 Hello everyone. I hope you're all doing well. My name is Joe and I am mind-share's global chief strategy officer And I'm excited to be here today Sorry that I couldn't be there in person But I'm going to share a talk with you that we're calling Media Utopia and we're calling it Media Utopia because I was asked to talk about mapping the new digital marketing Shifts and when I got to thinking about it I couldn't help but picture a map that looked kind of like this inspired by fantasy But filled with all of the crazy and increasingly complex things that we need to deal with as marketers the things like the cooking Cookie crumbling or the challenges around identity or brand safety or misattribution And you know when you think about the modern marketing world It's kind of hard not to get sucked into a world of doom and gloom because of all of these things When I thought about that map, I then realized that if we took a bit more of a positive view And took some inspiration from this quote from Arthur C. Clarke Who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic that? Maybe just maybe we might be able to way to find our way out of this map towards a future Media Utopia now it's impossible to Think about all of the things that are currently happening in the world of digital marketing Without addressing the metaverse because it's on everybody's lips And it's what everyone keeps talking about and if you read too much about the metaverse You might be tempted to think that your business was totally screwed if you did not have your metaverse strategy already figured out and That is because the metaverse has become a Rorschach test on to which every tech cohort is projecting the future That they might want or they might need Gamers think that it means the fort Nightification of absolutely everything while techno bros think that it's the you know final rise of tech dominance and the end of financial institutions Well Mark Zuckerberg thinks that it's some sort of invisibility cloak that will hide all the damage that he's done to civilization over the last few years But the truth is all of the talk and the rhetoric around the metaverse right now is a red herring In fact, it's the part of a fantasy map where the heroes get caught on an unnecessary side quest and what seems like a Kind of offshoot. That's not really a part of the core story But what all the excitement around the metaverse is doing is driving a massive amount of investment into the necessary Digital technologies and infrastructures. That's going to power the next version of the web regardless of what that might be things like crypto of course and VR and AR and 5g and even Quantum computing are what's going to make up the magic system of whatever of whatever future we wind up in Let's use just one of these technologies as an example NFTs or non fungible tokens and I'm sure many of you in the audience are probably rolling your eyes thinking I don't want to hear more about NFTs But if you put aside all the hype you could look through the lens and think what NFTs is really about is about ownership It's about people trying to find a way to own things in the digital world The way that we can in the real world because if you think about it While we use phrases like home screen or home page very few of us actually have a digital home on the internet We don't have any things that actually belong to us It wasn't always meant to be like this in the early days of the web There was a huge explosion of personal blogs and personal pages that were all wholly unique and of course a big part of the digital economy was driven by Legally downloading and gaining over ownership of things like music But as the web evolved into today's platform-driven ecosystem largely to serve the purposes of marketers It became much more cookie-cutter and instead we all started to conform to the existing interfaces of digital platforms like Facebook or Instagram where we can just slightly customize and And of course digital ownership of content Basically doesn't exist anymore as we are all just permanent renters through platforms like Spotify But there's an idea called psychological ownership Which states that people can actually power their sense of self when they have things that they feel like they belong to them So rather than thinking about NFTs or as about ownership Maybe what NFTs and this whole explosion in the digital space is really about is about helping people to Find their sense of self in the digital world Now there is something that the digital world has been able to provide to that sense of self that the real world hasn't Which is the ability to find or create a community that you are unable to in the real world One that is freed from whatever societal or social constructs might exist in your real world geography Sometimes these could be fun like the ability to meet other people who want to dress up like medieval characters Just like you sometimes it could be more serious and powerful like the ability to connect with other people who are transitioning This is the promise of what many people are calling web three Which is a decentralized web that's rebuilt from these communities up rather than from those platforms down Increasingly that sense of self is able to connect is able to translate from one platform to another as we're starting to see some changes taking place Fortnite may be the ultimate example as it's a major game that enables you to take your avatar from one platform like PlayStation and play Is that very same avatar on Xbox? Even some legislation is helping to make this happen as recently a law was passed in South Korea that Essentially is forcing Google and Apple to accept each other's payment methods And even the big historical platforms have who have always been at odds are starting to play a little bit nicer as for the first time in a number of Years you can actually start to see Instagram images when shared via Twitter So what does all this mean? What is the new map of the digital world look like? Well, I think it looks something like this between that massive investment in virtual world building and that Increasing interoperability and persistent identity that's being powered by that digital technology and the final enablement of a digital sense of self Brings us to a future in which the real world becomes more digital while the digital real world becomes more real Or to put it another way that Metaverse will not be some object that sits on the other side of a threshold that you escape to and Instead will be about taking all of the best parts of what we know of as the digital world and bringing them into the real world and in that way what has kind of been the Unfulfilled promise of something called the internet of things actually becomes instead an internet of people But once we've established that as the future that we are headed towards Brands need a compass. They need to kind of what are the core things that we need to worry about? And I think there are four new principles that brands need to embrace digital saving the real world data disruption Shift from consumption to participation and Lastly commerce that trans transforms These are the four new fundamental realities that brands will have to grapple with in order to be successful and stand out on this new Digital map we'll go through each of these quickly one by one When it comes to digital saving the real world The truth is the metaverse is going to be just simply the deepest layer of Multiple layers of reality that consumers will engage with and those layers of reality will range from the completely real Like hiking through the woods to the completely virtual like hiking through virtual woods on your phone Brands will have to find which of all of these layers Well, they can bring the most value to consumers and most likely it's going to be at the layers in between Where the real world and the digital world are merging One of my absolute favorite examples is this program called sick beats from a company called Woojer It specifically was built for sufferers of cystic bryrosis who are forced to put on what are essentially chest shaking Vests to clear mucus in their lungs Woojer was able to figure out that music at a certain frequency actually helped to Clear those lungs along with Chest shaking so they partnered with Spotify to create a custom version of this vest that specifically sank With songs that were at a 40 Hertz output and they built an algorithm to then go across and scrape all of Spotify to find songs That were specifically at that output Strapped on this helped suffers of cystic bryrosis to be able to actually enjoy what previously was an incredibly unpleasant experience This is a great example of taking a digital technology pairing it with a physical experience of need to create a better future Another one one of my favorites from one of our Clients is acts in last year's European championships. You wafer refused to let The German stadium that was hosting a game between Germany and Hungary Do projection mapping to make the stadium rainbow color in support of pride? specifically after the Hungarian government passed laws that were discriminatory against LGBTQ people Once you a for announced that decision within 24 hours acts partnered with Spotify to create a custom filter that actually Turned the stadium into a giant pride flag that built up a huge amount of momentum and excitement For people both in the stadium at the time But also around the world to demonstrate both the brand's commitment to the cause but also enabling other people to participate The second new reality that we need to accept is what we're calling data disrupted We've seen a significant increase in consumer interest in data privacy over The years as consumers themselves are becoming more and more Conversant and adept at understanding marketing techniques that are using their data to target them as A result of that of course we have seen many governments around the world pass new data privacy legislation or threatened to and I know in India just last week there was an attempt to pass a new data Privacy bill that was not able to get by partly because of the influence of some of the tech giants But the good news is it seems like many consumers in partnership with brands are actually taking these This dated disruption into their own hands and doing it themselves Take for example this program from Sunnybrook Hospital in Canada Who realized that almost 25% of pregnancies end in a loss of some kind But the unfortunate reality of that moment is that by that by the time that that happens You have already created a digital trail or a digital exhaust of data That signifies that you are pregnant and for many of these women They then need to go through the duration of the rest of their intended pregnancy receiving ads specifically targeted at pregnant women Through this program called on silence the conversation. They simply created an extension To web browsers that enable people to opt out of anything that was related to Baby ads to ease the person's individual grief by not having to be exposed to ads that were targeting them after their loss This is taking a tragic moment and using digital technology to kind of put a stop to any harm that could be done as a consequence Another great example is UNESCO who was simply trying to raise awareness of all of the data privacy concerns that consumers Should have out there. So what they did was create something called the cookie factory Which would enable people to opt in to assign themselves an additional identity or archetype on top of their existing data Which would create thousands and thousands of extra data points that were totally fake Just to fool the algorithms that were targeting them So you could go from simply being Joe from New York to a cherry on the cave or a punch of sugar I create this massive amount of data to throw the algorithms Off-wack another fantastic example of a big brand in this case It is UNESCO Enabling consumers to disrupt the data that is used to be to target them the third area from consumption to participation We're seeing a massive massive amount of investment in content as a couple of things are happening number one more and more content production or funding is being consolidated into fewer and fewer giant global companies the likes of Netflix or Disney or Paramount or Amazon While at at the same time more and more consumers are shifting towards a Digital streaming environment where they could get more and more of the content that they specifically want right at their fingerprints and on demand This is all then leading to an attempt to get the next big hit When you look back to last year that big giant hit came from a very surprising Place a Korean show on Netflix called swid game, which was the biggest hit of 2021 by far in fact it had three times as many hours of viewership as the next biggest hit on Netflix What was fascinating was Netflix spawned an entire kind of creator economy of their own between memes and filters and Squid game inspired tiktok spreading like wildfire People were dressing up like squid game characters for Halloween. There was so much fun content But all for a very dark very violent metaphor for the repressive power that the rich can have over society So it's no wonder that parents weren't very very impressed when it was creeping into games like Roblox What's amazing is that this was a world where content creators were running wild with the core concept of squid game And I think this is a perfect representation of the new reality that we are if not already at then very quickly Approaching which is the world where professionally produced content is married to creator-led content And they exist in a symbiotic relationship where they are fully reliant on the other Hits are dependent on that symbiosis Professionally produced content relies on the traction of the creator-led content and the creator economy itself only exists because of that content Now this has major implications for Brands as they are marketing themselves, but it has even more implications for how they engage consumers and what they are about One of my favorite examples is actually a program that Bacardi did as an extension of their music liberates music Platform which is meant to elevate to the voices of female music producers in this instance They actually enabled fans to invest in Bacardi curated mix tapes And those fans would then actually receive a share of streaming Royalties in essence those brands because those consumers became participants in both the brand and the music platform that they had created Another example, that's even more product focus comes from Eos, which is a Feminine intimate care shaving product who Discovered that one notable influencer on tiktok had sung the praises of one of their Products giving customized instructions to her fans on how to use it rather than simply just Give it give a general shout-out on social media Eos actually created a new product then they sent it to this influencer explicitly that used Her specific language on the bottle and even featured her instructions on how to use the product on the back of the bottle When this influencer shared it out amongst all of her Fans all of those fans started clamoring so they could get a chance to buy the very same product So Eos released it as a limited edition exclusively at US retailer Target where it sold out within weeks and actually increased the share of market of Eos as a brand significantly in just a few months and The last new reality that consumers need to negotiate is commerce that transforms We know that media and commerce are rapidly coming together And in fact the fastest growing part of the media ecosystem in 2021 was commerce driven Media growing by 61% in the first half of the year alone And that's all in the context of consumers having more and more new opportunities to buy things in different ways Whether it is click-and-collect or with one click through Instagram or buy now pay later or the biggest Shopping type of the moment live streaming in fact McKinsey is predicting that live stream social commerce could make up 20% of all retail In the here in the US by 2025 And if that's the case what will it be in 2030 or more importantly what would come after live stream commerce? So in a world where you can buy a car from a vending machine Or you could subscribe to candy on a weekly or a monthly basis The question is how can you use commerce to not simply find a potential audience but to actually transform your business? And so in that way thinking about rather than simply just optimizing But how to transform is the key and we're starting to see brands who are embracing new commerce models Not simply as a way to drive a few incremental purchases, but instead to transform how they do business overall We're already seeing some brands do this like IKEA Who are taking the self-investment economy and adding it to it on its head? By creating something called the circular hub where they are actually enabling consumers to resell IKEA products for a benefit of both IKEA and that person so that you can make money off The IKEA product that you had bought two or three or four years ago while furthering a secondary economy for IKEA's products one of my favorite Programs is dole pineapples who realized there was a significant amount of waste created from the production of Dole pineapples and they took that waste and they actually figured out a way to make fabric out of it and so born was Essentially pineapple fabric which they then took to other brands to incorporate into their products including Nike who made a limited-edition Pineapple fabric shoe that was available for consumers to purchase this is a great example of taking new forms of Commerce and purchasing transactions and actually applying it to all of the other stuff that a brand might not have been selling before So those are the four big territories the question now is how can brands find utopia? number one as digital saves the real world's thinking about identifying your Audiences real most important needs what impact can you make by incorporating the wonders of the digital world and applying it? specifically to the world that we all have it as Data is increasingly Disrupted make sure to establish your own data ethics approach So you are being respectful of consumers wishes and not encouraging them to find a way to disrupt your own usage Third as consumption shifts to participation You need to ideate ways for consumers to join your brand in the same way that Bacardi did or even the way that Ikea did So that they become true participants not just in consuming your product but in participating and even investing in your success and lastly as commerce shifts to being a transformative aspect rather than simply about You know driving some incremental purchase don't just optimize but Operationalize a commerce approach based off of the fundamentals of your entire business So that's four ways to find brand utopia But the truth is there are probably hundreds or even thousands of different ways towards utopia The most important thing to do is think about all of the magic that is happening around us in the form of Emerging trends and new technology at consumers fingertips And always remember that those who don't believe in magic will never find it and do this Embracing that is the sure fire way to make sure that you will find your very own media utopia Thank you very much. I hope you have a great Conference and good luck to all the nominees tonight. Congratulations to all the winners