In this episode, Chief AI Officer Bobby Lehew curates a series of highlight clips from Skew Camp 2026, a promo‑industry bootcamp held in Montreal. The show opens with a brief sponsor message for Commonscue and an experimental AI‑generated segue that Bobby explains. The content then moves through six expert segments: 1. Todd Henry frames AI as a tool, instrument, or device, urging listeners to treat AI as an "instrument" that augments creativity without eroding human capacity. 2. Josh Ellis of the PPAI discusses the marketing shift in merchandise, emphasizing the need for ROI‑focused language, cost‑per‑impression metrics, and a toolkit to help brands justify spend. 3. Pierre from Koozie Group describes supplier service recovery, introducing the "Polaris" North‑Star approach that prioritizes rapid, customer‑centric problem resolution. 4. Anna Angelic, former CBO of Banana Republic, tackles the ROI conversation for merch, outlining concrete sell‑through measures (average order value, basket size, traffic, repeat customers) and brand‑sentiment metrics for service‑based companies. 5. Tony McNally shares change‑management wisdom, personifying internal skeptics as "Doubtful Dolly" and encouraging teams to lean into questioning to surface hidden risks. 6. Jason (with Dave Schultz) uses a print‑on‑demand analogy, positioning POD as a dessert that can unlock new revenue streams for distributors and suppliers. 7. Caleb Gilbertson of Imprint Engine looks ahead, predicting a rapid AI‑driven transformation of the distributor model—from selling products to designing outcomes—and stresses the need to reinvent value. Throughout, Bobby interjects with AI‑generated segues, acknowledges the experimental nature of the format, and reinforces the bootcamp’s mission to inspire and equip promo leaders. The episode blends strategic frameworks, concrete metrics, and forward‑looking industry predictions, offering listeners actionable takeaways for creative teams, merch marketers, suppliers, and distributors.
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Hi friends, Bobby Lee here, Chief AI Officer at Common Skew. Today's episode is a little different. We're sharing some highlights from our business bootcamp experience called Skew Camp. It's a gathering created to challenge, inspire, and equip forward-thinking leaders in promo. Now, Skew Camp started from this passion of ours to elevate the industry and inspire leaders like you. And it's grown into this one-of-a-kind experience that brings together some of the brightest minds in the business. This year's lineup was loaded with insights and actionable tactics, all against the backdrop of beautiful Montreal. Today, you'll hear Todd Henry on leading creative teams, a look at the marketing shift that's happening in merch, a candid supplier CEO interview, brand strategist and author Anna Angelic on how merch went from a side gig To a main act, and Tony McNally on building a team that embraces change, plus the future of print on demand and what the next-gen merch agency looks like. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of us at Comenscue. Over 950 distributors powering $1.8 billion in network volume rely on Comenscue's connected workflow. Process more orders, connect your team, and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, Visit commonscue.com. Now, here are the highlights from the Skew Camp stage in Montreal.
Oh, and one more thing.
During this episode, you're going to hear segues from me about the clips that are coming up, but actually it's not from me, it's from AI Bobby. We are experimenting and playing with tools. We'll always let you know when we use AI. We just thought this was a perfect case to try it out. I'll always be here to host guests in person and to do introductions. But every now and then we'll test some things because you're a generous audience and you let us do that. Here's the episode.
So our keynote this year was Todd Henry. Some of you were at SCUCon a couple years ago and heard him talk about bringing out your own creative best. This time he turned it toward your team, and I love how he frames AI here. He gives you 3 ways to think about it, and Honestly, only one of them is the one you want. Here's Todd.
I have a colleague, Andy Crouch, who talks about AI in 3 categories. He says we can think about it as tools, think about it as instruments, or as devices. So a tool is like a hammer. A tool extends your human capacity. So I could hammer a nail with my hand, but it's going to be really painful. I maybe could do it eventually, depending on how soft the wood is. But if you give me a hammer, Boom, boom, boom. It's an extension of my human capacity. Then we have instruments. How many of you were walking around last night and heard the gentleman playing the accordion out on the street? Right? So beautiful. Or the other, the woman who was playing violin. They can imagine those sounds in their head, but they can't make the sound of an accordion or make the sound of a violin. And the instrument gives them the capacity to do things they could imagine, but they couldn't do. That's an instrument. A device replaces human capacity. So for example, I haven't done hard math in my head for 25 years. Why haven't I done hard math in my head? I've got this device in my pocket all the time that will do all the math I want all the time, way better than I could do it. Why would I do that? I use a device to replace my capacity. Well, Because I no longer have to do that, now I no longer can do hard math in my head, which means now I have to use my calculator to do hard math because I've lost that capacity. And this is what a device does. It replaces a capacity that we once maybe were really great at. But it replaces it to the point that we lose our ability to engage in that behavior. So what Andy would argue is that if we use AI as a tool, which some people do, which is just basically like a better Google, you know, fine. If you use it as a device, it can be actually very damaging. If you use AI to do all of your creative writing for you, it is just a matter of time before you lose your capacity to do creative writing. Writing because writing is thinking. So if you're never embracing the friction of writing, then eventually you will lose your capacity to write. Instead, he would argue we need to think of AI as an instrument. AI is an alien brain that we can leverage to accomplish things we can imagine, but we couldn't do on our own. But there's still a human element of imagination and desire.
Next up, the marketing shift that's happening in merch. Josh Ellis is Senior Director of Media, Research, and Public Affairs at PPAI, and he's the guy behind the Merch Moves Us campaign. Here's Josh on why marketers haven't been buying what we've been selling and what it's going to take to change that.
I think that what we saw in the research that went into it is that marketers are looking at things that are different than, than what we had been sharing with them as an industry. They see the cool campaigns, go viral and things like that. But what they don't see is the ROI behind it. They don't see the cost per impression behind it. So, with this campaign, we're taking a much stronger approach of leaning into the language that marketers speak, which is the numbers and facts that they could back up their spend with. And so, we've done a ton of case studies. Thanks for showing this off here.
Yeah.
Of, you know, with real numbers behind them. And it's not just the website itself, although we've put a big investment into paid social, so this reaches the targeted audience of marketers and branders and things like that. But also this toolkit, which you're seeing on the site now, for companies that are limited in their marketing budget, whether by personnel or strategy. We put together a ton of assets that you can share with your clients, white label in some cases, and The idea being that this is our Got Milk, right? This is the industry's sort of combined message that is a rising tide lifting all boats to elevate this medium.
So every SKU Camp, Kathryn puts 3 supplier CEOs in what she calls the hot seat. This year it was Alan from Spectre, PCNA's brand new CEO Josh, and Pierre from Koozie Group. And Pierre said something you don't hear a supplier say on stage very often. Even when you ship almost every order on time, some still go wrong. So the real test is how you fix them. Here's Pierre.
Yeah.
So what we want, as everybody, I guess, in this room as a supplier, is to delight your customers with orders that ship on time and with good quality. And it's more than words, right? I think we had the same struggles that PCNA had over the last few years. And we know that you don't think in averages, right? So when we are shipping 97% on time in full, which what— which is what we do, there's 3% of you, it's 90 orders a day. So I can look at every one of you in this room and say, I'm probably gonna screw up one of your orders. It's how do we react to those screw-ups? Right? So how do we retool our service, customer service, end to end, from the first person that picks up the phone to the person that's gonna solve your problem? So that's our new North Star. It's called Polaris. Nothing to do with the off-road vehicles that you see on the streets here, right? Totally different. So Polaris is our North Star. It's gonna take a journey, right? It's a lot to look at. We take a lot of feedback. We've created a customer advisory board. I think we have one member here in June of this year to listen to our customers more than we ever did. But yeah, this is, this is the journey we've embarked on. It's going to take some time, but this is the goal.
Okay. This next one, I'll be honest, interviewing Anna felt like sitting down with my professor about to fail an exam. Anna Angelic is a brand strategist, an author, and a former chief brand officer at Banana Republic and Esprit. She was one of the first CMOs to treat merch as a real pillar of brand strategy. So I asked her how we answer clients who want an ROI on merch. Here's what happened.
When we face clients and they want to have the ROI conversation and they're like—
In the scorecard, look, look, look.
No, no, no, no.
It's a great, it's a great question, but you need to say who asked them, who owns the scorecard?
Who owns the scorecard?
Yeah, who owns the scorecard right now? Tell me.
With marketing.
Okay.
Right?
Right, like marketing, what is on that scorecard?
They want to know, here's what they wanna know. Okay, I see this cool merch campaign you want us to do. I have to go to my boss and tell them what the return on investment is for this.
Correct, so how do you define return on investment?
They're typically defining it in terms of impressions, which is not easy to measure.
How are you defining it?
I define it return on emotion and return on impact.
Oh, but that's too fuzzy. You need to operationalize it.
Right, how?
That's why it's not working.
I told you I was going to school and I was afraid I was sitting with my professor.
No, no, you need to, again, you need to kind of be like, hey, does this increase average order value? Does it increase the size of your basket?
Okay.
For like, for them, so they can track sales and track increase in sales before and after.
Okay, but you said merch was a long play.
Absolutely.
And they're gonna wanna measure the return.
These are the sell-through measures. So they need to, but they need to exist because they're unbelievably important. So that's like, does it increase average order value, the basket size, the return, the traffic? Does it increase traffic? Does it increase return customers?
That's easy to measure for retail.
Absolutely.
But for service companies?
For service companies, then say, what is the brand sentiment? What are the brand mentions around, among customers? Creative class? Who are the observers, the critics? Is there any media pickup on this? Is there any pickup among Substackers? Is there any pickup about cultural commentators? So that's affinity, mentions, and then say, come back to me. Let's do 3-month, 6-month, 9-month, 12-month plan. And let's see how everything else, is it mentioned with everything else that you're doing? Sentiment, affinity, And not just short-term impressions.
If you know Tony McNally, you know he's everybody's best friend in this industry. Tony's been in promo for 22 years, and he's been through a couple of acquisitions along the way. So in his words, he knows a little bit about change. Here he is on that one person on your team who pushes back on everything and why you want to lean in.
Your challengers, which I hate to say it, Negative Nancy— I'm not going to use Negative Nancy. Let's call her Doubtful Dolly, right? Doubtful Dolly is gonna question everything that you're gonna do. Doubtful Dolly's probably been there for a long time. She's like, I write this on this piece of paper, I save this piece of paper in a folder, and it's worked for me for 15 years, and that's how we're gonna do it. Well, Doubtful Dolly, you're living in that comfort zone, right? But I say lean into her because allow them to question, allow them to have that open platform to be honest with you and question what you're gonna do. You're gonna find that some of the greatest nuggets come outta the questions that your biggest challenges pose to you. I have an example. I have an employee who we, again, back in the e-com days, we were trying to figure out how do you create an online platform where a client can approve their proof in an email, right? So we were like, oh, we're gonna upload the PDF. We're gonna send the email to the client and they're gonna say, I approve, I don't approve, and they'll send an email back to you. Dolly comes to me and Dolly's like, Tony, this isn't gonna work. I'm like, Dolly, what are you talking about? We're gonna send the email, they're gonna say, I like it, I don't like it, it's gonna send it back to us so we can move on. Tony, you're missing something. If they say no, then what? So it's yes or it's no with a change. And we were so focused on getting this project done, it was a blind spot that we weren't allowing the client to have that opportunity to say no with a change. Something so simple that we were just dead set on that Doubtful Dolly brought up to us. Um, yeah. And without no safety, no honesty, you're not gonna get change.
Print on demand. If you still picture like a happy birthday mom t-shirt, this one's for you. Dave Schultz sat down with Jason from Fulfill Engine and Ryan from Fast Platform. Here's Jason on the fear that POD eats into your bulk business.
Can you imagine going to a restaurant and asking for dessert and they're like, no, we don't serve dessert here because we're worried you wouldn't eat the hamburger that you had before it, right? Like POD is, is the dessert, okay? It's a new way to bring in revenue. It's a new way to meet your clients because everything we've been hearing for the past 2 days is all about how do we elevate ourselves as distributors? How do we elevate ourselves as suppliers? And if you're a supplier, it's about giving your distributors and the people working with you more options to buy the already amazing product that you've sourced and the amazing people that you have that's decorating it. And then if you're a distributor, it's about giving your customers the ability to have flexible programs. One of the fastest growing partners we have, and it's one of the fastest growing companies in our entire industry, 3 years ago didn't know how to make swag. They didn't know anything about the promo market. All they did was snacks. Well, they came out to Long Beach 3 years ago, they learned about this industry, they went to PPAI, they learned about promo products, and all of a sudden they started offering print-on-demand. And guess what? They're getting all the bulk orders too. So now they're over a $100 million company in less than 3 years because they transitioned just from a snack gifting company to a swag, and now they are a swag solution. So it really is about becoming a solutions engineer rather than just a transactional distributor.
We closed out SKU Camp with Caleb Gilbertson. Caleb started Imprint Engine in his living room 14 years ago, and today they've got 150 teammates around the world. And honestly, he's spent more time thinking about AI than just about anyone I know in this industry. Here's where he thinks distributors are headed.
I think time changes the entire distributor model completely. It's going to change the whole industry. I think it's going to happen way faster than any of us are prepared for. So yesterday we sold products, and today we manage projects. Tomorrow we design outcomes. And I think that's the trajectory we're on. The biggest threat isn't AI. I think it's defending value that's already gone or going very, very quickly. So coming back to this question, what will AI never replace? Don't ask if it can do it today. Every time you say that AI will never replace that, ask what it would need in order to do it tomorrow. It's going to need knowledge, context, reasoning, tools, and agency, and it's coming really fast. And then what are you going to do when all that exists? What are you going to do with your day when AI can do all these things? So yeah, in closing, I don't think the future is about AI. I think it's about the reinvention of value. And I think it's gonna belong to the ones willing to reinvent it.
And that's a wrap on our Skew Camp highlights from Montreal. A huge thank you to every speaker who shared the stage with us and to all of you who showed up and made it what it is. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
