The Future of Commerce is Experiential

Why experiences, not transactions, are the key to unlocking powerful first-party data

I’ve talked extensively about experiential as the cornerstone of impactful brand storytelling. Having led the rebrand of Two Bunch Palms, designed hotel opening experiences for Virgin Hotels, crafted immersive moments like the 100 Thieves Cash App Compound opening and produced brand experiences including Cash App's Art Basel workshops with Heron Preston, I've experienced firsthand how powerful experiential commerce can be. I've also seen how frustrating fragmented data becomes when it undermines personalization and limits future growth. Future Commerce recently reinforced this perspective, highlighting the growing impact of retail-hospitality hybrids that blend commerce, culture, and community (Future Commerce).

Now feels like the ideal moment to dive deeper into why experiential commerce is essential for brand health and foundational to unlocking clean, actionable first-party data.

Commerce is not just changing; it is being completely rewritten.

For decades, brands have relied on fragmented platforms to reach consumers. They have spent billions trying to track behavior, personalize marketing and drive retention using tools that were never designed to work together. CRMs collect outdated data. CDPs unify it but fail to activate it. Marketing platforms push messages into the void. None of it creates real engagement. None of it builds memory.

And yet, brands keep doubling down on the same failing playbook, convinced that more data, more tracking and more automation will fix a fundamentally broken system. But the problem is not the data itself. It is that this data lives in silos, disconnected from the actual consumer experience. Tracking alone does not create relationships. Automation does not generate loyalty. Fragmented tools cannot deliver a unified brand experience.

Consumers are not asking for more targeted ads; they want experiences that mean something.

This is why the future of commerce is not about selling more efficiently; it is about creating experiences that connect, engage, and evolve.

The High Cost of Fragmented Data and Platforms

Every brand today is drowning in consumer data, yet most of it is unusable. Instead of driving better decisions, it creates complexity, inefficiency and wasted spend. According to a report by the Association of National Advertisers, brands that rely on fragmented marketing systems spend 20 percent more on media buying than those with integrated solutions. Poor data hygiene costs organizations an average of $12.9 million per year, slowing down personalization, increasing churn and eroding brand trust.

Retailers that cannot share data effectively across departments miss out on revenue growth opportunities of up to five percent. Instead of activating their consumer data, they are constantly playing catch-up. They are losing customers not because they lack data but because they lack connection.

This is the hidden cost of fragmentation. It is not just a technology problem; it is a business problem, a retention problem and ultimately, a brand survival problem.

The Death of Transactional Commerce

For years, the internet promised a perfect commerce ecosystem, a frictionless world where every brand could reach the right audience at the right time, where data would drive intelligent personalization and where retention would be automatic.

That future never arrived. Instead, brands are now spending more than ever to acquire customers, only to see them churn faster than before. Customer acquisition costs have skyrocketed 222 percent in the past eight years. Retargeting and paid marketing are less effective every year as consumers grow numb to the noise.

The problem is that commerce has become purely transactional.

For most brands, the customer journey is a straight line: a person sees an ad, clicks a link, buys a product and receives a generic follow-up email. There is no depth, no reason to stay, no lasting relationship.

Meanwhile, experiential brands that create moments, engage through culture and build community are dominating loyalty and retention. This is not marketing; it is experiential commerce, where every interaction is a moment that builds a long-term relationship, not just a sale.

Why Static Data is Killing Brands

At the center of the problem is fragmentation. Brands are tracking more data than ever, but it is scattered across different tools, making it impossible to activate in a meaningful way.

Every brand is sitting on massive amounts of disconnected data across e-commerce platforms, email marketing tools, social media and in-store transactions. But data that does not evolve in real time is useless. A CRM entry from two years ago tells you nothing about what a consumer cares about today.

This is why personalization has failed. Despite years of investment in AI-driven targeting, most brand engagement still feels robotic. The tools brands use were built for audiences, not individuals. They were designed for segments, not experiences.

Experiential commerce fixes this by replacing static data with living memory. Instead of treating each purchase as an isolated event, it turns every consumer interaction into an evolving, intelligent profile that refines itself over time.

The difference is not about collecting more data. It is about making data work for both brands and consumers.

Each experience feeds the next. Each interaction builds a more complete picture. Instead of forcing personalization, the system becomes inherently personal.

This is not a future vision. It is already happening. The brands that understand this are owning consumer attention while everyone else fights for ad clicks.

The Shift to Lifestyle-Driven Commerce

The success of retail-hospitality hybrids signals a larger shift toward commerce that is built around lifestyle. Consumers are no longer separating shopping, entertainment and leisure; they expect them to exist as a single, seamless experience.

Retailers that understand this are not just selling products; they are designing environments where consumers can engage, hang out and connect. Future Commerce calls this "architecting desire" — a strategy that blends commerce with culture, hospitality and community to create a living brand experience. It is why hotels are turning into exclusive clubs, hosting fashion weeks after parties and building VIP experience layer. It is why the most successful brands in the next decade will not just sell products; they will sell moments.

Exploring a Unified Consumer Data Solution for Hospitality

The hospitality industry is built on data. Every guest interaction, from booking a room to ordering room service, leaves behind valuable signals about preferences, behavior and intent. The problem is that this data is trapped in silos scattered across booking engines, CRM systems, event management tools and loyalty platforms that fail to talk to each other. This fragmentation makes it nearly impossible for hotels to create a seamless, personalized experience that keeps guests coming back.

We are in discussions with a major hotel to explore a beta integration into one of the leading hotel OS platforms which is widely used for managing reservations, room assignments and billing, but it struggles with creating a single, dynamic consumer view that evolves with each interaction. ITM could bridge this gap by merging the hotel's OS platform's operational data with ITM ID profiles, enabling hotels to build a truly unified and actionable consumer profile. Instead of treating each stay as an isolated event, ITM connects every touchpoint into a living dataset that learns and refines over time. This allows hotels to go beyond simple segmentation and into true personalization, anticipating guest needs before they arise.

With ITM’s integration, hotels can:

• Unify the hotel's OS platform data with external engagement data, creating rich, evolving guest profiles

• Use personalized tagging to segment guests based on behavior, interests and past stays

• Predict demand shifts and adjust programming dynamically

• Deliver hyper-personalized recommendations, from exclusive offers to event invitations, without relying on broad discounting strategies

• Drive higher revenue per guest by offering curated loyalty perks, limited-time experiences and targeted upsells

A major challenge for hotels is keeping programming engaging and relevant throughout the year, not just during peak seasons. Many rely on broad discounting strategies that erode margins, but ITM provides a smarter, data-driven approach. By analyzing guest preferences, travel patterns and engagement history, hotels can dynamically refine their programming to evolve alongside their audience. ITM enables hotels to introduce personalized membership tiers, exclusive events and VIP access that deepen guest loyalty and engagement.

With ITM, fragmented data sets become unified, actionable intelligence. Every stay, purchase and experience enriches the guest profile, allowing hotels to foster ongoing relationships beyond a single stay. As hospitality shifts toward experience-driven engagement, ITM ensures a seamless transition by turning each interaction into lasting brand advocacy

The future of commerce will not be built on fragmented systems.

It will be built on connected, evolving, memory-driven engagement.

And the time to build is now.