- [20:32]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, you know, we've seen value cycles before. That's not, that's not new. That's been around forever. It's been around as long as I've been doing this. I think the things that make it a little bit different this year that we are watching is that it's structural, not cyclical. You know, in past recessions we'd see value shopping spike and then it would sort of go back to normal. But what we're seeing now is, is much more structural shifts. You know, discount formats continue to lead club formats that provide a different type of value. These are the store based formats that are driving the growth and outpacing other retail formats. That's not temporary. That is a new consumer norm in where they're going and where they're shopping in stores. It's also being driven by not just economics. Yes, of course there is inflation, there's economic pressures. Those are absolutely factors. They continue to be not trying to negate that. They, they do play a key role, but we're also seeing a value shift. Consumers are becoming much more selective about what they're willing to pay a premium for and where they place value. They want transparency about why something has a price premium. And if they don't see that justification, then they're going to switch to a different product, a private label. And then the other thing that I would say is that ultra low cost is really the new competitive baseline. If you think about a temu or Sheen AliExpress, these platforms have all reset consumer expectations on what value can look like. And if I were to toss in one more, you, you set it at the top. Private label are really now strong household names. Retailers are investing significantly into private label. They are not just a substitute. You have leading global retailers that for example, are targeting over 40% of their sales in, you know, food and beverage or you know, some CPG categories in private label. These aren't just the volume plays anymore. They're much more strategic positioning. They're how they're differentiating. Private label is becoming aspirational for some of them. And so that creates a very different value environment than we've seen in the past.
- [22:47]
Emma Irwin
And I know for many of our brand listeners who are listening, you know, private label is often a thorn in their side. It is painful, it's very hard to compete with What? Do you have any recommendation for brands that are like suddenly now kind of facing really aggressive private label competition? Where should they respond versus where should they not? And I know a lot of times looks like it's chasing price to rock bottom. Do you have any advice there?
- [23:10]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, I think you can't win a price war with private label on every product brand. If you're a brand, you need to respond on your core equity product. If your brand is known for a specific attribute for be it quality, performance, trust, you know, a variety of things, you need to defend that and invest in them. Make sure that they're in promotion rotations where we're available. If you lose position on your core equity, then that starts to become problematic and troublesome. Focus on brands with clear differentiation. If you have a product that offers a genuine benefit that private label can't easily replicate, be it innovation, certifications, performance, it could be a variety of things, you need to defend it. And that's where brand equity really matters. Focus on those categories where there's repeat purchase skus or the category as a whole. You know, going back to our clean room discussion, think about the ones that have the highest lifetime value. Think about the ones that have the strongest new to brand rate. Focus on those where you can build loyalty and trust. Where I would say you get, it's harder if you start chasing on if something is highly, highly commoditized or it's really a low value, a low volume skew for you. The cost of competing with private label across your entire portfolio is probably too high. And so you want to use price competitively but in your pricing strategy competitively, but make your real brand story about the attributes beyond price and in really focus. It is about value, but it's also about quality and differentiation and performance and trust for those, you know, long standing brands. Give consumers a reason to choose you. That's not just on cost or price, but it is key for brands. I would say it is key for brands to understand your private label substitution rate. What percentage of your category is private label? How is that trending? What are the within your category? What are the subcategories that you can see your retailer partners are investing in private label. And so that's, that's something that I would pay attention to. And then the last thing that I would say where you can more effectively compete is that yes, private label is a profit engine for. It's a profit engine for retailers. It's not just a traffic driver retailers may have used to drive it. Use private label just to really drive traffic, which included sometimes a loss leader or a low margin item. Now they're building entire portfolios around private label because it's, it's more profitable. And so at the same time quality has improved dramatically. It is a data play for them. They, it gives them direct consumer feedback which is invaluable information in an AI driven world. But the delicate balance with private label for retailers is that private label is different from a media planning standpoint. Private label doesn't buy retail media and we know that many of our retailer partners are driving growth and margin through their retail media networks. And so that is a really delicate balance for retailers in evaluating their revenue and margin growth from the sale of the private label products themselves with the trade off of them not buying that media.
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Emma Irwin
That was a good, I liked that.
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That was a good point.
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I had not thought of that. So I'm excited to use that somewhere. But for anyone that just listened to you talk through all of that and they had this very like digital lens, I'm going to challenge that and make us expand more into talking about stores. So I know your team does a ton of work analyzing with the store of the future. Looks like how are these shifts that you just kind of talked about maybe overall showing up inside the store of today and how will they show in the store of the future, not just online?
- [27:04]
Hannah Donahue
These shifts are really showing up in their assortment strategy, in how they're integrating in their loyalty programs, in their value messaging in the store. You think about how much digital merchandising and retail media opportunities are exploding within the store. Value messaging is being woven throughout these and I think you will continue to. And then you layer on retailers focusing more on closed loop measurement capabilities and seeing the influence and connecting them. I think you'll, you'll see it pop up there as well. Got it.
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Emma Irwin
All right. Moving us into trend number four. I think if I'm keeping keeping track of the ones that we're covering and that is consolidation and partnership scale across commerce. Where are you seeing this play out most aggressive, aggressively right now? That makes it makes that growth worthy of its own trend within the report?
- [27:52]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, I think so. It's playing out in a quite a few arenas. But if I were to say the ones that we're seeing the most and expect to continue to. It's on demand retail that has been continuing for quite some time as those platforms look to scale their delivery networks and scale their operations. It's been significant consolidation for, for quite some years and we expect that to continue. Really the continued Formation and mergers of buying alliances, particularly in Europe, is continuing and, and really showing their strength there. It's something when we're working with a lot of our European partners, that's one of the topics that comes up the most. And we anticipate that to continue because these alliances are really about retail to retail consolidation and creating stronger negotiating positions. And that's only going to continue, continue in this competitive environment. And then the other one is AI partnerships. We talked about it already, but we're seeing partnerships continue between, you know, AI platforms, LLMs and commerce players. And that consolidation will only continue.
- [28:58]
Emma Irwin
We're going to very quickly hit on a fifth trend. That's half the report team and in fact we covered two in one. So it's more than half the report. But you should still absolutely read the full report. CTV is coming into focus, according to the report. I know what coming into focus means, but can you be more specific with what brands need to prepare for when it comes to the CTV landscape?
- [29:18]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, you know, CTV is really transitioning from experimental to, to really a strategic commerce channel. Commerce acceleration, excuse me, Commerce integration is accelerating and CTV isn't just awareness or reach anymore. Retailers are building clickable QR enabled shoppable CTV formats. And then so that obviously means a shopper can see an ad on CTV clicks through and then ultimately lands directly on a product page. And so the path from your living room to commerce has significantly shortened and retailers are becoming major players in CTV advertising. They're using their first party data to target shoppers on CTV more effectively. Connect that all with closed loop measurement. And so what you're seeing is that CTV is becoming really a core part of your retail media strategy and not something that is separate from it measurements improving there. And so if you're able to have that closed loop attribution that connects CTV viewing to in store and online purchase, that's, that's really changing how brands think about it. And then the only other thing I'd say is that creative formats are evolving. Brands need to be ready for that dynamic, personalized, interactive CTV creative. And so that requires some different production thinking and media planning as well. I mean we could go on forever about this, Emma, but that of course that could be a whole other podcast on its own.
- [30:41]
Emma Irwin
Oh, I know, I know. Okay, rapid fire conclusion. If you had to pick one of these trends that is the most urgent for brands to act on in the next 12 months, which would you choose and why?
- [30:50]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, I mean, I probably say data clean rooms. Not surprisingly, we'll continue to beat this drum. You know, I know agentic commerce gets a lot of the headlines, but ultimately the data clean rooms are immediately actionable. They are high impact for your brand. The infrastructure is there and more than anything, everything else rolls off of it. All these other trends can be informed by the analytics that come out of data clean rooms. And as a true data nerd at heart, I might be a little bit biased on that. Again, all the others, I'm not saying the others aren't critical. Of course agentic commerce is critical. But you know, data clean rooms, that infrastructure is there and the use cases are proven and the retailers are ready. It's just about taking that momentum, taking that first step and really running with it. And there's the cascading impact of if you get into data clean rooms, you're going to have better measurement of your retail media that frees up budget from ineffective. You know, if you're doing underperforming tactics, you'll have better customer data. You know, clean rooms are really that foundation that just makes everything else work better.
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Emma Irwin
For a listener who feels overwhelmed by 10 really large trends, what is a simple framework you recommend for turning this into a focused 2026 action plan?
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Hannah Donahue
Yeah, so I think the first thing is map to your business model. You can do that, you know, first week, which of these 10 trends directly impact how your customers shop? Pick the three or four that are most relevant. Don't try to nail all 10 at once. Then from there, identify where your signal gaps are. We were talking about that earlier. For each of those four three to four priority trends that you select, what's the gap between where you are and where you need to be? Do you lack data? Do you lack platform relationships? Do you lack certain capabilities? Be specific, because that clarity will ultimately drive action. The next thing I would say is build your roadmap. So for each trend, for each of those three to four priority trends, what's the first thing that you can do in Q1 to really move the needle? Not the perfect solution, just the first actionable step. Maybe it's get into a data clean room pilot. Maybe it's hiring a specific resource that you need. Maybe it's auditing your product data for agentic readiness and then ultimately sequence your initiatives. The key is you don't need to solve all trends immediately. You need to move meaningfully on three to four of them and pick the ones that matter the most to your brand and build capability there. The rest will follow.
- [33:20]
Emma Irwin
Beautiful. Okay, finally, what is one question you think every CMO or head of Commerce should be asking their teams after reading this report that they probably aren't asking yet.
- [33:29]
Hannah Donahue
Yeah, that's a great question. I think I would say where are we most exposed if we don't act on this trend? So for each major trend in the report, I would have leadership ask themselves, if we do nothing, what happens to our business in 12 months? What does end of the year look like? If we're sitting in December and we didn't do anything, what does that look like for us? That question ultimately will surface the urgency and prioritization more naturally. And it also service it surfaces any political or organizational issues that might be holding you back. Because if you ask something like what should we do about agentic commerce as an example, you're going to get a lot of maybes and debates. But if you ask where are we most exposed if we don't act, I think you get clarity. You start to hear we lose share to competitors who are doing X, Y and Z, or we miss the customer who's shifting to this new channel or we can't measure all of our retail media effectively anymore. That exposure surfaces the real priority and I think helps bring clarity to drive the action that's needed.
- [34:36]
Emma Irwin
I have to, in a few words, ask you what is on your digital wish list something that you just haven't purchased and why this time around?
- [34:43]
Hannah Donahue
You know, for the longest time it was one of those cool cabanas for the beach. I kept getting ads for those that sat on my wish list most of the year, including all summer, but I just got one for Christmas. Someone gave me one, so I was excited. Outside of that, it's probably pretty cliche, but I, I love reading. I add a million books to my digital wish list and I may get through a lot of them, but the list is extensive. And so that will, that will be on there for some time.
- [35:08]
Emma Irwin
Beautiful. Okay, I think that can wrap us up.
- [35:12]
And thank you so much for your time.
- [35:14]
Hannah Donahue
As always, thank you for having me.
- [35:19]
Emma Irwin
And that wraps up the first episode of the Commerce collective podcast for 2026. Hopefully we've given you some food for thought, a spark that ignites insightful conversations on planning for the future with your team and maybe even the inspiration to be ahead of every trend we talk about in next year's version of this episode. You can download the full digital trends to prepare for a report in the episode description. And if you want to discuss or work through an action plan of specific elements of the report for your business, our Commerce Intelligence team would love to take that next step with you. You can reach out to me directly@emma.com irwinmc.com or head to Flywheel's website and hit Contact Us. I've been your host, Emma Irwin, and
- [35:57]
we will see you next time.