Blue Sense Podcast

AI Isn't Your Moat, Taste Is: '26 Predictions with Nathan + Angus

• Scott Wilkinson, Nathan Perdriau & Sebastian Bensch

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Scott and Nathan sit down with Angus from MKTG to make clear predictions for eCommerce in 2026.

Key themes discussed:
• Why organic content will be more important than paid in 2026
• The real role of influencers versus in house creators
• Why AI lowers the floor but does not raise the ceiling
• What happens to agencies as media buying gets commoditised
• When in house teams make sense and when they do not
• Why finance led marketing is still rare and still a moat
• Which brands will win and which will struggle next year
• Why retail, community, and real world experiences are coming back

We also dig into hiring mistakes, ego driven decisions, why most founders struggle to recruit great talent, and how the best brands blend agencies, in house teams, and external perspective rather than picking sides.

If you're scaling a 7, 8, or 9 figure brand and thinking about where to focus in 2026, this episode lays out the reality without the hype.

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Get the latest updates, best practices, and PROVEN eCommerce strategies every day. Subscribe here: ‪@bluesensedigital‬

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Blue Sense is a global eCommerce consulting firm that partners with founders & operators to tackle their biggest growth challenges.

Our YouTube channel is dedicated to sharing our most effective marketing strategies to help you achieve your business goals.

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If you’re an 8 or 9 figure retailer looking for deeper creative insight or performance insight grounded in real finance reach out today.

⬇️️ You can find us here ⬇️️:
Website: https://www.bluesensedigital.com.au/
Instagram:   http://instagram.com/bluesensedigital/
LinkedIn:   http://linkedin.com/company/blue-sense-digital/

Find Angus here:
Website: https://www.mktgemails.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anguscowan/
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/mktg-emails/

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Scott Wilkinson:

Welcome back to the Blue Sense podcast, joined today by Nathan and Angus from mktg. Angus, thanks for joining us.

Angus Cowan:

No worries, thanks for having me.

Scott Wilkinson:

Thanks for coming down for our event tomorrow. A little bit of a precursor for that. We're going to hit you guys up for some predictions for 2026. So if we start with what brand and performance and all of that sort of landscape is going to look like next year. Both of us sort of dabble around the frame of organic content and organic channels, but neither of us ever play directly there. What do we think that looks like next year and what's its role across performance and retention?

Angus Cowan:

Jeez. Yeah, I'll take the floor I guess. I think organic's going to be more important than ever. Like, and good organic content, not like shitty, excuse my French, following the trends, but like good, real authentic content that actually moves a needle in terms of brand awareness attracting new views to your business. Yeah, it's going to be irreplaceable.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, I agree. I think organics always been important. It's probably more important now. I know you and me are personally double downing on organic giant in our burst of world. No, but I think it's the, the cheapest channel to get solid growth out of. I think it's also probably one of the hardest channels as well.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, like if organic was predictable, it'd better than ads.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

Like it's just not and it's extremely hard and I don't know, there's some really good brands out there. I talk about it all the time. We have some clients who are more, they get more business from organic than anywhere else but they crush it. And they have full teams dedicated to organic content, new ideas, capitalising on trends. It's just. Yeah, it's very hard to do.

Scott Wilkinson:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

Well, were sitting down with a prospect the other day, multi eight figure retailer, probably close to nine actually and I used one of our clients, Cookeye as an example for them which is they have two full time content like creators that they do other stuff in the business but they make a tonne of content for their IG and TikTok and it's unreal because they just go into stores, they show all the new products, it's just infinite content hitting platforms and that content does like millions and millions of views a week and it's all showcasing product. It's all people actually in the business and it's also organic that just props up paid and everything else in the business. And then there's obviously the retailer that were talking to who their organic strategy is just product photos on IG and then sometimes there's a sprinkle in of some UGC and that's the whole feed. And then the question was like why? Why are we only getting 20 likes on our posts? And it's like, well there's no connection being built there with anyone. And so even just one hire on a retail business that big to just be like a good pick on a content creator full time in house and then they're just cranking content across socials. Huge roi.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, you've. There's this, I don't know if you've seen it. There's this agency, I think they're called the Attention Seekers or something they run, it's like a creative agency but their Instagram has like 400,000 followers as an agency because their content girl is just phenomenal. And it's like I think the two main constraints are. Which will probably reveal itself heavy in 2026 is the ability to create a lot of content because organic is a channel that requires 30 to 60 pieces a month every single month at least, if not more. And then the ability to like know what good content looks like. And then more and more brands relying on AI, which I know we'll probably talk about at length in this. But it really creates a moat for the brands who know how to make good, authentic, real organic content and then can do it at scale. Like if you solve for those two things like that's all it is. But they're the two hardest things in the world to solve for.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Scott Wilkinson:

Where does. So I mean AI is one component I'd love to go deep on. Where does third party fit into that? I think like particularly with the smaller brands that we meet with, there's still this like assumption that influencer quote unquote is a channel means these crazy CPMs that just don't make any sense in the panel compared to just someone that's got 20,000 really engaged followers and makes really cool content that you can reuse in the business house where what does that look like?

Angus Cowan:

I, I just think it's like it's a skill issue. It's like picking influences like you need to have. Like I was just met with a non figure retailer of ours and like one of the things he was saying is going to be the biggest moat in 2026 is taste. Like just especially with AI, it's like who has the best taste and being able to like identify influences that Align with your audience but have a good engaged following. I don't think it matters if they have 5,000 or 5 million. It's the sort of level of engagement and how much pool they have. Like you look at, there's plenty of great examples of influencers that have 10 to 20,000 followers that are super engaged and they're valuable to any business. Then you say look at someone like Adam Sullivan, millions across platforms, any brand he partners with that goes bananas and it's just because of the engagement. So I think it's for influencers. I still think it's a really viable channel if you know how to pick them.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, I agree. There's, there's another nine figure retailer who hopefully comes on board and their whole to market strategy has been influencers. Their paid presence is very small respective to their DTC online rev and like yeah, it's a skill issue, right. Like they've been excellent at choosing influencers and like probably having consistency in the taste and associations that they're making through the market rather than just like people see influencers as an easy money opportunity and so they just go to Instagram, DM 50 people, three people say yes, cool, pay them ten grand, hope for the best. And it's like those are people that you want to be associating the brand with number one and then number two, like what's engagement look like, what all the metrics look like across actual proper vetting of creators. Kind of a side note though is that I don't, I think influencer is great and it's a good channel but I also think there's the channel of still hiring in house. Like the Kinso guys have kind of crushed it on that which is their whole go to market strategy is just hire a bunch of pre existing content creators that are super small but clearly are like Gen Z and know how to make good content and then just bring them in house and get them pumping content for the brand on their personal socials and then their company socials. It's like they'd rip like a million views a day across all of the profiles.

Angus Cowan:

I see it as different channels. Like the third party influencers should be completely separate to your organic content strategy. Like at Kinzo they've nailed the organic content or what people are calling like EGC like that employee generated content. But influencers, it's just another quiver in the bow. I guess it's another channel to use but I think your own organic content that you own should be more of a priority than those third Parties and influences. But that's not to say you can't also go down that influencer route and see really good success.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson:

So I could hire a bunch of small influencers. I could hire someone in House. Is 2026 or why isn't 2026 the year? I couldn't just hire a VA and have them in Nano Banana Pro 24.

Angus Cowan:

Because it'll be shit. It's just taste like it's. You can't think content is not just scale, it's a quality. Then, then scale, I think. I mean when you look at my Instagram, it's not good. So like don't take my word for it. But like when it comes to brands and the brands we work really well, they're so particular. Like the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes into creating a good piece of content or at least the amount of skill. Like it might be easy for them, but they've developed that muscle where they know what good content looks like and they can come up with ideas and execute really quickly. Like, AI is not something that. I don't think AI is something that people will connect with on an. With organic content. Like I don't think any human wants to like sit there and watch a funny AI reels all day. Like, you know, it's connecting with and back to the Kinzo. It's like they've created a. Their own world. Like they've got their own world. It's almost like the Office, like that TV show. It's like you feel like you're watching people that, you know. And that's the most important thing I think is the human connection with it, which you can't get with a va and maybe we'll be able to by the end of next year.

Scott Wilkinson:

I don't know.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, I agree.

Scott Wilkinson:

It's interesting because I had a conversation with another agency founder. Feel like maybe a month or two ago as sort of take was AI is going to make every agency a lot more profitable. I sort of disagree with that quite harshly. I'm like, I think it'll make good agencies more profitable, but I think it's going to send the bad ones into the dirt more quick because the arbitrage of just having the technical skill set is going to go to closer and closer to zero. So how do you guys see AI influencing? For example, if we start with something like technical media buying versus effectively as, you know, levers in platform.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. I said this on a podcast the other day. I can't Even remember who I did the podcast with in Virtuous which was that the costs. So like the 2K meta ads agency retainer model to just manage your ads.

Angus Cowan:

Dead.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, like dead. Because the ability to run your own ads these days on like just a super simple technical structure with a couple creators, it's not rocket science, particularly on smaller businesses like that's why community and coaching groups have done so well is because if you're doing like 20k a month in rev, you don't need some kind of crazy meta ads quant expert figuring it, figuring out how to structure the account. But as you then start to go upmarket, I think the upmarket positioning sticks and I think it sticks hard because in a world where you use like an AI software that just outputs, it's just like managing your media but you have no idea what's going on. I think it becomes even more important to actually know what's going on and know how to pivot. And we see this in big accounts all the time, which is that like the number one mistake of big accounts, which is so easy, is that all the spend just flows into existing customers. It's just because they're not watching it like a hawk, they're just running a simple structure. They're just hoping for the best. They don't think there's much technical skill required, which there isn't at low levels, but high levels there is. So I think like the bottom end of the market will collapse. Because you don't need them.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, I, I think like. And you've already, you're already sort of seeing this or at least we've discussed it at length. You'll have that those agencies, they'll have to become even more commoditized. I still think they'll exist, but they'll have to go even further down market and just sort of be like a tool, like a manager of AI tools. And then you have the people who go and you sort of paying them for the strategy. Like you're either paying for the labour and just the like commoditized service or you paying for the brains and the strategy and the people thinking. What they both have in common though is people like brand owners, they still want to pay to sort of outsource the accountability in a sense. Like they don't want to have to worry about it, they just want to make sure that someone's trusted is either is managing it. Whether that's as simple as running the AI for you know, really cheap retainer or actually thinking and applying Strategic insights, analysing the data and making the decisions. So they'll exist. It'll just part like the Red Sea, I think in terms of the level of service.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Like people are going to go down further down market $2,000 retainers become.

Angus Cowan:

$200 and you know, 299amonth. Like we'll click the button, we'll tell the AI to go. We'll just make sure it doesn't break.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

And that'll be.

Scott Wilkinson:

It's almost back to where it was like 15 plus years ago for me. Selling websites for 399 bucks.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

And it's like a 399amonth management fee.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

Do nothing. That's it.

Scott Wilkinson:

What about your world in terms of like flows, extreme personalization, like this kind of thing.

Angus Cowan:

AI will definitely become more prevalent. The same guy that I mentioned earlier that I was just speaking to before, it's like things like copywriting and design, like it'll just become less of a moat. Like that's no longer your moat. Like that stuff will become very easy to do. It's getting easier. It's going to be the strategic thinking and actually being able to help the business achieve their commercial goals. That'll be what they pay for. I think there's plenty of tools out there like, yeah, AI flows and stuff that I have very strong opinions on. Like that is not a good product yet. I think the thing is with those AI, like anything where AI automates the work, like it sends and all creates all the email flows for you and chooses the best time to send them or it, you know, allocates your media spend perfectly. Like I, I think it just outsources the thinking from any human. And that's where you probably run into a lot of issues because a lot of crap slips through, especially because the product is still new. Like the people who are adopting that AI stuff now, they're kind of just like guinea pigs for is this going to work? And then I think in five years or something or maybe one year will be when they become really mainstream and people use like work out how to use them best. But it's not really like ask anyone who's used AI anything. It's not, it doesn't perform well. Like AI creative AI emails, AI copy. If you do that and you don't touch it and have human input, it sucks. Like it's really bad.

Scott Wilkinson:

Does the dumb label work really well?

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. Doesn't build you a template but they. You wouldn't publish it without looking at it unless you like, want to take some risks, but.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Yeah. Shouldn't AI be driving 25% of your revenue?

Scott Wilkinson:

That.

Angus Cowan:

No.

Scott Wilkinson:

Like, what?

Angus Cowan:

I don't know. What world is that living? Like, Yeah, I don't know, it's. It's just such a buzzword. It's like, oh, hang on. Yeah, everyone's. Everyone freaks out and like, they think it's going to, like, solve all their problems. Like, oh, you know, customer retention sucks. Like, if we just throw an AI at it, like, it'll fix it. It's like, what are you talking about? Yeah, that's not how it works.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. I think people are scared of missing the past. Yeah. Like, it's like, oh, the bus is coming and if I'm not on it, I'll miss, like, a big money opportunity where I can go from 5 to 10 mil just off.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. But like, even the profitability thing, like, people are like, oh, AI is going to make me way more profitable. Like, we have implemented and incorporated a tonne of AI into our delivery service with our agency. We've not become more profitable because the costs go elsewhere. Like, you reinvest into another human to do something else or now you need to do more thinking behind it and like, the cost finds a way to show up elsewhere. It's sort of just probably redistributing it into more efficient things so your business becomes more efficient, it maybe can grow faster, but it's not like you're just like making all this extra cash all of a sudden and just banking it.

Scott Wilkinson:

There's no value arbitrage in it either. Because if everyone's got access to that tool for next to nothing, then like I said, what you're doing is like just getting the same advantage that the agency down the street has. Yeah. You still need to spend the money elsewhere to. To get the growth. Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Well, that's how like, agency pricing works. Right. Which is that there's. If your gross margin is too good, there's risk because competitors can just come in and just operate at a lower gross margin and take all your clients. And so you need pricing power. But if you just overprice, it's like you just introduce massive amounts of risk into your client portfolio. And so, yeah, the cost will redistribute elsewhere or you'll just have to lower prices.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, that's the other thing.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Or someone will just come in, implement all your AI stuff and just serve it half your price.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, it's probably an arbitrage, like a few months, like at max, if you Decide as a brand or an agency owner, like, I'm going to cut all my humans and just build it all as AI. Like, you'll have a few months of a really nice P and L and then it's, you're fucked and that's it. So. And everyone also blends into, like the same. And I know, like we discussed this earlier today, but if you're a brand using AI Creative or like AI Copy or like AI to run, new strategy is like, you just have this weird market where everyone looks and sounds and feels the same and does the same thing and there's no uniqueness. And then the brands who actually win and stand out long term are the ones who sort of stray away from that crowd. So I think in both, like agency or Ecom or anything, it presents more of an opportunity for the brands who, you know, they use AI to their advantage for the efficiency, but they work out how to pivot and still differentiate themselves in the market with using AI.

Scott Wilkinson:

To assist that, which, I mean, so I didn't have this on my notes, but that sort of brings about another interesting question, that if we move away from AI in 26, what does the coaching model look like? Because I think I watched a piece of content before I bought it at Blue Sensor. You guys were discussing this specifically. It was exactly that problem with AI tools. You're just going to this, like, race to everything being completely homogenised. I've probably had four or five conversations in the last week with brands that are just approaching that scale, where they're getting a little bit too big, probably for their coaching group. And the recommendations that they're getting, they're like, I'm just getting recommended the same thing as the seven other brands here on my particular call. And so there's no upside for me as a individual operator.

Angus Cowan:

Well, what those. What the coaching groups do is they then just release a new tier where you can just pay more and you're in a room with less people. So now it feels more personalised. But, like, yeah, I think most brands come to that natural conclusion. It's like they take on a resource, they maximise it as much as they can, whether it's the learnings out of the coaching group. And then they sort of understand, like, I've, you know, sponged that resource as much as I can. Now I need to go and apply learnings from elsewhere, like, you know, they're sort of agile in that way. But, yeah, I don't know the coaching groups. Like, again, it sort of comes back to that outsourcing accountability. Like, as a business owner in any, like, vertical or industry, you can only think about so much. You just need to rely on other people to make certain decisions. And I think with those coaching groups, a big part of it, whether it's them recommending AI tools or them recommending an ad account structure, like, they're genuinely just looking for someone else to make the decision for them so they don't have to think.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. I think we have a balanced view on the coaching groups, because I know that video you're referring to, which is, I think they're good, but I also think they're, like, not a perfect solution for people as they achieve scale. I think they, like, solve problems. Like, they solve problems that agencies don't solve, but then agencies solve problems that the coaching groups don't solve.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

It's annoying that the coaching groups say that agencies all suck. Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

And then they own them. Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

And then they own agencies. There's little referrals out back.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, I. I don't know coaching. They're great. Like, don't get me wrong, I've referred people to go and join coaching groups. I've probably sent them like, 30 clients. Like, it's a lot of money for them. Yeah. I don't know. They're just. There's a different solution for everyone. Like, there's a. There's a scenario for every possibility. There's this, like, I made a real or a LinkedIn post about this the other day. There's brands that have scaled by having their team extremely lean and doing nothing but hire agencies. There's brands that have scaled, never touching agencies and building a great in house team. There's brands that have scaled with a few people in coaching groups. Like, there's success storeys for everything. Like, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. It's really just dependent on the founder and that skill set to a degree.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, I agree. I think the market sits as, like, 30% of people should end up in coaching. 30% should end up in agencies.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

30% should end up in house. 10%, I don't know.

Angus Cowan:

Never scale. Yeah. If you look at the really big businesses, like the businesses that achieve real scale, it's a blend. Like, they've got agencies to solve specific problems, they've got great in house teams and they probably go and steal nuggets from coaching groups. All those businesses that the coaching groups advertise that are like $100 million in revenue, they have all three of those things. They use all they use you know, as much of all the resources as possible because that's how you probably really break through and achieve. Quick scale.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. I don't know any high 8 to 9 figure business that doesn't have in house team agencies plus some degree of coaching or a mentor or someone that's getting paid to come in on a quarterly basis and just say some stuff like yeah they like everyone has all three because you want all three at that scale if you have the resources to deploy across all of them because then you get the pros of everything and if you.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah again if just like arguing I guess against the full in house method. It's like if your in house team was good enough that it could beat out every agency and every consultant in every vertical.

Scott Wilkinson:

Like you have an agency.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

To great. But it's.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah it's. I don't know. I think it's naive to think you're never going to be able to learn one thing from someone who doesn't who's not directly employed by you.

Scott Wilkinson:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

Like that's crazy.

Scott Wilkinson:

I mean. Yeah. If you're an exceptionally talented media buyer why would you only apply that skillset across one brand and product?

Angus Cowan:

Well there's that too and like the.

Nathan Perdriau:

Hiring and that sort of thing.

Angus Cowan:

The recruiting and the hiring of ecom's like a whole different storey. I think it's pretty brutal out there.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. I'm more I, I've done audits for very large in house only brands and they've crushed it in house and I've been like damn, we should steal this performance mark. But like so that's good. But you also introduce massive risk being that brand because their like entire media strategy is hedged one person in house who's a weapon but you can't progress them. Like what's the career path as you being the only person in an entire division in an E comm brand they can't really go anywhere. You just got to keep hopping in house to in house.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson:

You gotta give that person a stake basically.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Particularly when they realise that oh this business is only being held together by my performance marketing. Yeah. Like, like if I leave this is going down. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson:

That's Sean Frank's Storey Ridge, isn't it? It was an agency.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson:

Connor. And they effectively acquired Ridge.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson:

Now they're doing teeth render my. An Aussie. Yes.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Good acquisition.

Scott Wilkinson:

Well on that what does firing look like? Where's the biggest leverage if you're a high seven low eight footed brands.

Angus Cowan:

If I was A brand I would probably buy, I'd probably just hire an agency. But if I really wanted to build an in house team I would for the life of me be trying to poach from top agencies. Like that's where you're going to get the best talent.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

But anyone who works for a top agency would also be silly to leave a top agency. Like the amount of effort, like I've been on a recruiting push at the moment trying to get good talent to join us and it's like the amount of effort and time I've had to put in to book a waitlist, like a short list of five people. In the end like you know, take 30, 40 interviews, narrow it down to five potential candidates who are good enough to join our agency and that's fully remote. Even taking advantage of like global communities to try to find that if you were like oh I'm on the gold coast and I need a really good specialist performance who can be in the office five days a week and like join my in house team. It's like the pool, it's just so small. You're not gonna, it's just too hard I think to recruit or it's just a needle in a haystack like any really good person and agencies feel that every single day as they try to grow their team. So I don't know, I'd be trying to poach from agencies if I was a brand also.

Scott Wilkinson:

What then? Because I think like I say that's hard to do because I've shared this with a lot of much smaller businesses over many years like before Blue Sense as well that like the number one reason you're going to struggle to hire that really talented person is they're just worth more to a really good agency. And so that agency will spend more time on recruitment and will spend more money on their salary and compensation and so it's hard to compete with. I've also heard you guys talk about like the struggle for smaller brands, the six seven figure brands of like you just don't know enough yet to make great decisions around hiring an agency. What are the highest leverage skills that you're looking? Like what are those skills that you need in your business before you get to the in house team?

Angus Cowan:

What do you reckon? I, I think it's one of the benefit of the coaching groups is like you go and learn the competencies of many different facets of running an E comm business and then you at least know what to look for. I think that's the long and short of it.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Like it's just hard. Right. Because the only way you get good at hiring the right people is by hiring the wrong people over and over again and then finally getting good at some point like a really good service would be hiring us to hire your in house performance marketing team. It's like recruiters. Yeah. Because like recruiter. If you go to a recruiter to hire your in house team as well like the reality is you can't fit that person's good and they're incentivized.

Angus Cowan:

To just go on a higher expense of people. Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

I've hired tens of people through recruiters.

Scott Wilkinson:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

Don't necessarily great decisions. So yeah, I think it's like that's why I do think an agency is a lower barrier to entry at like a 5 million as long as you can afford it and you've gone through the coaching groups and you understand how to vet. I think if you had the basic skills of Klaviyo meta Google performance marketing as a whole, you're probably going to have an easier time vetting through an agency that already has top talent inside the business than trying to hire in house and leveraging all of your growth one single person under fair work and having to be you. Kind of like an agency. Goodbye agency. Yeah. In house person. Not so easy.

Angus Cowan:

It's also like the opposite is true is like I think emotionally founders get connected to their first few hires. Like you guys have probably seen it where a brand has hired this marketing manager. It's like the first person they've hired and they might be like a great person but they're not very good especially as the brand scales and they haven't actually learned anything else because they've sort of just been like sitting in the seat as the rocket ship of that brand has taken off for whatever reason Y then three years later they've still got this marketing manager as their first ever employee and they love them but like there's been no real skill development and founders get so attached to their in house teams culturally and emotionally that it's very hard to make a ruthless decision where in an agency or at least as I think like there's a. It's quite cutthroat like high standards. It's sort of, you know, you're not just holding onto someone because you love them and they know your branding well. Like it's a performance environment so you naturally attract better people and then you retain those good People. Yeah. I think brands like you said, they don't have that emotional connection with agencies. They can hire them and if they suck, they let them go. And that's great for the brand because they've learned something and they'll know something for the next person they hire. Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

I also think it's just, it's tough as an e comm business because one thing we said in the previous pod was the highest leverage growth tool within a business is good people. So if you have like really incredible people, if you somehow knock it out of the park first three hires, A plus players. Yeah. Like you're just going to be set up for major success. The issue is in an e comm business you don't hire many people and so you don't get the reps in to be able to know who's good, who's not, how to fire, how to let people go quickly. Don't get connected to people because you see that your business doesn't grow for one year. Whereas comparatively being on agency side, like we have hired more people than most econ brands. Like yeah, if you're under a 15 person econ brand, I guarantee we've hired more people than you have. And so because of that we're better at hiring people, I would hope. Yeah. And so we're better at the highest leverage skill that you possibly have within the business if that's like what we're arguing. And so you're actually quite disadvantaged if ecom is your first business. You haven't hired a lot of people at first or like prior business before that and you're going in like you're going to not be very good at that skill and you're kind of leaving it up to luck.

Scott Wilkinson:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

And it's probably like you said, it's the hardest, it's the highest leverage skill, but it's the hardest skill to learn. At least that I've found out of everything I've had to learn in growing an agency from even how to get clients, how to service the clients well, how to do everything in between. Finding good talent has by far been the biggest bottleneck and I can't, I just can't imagine how hard that would be for an e comm brand. Yeah. Especially in Australia, like small talent pool in the grand scheme of things.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, I know. Like one advice to econ brands is don't get connected with having someone in your office and don't have an office. Yeah. Like, like open up the talent pool to global and I'm Saying like us, uk, big four, anywhere, right. Europe, it doesn't matter. You will like immediately get access to better talent just because you're going after a way bigger poll. Yeah, like, but people don't want to do it because they're like, oh, what about the time zone?

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

Oh, what about they're not in the office.

Angus Cowan:

I need to be able to watch them every day.

Scott Wilkinson:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

And make sure they're working.

Nathan Perdriau:

That's all right. Don't grow. Yeah, that's fine.

Scott Wilkinson:

The other thing, I hear more and more from new brands and this was a question you put in my notes earlier today. Blue Sense specifically has been a very finance led marketing agency from the very beginning. We meet with more and more brands recently. I've noticed in the last three to six months that say, oh yeah, you know, my agency has looked at my P and L and you sort of probe a little bit deeper on that question. And again, no, they're not, but they've looked at it. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's comprehension, that kind of thing. Is this the year that finance and marketing teams and E comm brands finally like get completely aligned and that finance led marketing goes mainstream?

Nathan Perdriau:

This was my prediction for 2025.

Scott Wilkinson:

Not quite.

Nathan Perdriau:

Nah, I don't think so because I think back then I was naive when I made that suggestion because I thought that there's competence that exists in the market and I think I've been unfortunately demotivated this year by realising that most people are incompetent and that bridging finance and marketing is actually taking a very advanced skill set and bringing them together like you're talking about proper professional services, not just like throw some people with marketing degrees into a room and hope for the best. And so because of that, like I was hopeful in that is the obvious future of performance marketing, which is bring finance into marketing and like, I think they're the best services that exist and that's why our whole positioning is there. But do I think that. Oh yeah, that's just, that's easy. Just all agencies will just start doing that. No. Over the past two years I've realised it's not easy. Yeah, a lot of people are not trainable across finance, creative and performance marketing all at the same time. That talent is a very small pool, is very hard to scale. So no, yeah.

Angus Cowan:

I think though that's also why more brands have gone in house to a degree. Like the agency narrative is because most agencies, like there's A lot of stupid operators out there who wouldn't even know what a P and L is. And it's like, that's just the reality of it. Like marketers are, you know, traditionally very just creative people and stuff, but there's more and more founders out there going, what the. This agency has said, like, my ROAS is so good, but we're not making any more profit, like month after month and they're moving in house and relying on resources that are teaching them how to use it. But that'll just. I think it'll create more of a moat for people like you guys essentially, where it's just, I think it will go that way. AI tools and stuff will make it easier to, you know, map all that stuff out. You don't have to be a genius to do it. But like, yeah, it'll just create more of a moat for the people who are interested in doing that, I think.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Well, I'll give you a quote from another agency in Australia that I got given two years ago, which is, I sat down for coffee. Hopefully they're not watching this. Don't clip this as well and put it on my socials name and sham him. I sat down for coffee and then we ran through the division and what we're doing and how like we want to be super upmarket and we're continuing to go deeper and deeper on performance marketing and that our people that are on the accounts of the people you talk to. So it's one person, you don't have account managers. And he says, well, what are you doing? You're trying to run the unicorn model. And I was like, what? He's like, you're trying to get like a bunch of really good people into an agency that doesn't work, that doesn't scale. You need to have like maybe one or two unicorns, but then just a bunch of like not very smart people and they can just do the work and then you can retain them as well. I was like, maybe there's merit to that. Turns out there's not merit to it. It's not a good idea. But it does show you like how most agencies are structured and are thinking. And it's also, it also shows why most people won't go down the route of going up market and getting very sophisticated with finance and marketing. Because you need to run the unicorn model. And the unicorn model is a hard model to run.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, well, it's like starting an agency is the world's easiest thing to start. It's like building a good agency is probably the world's hardest thing to do. Yeah. Attract very good people, retain very good people, deliver a very good service is like hard to hit that trifecta.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. And then scale the people and make sure that all the end nodes retain the same amount of quality as the founder would have. Would have done.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson:

Yeah. So I mean that conversation comes up frequently when, both at Blue Sense and earlier in my career when a brand will be like, oh, we worked with such and such agency previously. They were awful. Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

And I'm like, you're never surprised.

Scott Wilkinson:

We've hired people and they're exceptionally bright. Yeah. Like great team members. I think that's just down to. It's like most agencies, even the less good ones we'll politely call them, have at least a couple of very bright people and they're annoying. They just don't hold onto them very well because they get very frustrating. Yeah. Good.

Nathan Perdriau:

A bunch of bricks they use.

Angus Cowan:

Like, I, I've hired one person in particular. You both know, I've hired one person from an agency environment which wasn't very good. And going into that hiring process, I had my reservations because I was like, this agency sucks. Like, but then she's been like, phenomenal. And it's like the reality is those, like, it's usually one or two individuals propping up the whole success of that agency, like always carrying the whole weight on their back and they get frustrated very quickly. I actually think that's probably the best opportunity for brands who are looking to poach from an agency. Find the, find the good people in the agency because they want to leave. Yeah. And offer them a nice salary and a holiday and they'll probably love to kick their feet up after carrying shit for like three months.

Scott Wilkinson:

To be honest. I think there's huge value like in that for brands because it's like you're also pitching them on the fact that brand side internal roles compared to an agency role is inherently just way less activity. Like the number of wrecks you're doing every single day in an agency environment for a single like contributor is so much more stressful. Yeah. And so it's like, hey, here's a cushy salary. Come and say, we do have big targets that we want to achieve. Like, you will be challenged. But it's also, you know, you're not going to be getting text messages at 2am from the. Figure out what happened on these 20 clients you were meant to be.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, I mean I haven't worked brand since like I was learning E commerce in my first like ever job in the space. But I don't know what like people do with brand side like half their times. Like if I'm being honest like if you're in unless you're working for like a multi nine figure brand that needs you know a lot of different moving parts, different facets of their business, maybe like you know there's a full time job in there.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

But you know if you're like a seven to eight figure E com brand and you got like an in house email marketing manager, it's like what do you do for more than like 10 hours a week if you're good otherwise you're really shit and you're paying someone to be shit and take 40 hours to do a 10 hour job.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, yeah. No going in house is like retiring for most people.

Angus Cowan:

That's the end of the road.

Nathan Perdriau:

Like I do nothing. Yeah, it's nice particularly going in house and like you also still have an agency and you don't have any other responsibilities. I think that's naturally why the really like good in house roles and obviously there's a bunch of partners that we have who are incredible in house. They're doing a lot of stuff like they're working across the entire marketing function. That's why I always do find it interesting when you have just like an in house meta ads buyer and you're spending 60k a month on ads and I'm like what do you do? Yeah, 40 hours a week now I think you could fill 40 hours a week on a 60k budget with having multiple different people thinking about the account because you're getting multiple different ideas and perspectives and analysis and get so like just one person.

Angus Cowan:

They'Ve got to work weekends mate. They got to shift the budget.

Scott Wilkinson:

Well yeah, this is always good. You read my mind. It was like they're optimising on the weekend. As I told you yesterday, I've had three different people in the last week ask me what do you do in an agency model And I've got to be optimising my account all weekend.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. What do you think about the Bangus?

Angus Cowan:

It's just like so stupid. It's like, I mean one, a good agency, like a really good agency should be available on the weekend if there's an emergency. Like if shit comes up. That's without saying yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

And we are, yeah, if shit goes bad you'll get a response and you'll get a response pretty quick in like minutes.

Angus Cowan:

And a good agency would be there on the weekend. But no, like, what the is people talking about like optimising stuff on the weekend? Like, it's just, I don't know, it's like they, A lot of brand owners get this like ego idea that they're like Warren Buffett selling their like slippers, like doing a million dollars a year and they're like shifted weight and it's just like word out of line. It's like, it's, it's crazy. Like, and it, that's all ego. It's like if I need my agency to be like sweating over my ads, but like my 500 a day ads budget all weekend, it's like, relax.

Nathan Perdriau:

It is ego. Yeah, it is ego for sure. Yeah. It's just like you better be looking at my ad account over the weekend While I'm spending $500 across the weekend on ads. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. The caveat is Black Friday, obviously. Make sure Black Friday, we look at all accounts like every hour of the whole weekend.

Scott Wilkinson:

I don't think Uber slipped for three days.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. I'll tell you what, I think most agencies wouldn't be online on the weekend. So I actually think that's a little bit unique to us as well. But God, optimising campaigns on the weekend, bau crazy.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. I mean I don't get that. Obviously I'm not. We don't do media buying stuff. So like we schedule our stuff for the weekend. But yeah, I don't know, I just couldn't. I didn't feel like it's such an out of pocket request. And imagine working brand side for a founder like that. You just hate your life.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, I know.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

Fair work come.

Scott Wilkinson:

So not the year finance goes mainstream. We're, we're walking that prediction bash. Yeah. If we like zoom out e commerce as a whole. What are the brands? It might be the categories. It might be the business model. Who's going to crush it next year? Who's going to struggle?

Nathan Perdriau:

Oh, I think I would have said the exact same thing last year and I think I would have been right. Which is that organic content influences dropping products that are actually good to their audience. Is the biggest hack in ecom. Like straight to 10, 20 mil. Like you saw this on the 30 under 30 list as well. There was, there was a ecom brand that's female led organic content Sofa Doef. Yeah, yeah. I don't think any ads at all.

Angus Cowan:

Doing like eight figures off tick tock.

Nathan Perdriau:

No marketing cost, just good at making content has an audience earned media like I think that's that they're going to continue to crash. Adam Sullivan's like a good example of it as well. On top of that.

Angus Cowan:

I think, I think it's the blend of. It's either the two verticals that will crush. It is either really good organic or really good retail. Slash like in person for both the same reasons which is like that human connection as AI stuff becomes like more cringe and more prominent as well. Just AI slop and people trying to use AI models that look like perfect. It's just being more human and more relatable is going to be the breakthrough. We've seen that this year with how important organic content's been and the people who can be more human, more raw, more authentic create their own worlds. Kinzo even what Adam Sullivan's doing with all the people like that Donnie guy and he's like office now. It's, it's crazy. They're all creating their own organic world and the other thing is like less so the founder led organic stuff but just retail having in person presence people things that people can go to so you know they're not just AI slopping on their phone all weekend. Like there's, there's life to live and there's things to go and experience and brands that provide that retail experience will crush.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I made this on a previous pod which I made this call which was that AI content. Well I think it'll continue to go up obviously like if cost of producing AI content is nothing like it is just going to flood the feeds and obviously all these new startups will just try to leverage it as much as possible. As you start to crank out more and more AI content and it becomes indistinguishable from proper real content, then I think it becomes important that people actually know who the person is so they can identify that hey, this piece of UGC that I'm seeing right now pushing this product, is this a real person? Like click on the profile. Is this actual real person? Can I validate it? Do people follow them? Can I have a connection with them? So I think people like move past content into who's actually in it.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah.

Nathan Perdriau:

Which I think makes influences more important.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, you've seen that with the. I think that it'll be the long form influences or the influencers who create a bigger narrative like your Kinzos and stuff. Like they've created their own world. And it's the same with why streamers are so popular, why YouTubers are so popular and get the biggest pool like Mr. Beast and stuff. It's because people can really immerse themselves in more than just like a 20 second reel or like a carousel of like that person's life, which you know, can be fake. And that's why like right back to the start, like where people go wrong with hiring influencers is like they hire the pretty Perfect influencer with 500k followers who has the most polished life. And people are just seeing through that shit now. Like they don't care. They don't want to be influenced by someone with no flaws. Like they want to have a human connection to a real person. So, you know, whether that's creating your own world in your organic short form or, you know, having long form presence vlogs or having events in person, things that people can spend more than like 15 seconds consuming will be the cut through.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, I think long form is super important. That's why we do long form. You do long form? Yeah, because like I can make as many reels as I want, but I don't think people are going to like get an understanding of what we actually do, what we're recommending in a 60 second clip. Yeah, like I think people need to sit there with you and come for the journey. I think I saw a clip of Hormozi talking about this, which is like one view on a 20 minute video is the equivalent of someone watching 150 of your clips. Yeah, like so. So it's much more important to get someone watching a 20 minute video than just absorbing your short form.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, we saw Jack Henderson said this in one of his podcasts the other day. Hormozi told him that all of his long form should be live streams. Now it's like when you're doing long form live stream, get people watching, asking questions, interacting and then, you know, you can do your video as planned, but it's live, so you're actually getting, you know, even your long forms not clipped in polish. It's like super raw, super authentic. You're responding to the audience as you go sort of thing. And it's like, yeah, more of those experiences will be really important. I don't know how econ brands can like leverage it necessarily yet. Like long form content, there's obviously, you know, founder vlogs and stuff, but then you sort of start going down that like influencer route to a degree. But there will be something there.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah, there was when were at the Hormozi event, there was a girl that asked a question that she was doing 8mil online direct to consumer dresses and no ads. The whole strategy was she would go live for two hours each day in the warehouse and she would just try on dresses and she'd put a dress on and she'd say, I only have six of these next six people to buy them at $150, get them and then just, she'd just stand there until they sell out, be super entertaining and then just rinse that for two hours and do like 10, 20 grand per live. And then she was effectively asking Hormozi like, how do I scale this? Yeah. And his answer was, you just need to get more like salespeople. Yeah, yeah. And you need 20 lives going at once, which she's doing 24.

Scott Wilkinson:

Seven.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah, that's what, that's shifting budgets on the week you're getting your streamers in.

Nathan Perdriau:

But that's like a good, like I don't know if that's the business model to run, but that's a good.

Angus Cowan:

It's an example of it.

Nathan Perdriau:

It's an example. Yeah. Like you can do it, you just got to be creative.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. The missing piece.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah.

Scott Wilkinson:

Got a final AI question that's come to me as we've been talking about this and what you mentioned a moment ago. So we talk about AI and creative, we talked about it in technical execution flows, whatever it might be. There's obviously the most noise around it, I think in any commerce specifically that's unique to E commerce is Shopify is integrated with whatever LL in our GPT is obviously the big one. We're all going to be shopping there. We're never going to go to a Google search, we're not going to be influenced by a Reddit feed, by, you know, Instagram, whatever. I. So my wife, mid-30s, works part time, has a 1 year old son, has never, period, logged into GPT or used an LLM. Was talking about this on the weekend. I use it 20, 30 times a day, probably in the course of doing my job. My hypothesis is there's way more people like her than there are people like me at the moment still in the market when I was still working on the search side and SEO8, nine months ago, that definitely bed out in the data was growing explosively, like a thousand % growth in six months. But it's still only 0.1% of your traffic for something like that. What, what does that look like? Do you think that takes off as a channel finally or. I, I don't know. I still feel like the digital normies of the world are not quite.

Nathan Perdriau:

There.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. My like, sort of side hypothesis which ties into this is people in E comm or in marketing spend just way too much time using AI that they think it's normal. So they, they'll like make an AI creative using nano banana and go, oh, like this is sick. Like, how good does this look? And it's like the average person who's just been hanging out goes, what the. That's AI. And it's like you get so desensitised to like AI that you start thinking it's everything where realistically, like my parents, my brother, he's like a tradie. Like what? Never use AI ever. And they're just like normal people who don't immerse themselves in marketing. So I do share the sentiment. Like it'll become more normal, but yeah, for.

Nathan Perdriau:

Sure. Well, I think like with the AI search in Gemini going into Google, I think it'll be forced on people. Right. Like your wife actually would use it a lot because she would ask a question on.

Angus Cowan:

Google. Google.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. And she'll get the AI response which is significantly better. Like Google's a much better platform now because you can treat it like GPT and you'll get actual answers rather than having a blue link your way through to find answer. But yeah, they're already placing ads right now in the searches through search and shopping campaigns. It's like just unclear how you rank.

Scott Wilkinson:

There.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Did they just rank in people? So I think like that'll just start being.

Angus Cowan:

Integrated. I think from like what I've heard and I don't know left from right when it comes to Google. But it'll, it's about like obviously LLMs like go and do whatever they do, scan the Internet to find answers and make suggestions and their records or whatever. But I think it'll become more important to have more touch points across more places like, you know, organic content, Instagram, organic TikTok, YouTube stuff like be in Reddit threads, be like be everywhere. So you have the best chance of like ranking in places like that. But while you don't know how to rank there, like it's out of your control so you really care. It's just focus on good.

Nathan Perdriau:

Content. Yeah, I saw one like one hack tip which was actually really good, which is that if there's any Reddit posts out there, if there's any reviews out there that are talking shit about your brand, make sure you get a response in with the exact counter. And why? Because LLMs are just going to scrape it and then it's going to just serve it in responses. So if you go like, is MK TG emails a bad agency? It's going to go and just scrape everything it can and come back to you and go, this person said this. And you're going to go, damn. But if there's a response as to why they were wrong, it might not serve it or it will serve it with the.

Angus Cowan:

Response.

Nathan Perdriau:

Interesting.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. Growth.

Nathan Perdriau:

Hacks. I got.

Scott Wilkinson:

Them. I mean, the SEO dork in me that has loved working in that side of our industry for a long time is still just like, you nailed us. Like, we don't know how these systems work. Anyone that's proffering that they do is shifting snake oil. But if you just make really good, high quality content, it's like that's been the number one, two and three hallmark a good SEO for over a.

Angus Cowan:

Decade.

Scott Wilkinson:

Yeah. So I can just, yeah, just keep focusing on that. Which ties straight back to our chatter and organic content being really the major lever of just producing really cool things that people want to engage.

Angus Cowan:

With. Yeah. I think like what you said about brands before using, some will use agency, some will use in house, some will use whatever. It'll be the same with how people find your brand. It'll be, some will love the in person stuff, some will love the organic stuff, some will find you on Google, some will find you on ChatGPT. It's just like, you know, there'll be more ways to do it. I don't see like, I don't personally see it like being some crazy shift where all of a sudden like people only go to ChatGPT to show up like within the next few.

Scott Wilkinson:

Years. Yeah, yeah. One final prediction you've revealed, what reminded us what you want for 25.

Nathan Perdriau:

Was final one is Amazon becomes more popular again. That was on my 2025.

Angus Cowan:

Predictions.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. And I think it just applies like, I think Amazon keeps growing market.

Scott Wilkinson:

Share.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. In Australia specifically. Yeah.

Angus Cowan:

Yeah. It's weak here compared to the.

Scott Wilkinson:

Us. Yeah, yeah. I was just in Canada. And even the tech difference in and using it over there where it's like you get your delivery and it's like, yeah, it's coming later today and then you get this little bubble in the app. It's like the driver's 10 stops away and then like see the van getting closer to your house on the app and Yeah, I got the level of technology and like just how easy it is to get something to your door for effectively nothing is crazy. So when that arrives. Yeah, that'll. That'll definitely make a difference.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. What about your.

Angus Cowan:

Prediction? Just going to double down on the retail take. I think brands that double down on the in person stuff in general, whether it's retail presence, activations, pop ups, like community events. You know, it could be as simple as a rum club, you know, mornings at the beach, like a pop up with a UFC fighter. Who knows, like any community event, the brands who do that will.

Nathan Perdriau:

Win. Yeah, the drinks brand that were drinking before, Cadence, they do that really well. They do run clubs all over the UK and then 247 does it really well. I think they literally did an activation at the front of the.

Angus Cowan:

Office.

Nathan Perdriau:

Yeah. Like yesterday, those people are crushing. They're doing like 100mil Rev D2C and retail, it's.

Angus Cowan:

Community. People buy into that and then the product sells.

Scott Wilkinson:

Itself. Yeah, we'll wrap it up there. Thank you.

Angus Cowan:

Gentlemen.

Scott Wilkinson:

Done. Appreciate.

Nathan Perdriau:

It. Thanks.

Angus Cowan:

Angus. Thanks for having.