CommerceNext made one thing obvious this year: brands are pulling toward experience. Prestige names are lining up behind food and drink pop-ups, and it's not a coincidence. There's a growing swell of people looking for connection — not just likes online. The twist this time is that it's happening in public, IRL.
Nearly 28% of adults aged 25–44 now identify as digital content creators. That number isn't shrinking. When almost one in four people sees themselves this way, "creator" stops being a niche label and becomes the norm — which is exactly why brands are working so hard to refine what they're doing in that space. It's not about likes anymore. Bots can manufacture likes. It's about how you actually show up and connect.
Chapter 01Why "connection" is harder to fake than "engagement"
Connection is a slippery word. It's mushy, hard to quantify, and doesn't slot neatly into a dashboard the way a like-count does. A real connection — even something as simple as instant brand recognition — takes time to build and won't show up cleanly in a report. But get it right, and you get something a dashboard can't buy: loyalty, real engagement, and longevity.
The data backs this up. Brandwatch's State of Social 2026 report found that brands initiate less than 1% of brand-related conversations online — meaning 99% of the conversation about your brand happens when you're not in the room. That's where reputations are actually made or broken, and it's why trust-building matters more than any single campaign.
A few more numbers from the same report make the stakes clear:
- Mentions of hidden fees and extra charges grew 40% in 2025.
- Mentions of "deinfluencing" — people actively talking others out of a purchase — rose 79%.
- 54% of ad-related conversations online carry anger, driven by clickbait, ad overload, and paid subscriptions that still serve ads.
- Authenticity mentions grew 66%, even as influencer conversation volume surged 20% and creators are on track to overtake traditional media in ad revenue this year.
Put together: audiences are getting sharper at spotting a paid-off endorsement, less tolerant of being sold to, and more responsive to brands that let them see something real.
Chapter 02The Starbucks hoodie test
The recent Starbucks hoodie collab is a good example of the difference. A spreadsheet could have told you to make a hoodie, slap on the logo, and sell it — job done. This collab did something else. It led with design people wanted for its own sake, with the logo as the bonus rather than the point. That's the difference between wearing a billboard and buying into a club. The design gives the customer value first; the brand affiliation comes along for the ride.
Chapter 03Building connection into an ecommerce strategy
Our world is built on ecommerce, so the real question is how to fold community-building into that strategy without losing efficiency. A few ways brands are doing it well right now:
Create a pop-up. Activations that represent your brand values are everywhere at the moment — but you'll only ever reach a sliver of your audience live. The real payoff is the footage: capture enough of it to make the people who weren't there believe it happened, and want in next time.
Build a real UGC/EGC pipeline. "Person A says they like it, so I'll buy it" isn't enough anymore. Audiences want to know why they should trust Person A — and they can tell when someone's just been paid to show up. Show that content on your site.
Go live. Taking your product out into the world, unedited, is one of the clearest signals of trust a brand can send. You're saying: we believe in this enough not to need a cutting room.
Chapter 04The execution risk is real, too
IRL isn't automatically a win. When it's done without enough planning, it can go the other way fast — a livestreamer's giveaway meetup in Union Square drew a crowd so large it ended in chaos rather than connection. The upside of showing up in public cuts both ways: it builds trust when it's handled well, and it becomes the story itself when it isn't. Treat the operational side — crowd size, safety, logistics — with the same care as the creative.
Chapter 05The bottom line
Likes are countable, which is exactly why they're easy to fake and why audiences are getting tired of them. Connection is slower, messier, and much harder to manufacture — which is what makes it worth building toward in 2026.
