 Hello everybody, before I start it's a great honor standing here in Athens on this beautiful event Thank you for considering me to be a speaker And I would like to say special thanks to all of you organizing this beautiful event Today I will say a few words about how collaboration amongst shoppers in Gen Z and Gen Alpha will change social proof But before we start I have one question for all of you, so feel free to join me And my question is when you go to some some new city and you face with a problem of hunger You probably go to some restaurant. Yeah, so how do you choose that restaurant based on what? Like what what does encourage you to go to some restaurant? anybody Okay reviews so like Google reviews or Okay, because Google is a sponsor. Yeah Okay, okay, so go reviews trip advisor. What? Large queues, okay, that's also good. Yeah, okay great because you believe them Yeah Yeah, okay, okay keep keep that in mind because we will come to this a little bit later on Okay, so let me introduce myself even though He did pretty good job. I will do it one more time. My name is Laura Mersic I'm 18 years old and I come from small but beautiful country of Croatia I founded one interesting and innovative e-commerce plug-in, which is called collab card and Ever since I was a little boy I was always curious about how things work and why they work in certain way So I started like reading and watching different videos overall. I was gaining some knowledge Later on I was trying to use that knowledge to solve some basic problems and at one point I asked myself what is my mission because at the end of the day I think that we all should work on some mission and we should focus on our mission And I realized that my mission is to provide solutions that can reduce the complexity of everyday's life for people on this planet and I said this just to get a little bit more into my head and To get my perspective here have QR codes for both my LinkedIn account and Twitter account. I prefer LinkedIn So feel free to add me Like I said, I will talk today about how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are going to change social proof So let me introduce you to those two generations Gen Z are all born between 1995 and 2009 so I am personally a member of Gen Z raise a hand if you are a member of Gen Z maybe Oh nice great great great great. I didn't expect that great great. I will not ask about Gen Alpha because Okay, so Gen Z interesting generation. We are at the moment facing one big life transitions We are finishing our formal Education starting a job starting to live alone earning first incomes But we had really specific childhood because we grew up during the recession But on the other hand we grew up with development of smartphones. So we are smartphone natives We are the ones who are basically fueling the whole digital transition the e-commerce. We are the biggest customers of e-commerce and Even though we feel young they are even younger and those that those younger guys are Gen Alpha So Gen Alpha Gen Alpha are all those born after the 2010 so the oldest member of Gen Alpha is 13 and even though they don't physically Have credit cards or press the purchase button button. They have some key roles in decision-making When it comes to purchasing any e-commerce Well, because their parents listen to them and taking count that their parents are mainly those age between 20 and 50 so their parents are Leading in terms of technology and economical stability But what's what interest us are two things and that is the spending power So here you have spending power just for United States Not whole world and the estimated spending spending power of Gen Z is around 360 billion while on the other hand the estimated spending power of Gen Alpha is around 40 billion combined That is more than 400 billion which is a lot And while I was preparing for this presentation. I was searching for some data to give you Unique perspective of what we do and what we feel and I came across really a lot of different statistics But one especially caught my attention and and was living rent-free in my head for several days and that is this one So some marketing experts did a research and they said that average American teen receives between four to ten thousand marketing messages per day What does that mean? That means that in some perfect week in terms of getting these messages American teen will receive 70,000 messages like 70,000 imagine 70,000 of anything That's the norm and then you as a brand or you as a webshop you need to stand out among 70,000 measures It's impossible. I mean it's possible, but and because we are here We are we are getting so much messages We just developed a blockade and we don't even feel when you when we get some advertisement on Instagram or some mail or something else So question here is how to stand out and It's not easy. It's not easy. It's complicated, but Overall, it just requires a bit different approach and Yeah, we get those 70,000 messages But then the end of the day we still buy and question is what we buy we buy brands And yesterday here It was a really nice presentation where it was said that brand is not only a logo or slogan or something else That brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room and I agree with that But I will go one step further. I think that brand is Community yeah, so the best way to if community is good the brand is good for example today we took a family picture and That family picture is more powerful than any WordPress logo and if you ask me what is WordPress all of us here WordPress this conference is WordPress and we are the ones who will Support and who will bring new clients to WordPress same goes for everything else and Now when I'm talking about community I will try to say a word to about social commerce so social commerce is something that has been brought up a Few years ago. I mean it has been here for several years, but lately it became more popular and When you ask someone or when you go to Google and type social commerce the first 15 to 20 links will basically be all Social commerce is when you buy something through social media So for example through Facebook through Instagram to some other social media network Even though all of that is true social commerce is much more and if you ask me Social commerce is actually a community and then how oh How is this social commerce is that at the front end what we all see is that like social media shopping But what we don't see and what is even bigger what is behind every big front end is even bigger front back end and in this Case back in this role of community and social proof. So without quality community You don't have quality social media you don't have the followers for your brand on that social media and To spread your community you need quality social proof And now I'll go to the beginning of presentation So I ask you how do you choose your restaurant and let me rephrase what you said so you basically said I'm searching for some proof, but not any kind of proof You are searching for social proof and believe me you are not alone because according to some Surveys Gen Z and millennials are 99 more likely to rely on online reviews and social media when choosing a restaurant So 99% that's almost 100% that's almost all of us Let me just bring water my throat is But believe me when I said that restaurants are not only thing when social proof is deal breaker So for almost everything like I don't I don't have an example But social proof is go or no go for me So I use social proof in everything and not only me but my whole generation is using using the social proof Now I'll do a step away from the everything I said before and tell you a little story of my own So one day I was browsing through internet searching for for one t-shirt I really want one t-shirt and I found it But I didn't buy it and the other day like I did everything I Added to cart I went to check out and everything, but I didn't buy it Anybody maybe have an idea why I didn't buy it. What was the deal breaker for me that time? It's not connected with anything I said before Okay, no Okay, okay almost but Shipping yeah exactly shipping so shipping was almost twice as high as product itself Like and even though if somebody offered me 100 million dollars I would still not buy it because I'm not willing to pay for something twice as much than than from product itself and At that moment I just like they thought well, okay This is a problem, but this is not a problem that I face like my whole generation is facing that problem And like I said before I think that I should reduce that complexity and that I should offer some Solutions for those problems. So I started thinking what can I do and what can be done like in it didn't take me long to get an idea What do you do when you want to? Reduce the shipping you ask a friend to join you and then you will share the shipping costs But what happens then from the perspective of the guy who is in charge of that shipping of that Card he needs to receive all kinds of info from other sites So one one guy will say I want the size and blue hoodie another we say we'll say I want the size L t-shirt with something written on it and so on so I just went from one problem to another Which is not good and I connected them. So I created a big mess But what's good is that I realized that those two problems are heavily connected and that I could maybe offer some solutions With which could solve both of them So I again star stopped and started thinking what can be done and Not so long after I With the help of friends and some experts I created the collab card plug-in which enables customers to shop together on really easy way But that's not that's not the point here point here Is that I saw that as a need as a need of a whole generation and then I realized well collaboration itself and Shopping with with with someone together is not just something that will happen in future is something that is happening happening now and on the large scale and like And like maybe you are scared as a webshop of collaboration But you should not be collaboration is a beautiful thing not only for shoppers because basically for shoppers collaboration is Cost-cutting initiative, but from your perspective as a webshop It might be for example that you are encouraging Creation of small shopping groups that will transform to communities Which is core of any modern e-commerce or maybe that the individual purchase will be higher because in a single purchase You will have more more shoppers Or maybe the thing that Solidating some smaller packages will reduce cost operational expenses Like there is a ton of those benefits and you should not be scared and you should search for solutions How to give us the most and the best and the most simple way of collaboration? But it also I was also curious like what can I what is also Something that happens while we collaborate like something that is not benefit or anything like men I mean not benefit but something that happens in the background And I started thinking okay collaboration good I am getting something from some links from my friends But and also connected that with those 70,000 messages and I soon realized that today some traditional advertisement and Influence or endorsements are not as important as they were before moreover today The thing we value the most our recommendation from friends and family and Authenticity so remember this word authenticity, and then I realized that we have a shift in trust and emphasis on authenticity What are some other newest products of collaboration? Well, first of all review culture So today is completely normal to live a review after you eat something good or you buy something good Or you have a good experience in something And one proof of that is that almost half of Gen Z is living their review on social media like posting and Personally, I don't do that, but I often talk with my friends about my experiences So I think almost whole generation is one way or another giving some kind of review or some kind of social proof Is it that good or bad? It depends on you? But then the end of the day your view culture is definitely on its rise on the other hand user generally is Content which is strongly connected to reviews is here and when you ask someone what is your genetic content? You would get different answers, but user-generated content is actually authentic perspective on your business So remember what they said the one slide ago Authenticity and when someone gives you authentic perspective It gives you the best ad the better ad than some influence and endorsement And like user-generated content is great, but what's even greater is when you support it So try to support it like for example, you could if you see some review You could easily just screenshot it and put it in your social media that way you're doing two good things first of all You are showing that you see a little people Normal customers, but at the same time you are encouraging others to do that because some other guy will say look They put some random guy on their social media. They are promoting them Try to support user-generated content Now I'll try to circle everything that I said before and finally get give you an answer of on how will we change the social proof itself and Then I also was thinking about that before of course So I started thinking you know what's crowdfunding so crowdfunding for example if you heard about Kickstarter is when Kickstarter is a platform that where people crowd community is founding some brand business idea Basically the crowd is founding with money something Then on the other hand you have maybe Wikipedia where you are founding the base with information Then I thought well wouldn't be nice if we could just connect social proof with crowdfunding But I would not use the crowdfunding at the founding. I would use crowdsourcing That's how I got to crowdsource social proof. So crowdsource social proof is Definitely something that should be considered as future of social proof It's not that the social proof itself would be changed but our perspective on it will be and community members will actively contribute with their opinions Experiences and feedbacks on products or brands which is excellent for you and on the other hand you are the ones who need to develop some kinds of rating and reviews to allow allow that community To provide feedback But what I like the most are all of the strengths Of crowdsource social proof. So first of all you see this pointer right here Okay, so you see one picture and I see our picture We both think that our picture is most accurate, but it's not but if we combine our pictures We get more accurate and more complete picture now think like this You have some product and you are getting one review of from one side and then you're getting another So crowdsource social proof offers a diverse representation from different people for different backgrounds different preferences different behaviors and so on overall crowdsource social proof is only thing to give you a complete picture of your product and Most accurate picture of your product On the other hand to do anything today you need to be I Mean you need to follow the trends to be trendy and I I agree that that this is really not simple That's extremely difficult But you can help yourself and not you but others can help you so crowdsource social proof Is continuously going to get new members and those new members will join contribute the social proof We've all over time and will it will be up to date which is great for you and now if you use Those two strengths you have pretty good chances of standing out among 70,000 messages But last but not least multiple community members endorsing a product or service through a positive Ratings and reviews builds trust and credibility, but not any kind of credibility Authentic credibility and what we said before is that the authenticity is key in gain getting to us like Okay, so let's but not least accessible information and community engagement crowd source social proof really is accessible and It it's up to you also to offer the most simple way of us getting to that proofs And like I said, you need to encourage that it's up to you But also community members actively participating in discussions. I'll give one example also for WordPress so I know that there are several Facebook groups and Reddit groups where people sometimes have a problem and then the community is the one who solves that problem And that's great. And that's something that gives additional value to to WordPress and bars are of course empowered with the insights they need to make Confident choices based on collective collective wisdom of the crowd. Yeah, and Like I would go to the beginning how to stand out among 70,000 messages and how to get to us because I know that's a big problem not only For small brands, but also for example for WordPress because WordPress is having a tough times in getting Gen Z as They are so it's like if you ask any of my peers, it's more likely that they will know for example Shopify or some other Brands and WordPress and I know that you're having a tough time, but what you can do you just need to listen to us and offer us Solutions or if there are some solutions try to Get the solutions and to support those solutions I Think that I was a little bit faster and I was a little bit Not good with time management, so please feel free to ask me any questions Yeah All right That was impressive. I'm not gonna lie. Yes, sir. I was a little bit. Thank you. Wow. Wow. So this is from Everyone's a great. Thank you. It's from the WordPress team. Thank you. And then we just wanted to keep doing what you've been doing Big rounder applause everyone big rounder applause Keep going keep going You've all eaten just do it All right, so I think I'll start with my questions again because I don't know I'm curious You're over 17 you're still in school. You've done this research. You've created this application When do you sleep? Well, you know they said that there's no such a thing as a lack of time. There is just a better organization, so You know if you organize your time well, you can do a lot of things Do you do seminars for time organization? Can you teach me how to do this? I'm 32 when I still have issues For enough money I'm very serious about this question too All right, so a second question. That's a little bit more serious Well, the previous one was actually quite serious to be honest, but You mentioned that the Generation the earlier generations out is eat the alpha and so forth. They don't Okay, so they don't care about the TV commercials or things that are like really commercial and expensive and I don't know I'm trying to sell you some maybe magazine and they don't care about those either But why don't they care about social media influencers? They're like the same age. They're young. They're still in school Why aren't they let me ask you a question So you see an influencer and you know that he's a getting paid He won't promote a product without getting paid and on the other hand You have a really good friend who buys some products and then recommends it to you who you believe Yeah, I picked a friend, but what I picked a friend. No, no, you're right So same words for us We just we know that the influencers are getting paid and no matter how good the influencers say They need to live from something and that something's our sponsorships. So I will believe a friend before Influencer, yeah, that makes sense. Does anyone here disagree with that? No hands. I Guess you're right Bravo. All right, so let's take some questions from the audience now, right? It was quick one moment the microphone is coming your way so you can ask your question We can all hear you nice and clear It's likely the delivery right there when he's arriving. You're not understanding which side of the arriving Okay, so hello. Nice to meet you. First. I want to congratulations to your side to you because you're so so young I'm 21 actually and When I see people that are younger That in young I also I also generated and say And I started in war person when I when I was like 16 or 15 So I'm the younger person the as far as I know that in the Italian community So I'm so happy when I see people like me. So congratulations. Keep going and now what I wanted to say was that actually you said before that You seem like wordpress was too hard to use I Actually my experience never heard from any people also like 18 17 16 never heard about that What they have always heard is that people think that they are too hard because they they see the HTML code They said oh no, I don't want to go to do that. Mm-hmm. So what you say is that this is a It's too complicated. Thank you. Sorry for this. Maybe I'll stop the question. No, no, no, so What was that a few days ago? I was the biggest the university in Croatia, which is called the electric which does that so They they they produce developers at the end of the day and I ask them So what do you why do you don't I'm personally not the expert for for the things I just get what people told me but they said that they it's not just it's too complicated and things like that, but They prefer other things and that is exactly why for example Gutenberg is developing to to acquire our generation And to to to to to to to get to our generation. I I think that it's easier today And when if you go now to YouTube and say and type how to start a webshop There will be more tutorials about how to start it on Shopify and then on WooCommerce and it's maybe easier to learn then to learn WordPress if that satisfies your answer I Don't want to take your thunder here, but um I'd like to add to that that they're with WooCommerce and with WordPress. You have so so many options So so many plugins. Where as with spots at the spot if nothing against WooCommerce My plugin is on WooCommerce only at this moment. So I support WooCommerce. Let's go. Yes, of course But I'm just saying like what I hear from my people from people my generation Yeah, yeah, so we all want to make it better. Yeah, right Because we all love it. Yeah every day All right any other question from the audience come on Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, you're right in front of me terribly sorry for that one microphone here, please Thank you First of all, I Really find your idea Very very good and very pioneer But I'm not sure about the how you imagine the collaborative crowd crowd source collaborative Proof is it like? In independent networks or in a certain platform It's an idea or are you planning to create a platform? No, it's not an idea. It's just the perspective It's just how we are going to look at social proof We will not look at single one review or something. We will try to collaborate all of the all of those to found one Big social proof, you know So there's not like a platform something to do that Just our perspective and our position from where we look on that. Okay. Thanks Next question. Oh right up there Yeah, sorry, I'm circling back I don't see you. Oh, I'm up here. Okay. Sorry. Yeah, so circling back to questions to your comments on influencers and I think what you said made a lot of sense, you know, obviously you're gonna trust your friend more and your your your more personal recommendations But do you feel that your generation has perhaps Strengthened that view because I mean as an adult I have that view too And I'm sort of boomer generation almost Jennings. Yeah, thanks. That's generous And I does that have something to do with the fact that you as a generation are receiving 70,000 marketing impressions per week and you do you feel that as a generation you've developed a resistance to marketing in general Yeah, yeah, that's a question. Well, not to general but okay Like I said, those 70,000 messages are basically some traditional and an old-fashioned Marketing messages and or influencer endorsements. And yes, we raised some resistance to that That's why you need to find new approaches to get to us Yeah, and and in order to to to acquire more customers The best way to do this is through community. So you need to Encourage your community to do that. So follow on question if I may so The your resistance seems to me like it is a lack of trust Or it's found in a lack of trust and then if we as Not just the WordPress community if the marketing world as a whole starts infiltrating our communities Does that not mean that you will eventually get to the point where you lose trust in your own communities as well? I mean that super philosophical question there But we're in Greece in all end of philosophers. So To put a little more context on it though You your generation has raised those barriers that those resistance levels. I think probably faster than any generation in history And I wonder if that isn't going to be the exactly the same for whatever marketing trick comes next So I suppose my concern here is that we're starting an arms race It's always been an arms race, but we're really accelerating it now. No less a question more of a comment Okay, so if you ask someone 10 years ago, how will marketing look today? They will they would probably not give you an accurate answer. That's why I cannot give you an accurate answer right now so we can only predict or try to predict and And go with the flow All right Next question from the audience, please. Oh this sir right up here quite a few questions Hello, hello first. Congratulations for achieving many things in at your at the very young age I think skies the limit. Thank you from there. So people for form communities big or small do you think that ethical presumptions that I believe is Getting bigger we'll get in the way of forming view commune bigger communities and I don't know in the near future Maybe make reviews seem obsolete like people will start buying products big based on their ethical based on their Under beliefs, okay, or on what is ethical rather than oh that person or my friend was Happy with that product Could you repeat one more time, please? Excuse me. It could you repeat one more time? I didn't yeah, do you think that the people in the future? Okay, we'll start buying Stop or start buying products based on their beliefs and What what does that their belief means? On the red color on the thing thinking that all this product is more environmental friendly or okay? Okay, okay. Okay. Yeah, it's better than me rather than based on critics and reviews from friends or family But those two things go really Really well along with each other because you will get recommendation look this product is environmentally friendly and you you support that so those two things will probably go with one with another, you know because What I know If you understand what I want to say to you and maybe yeah There will be some situations when one will go against other but as I see it that The beliefs you are surrounded with people who have same beliefs as you pretty much So those recommendations will go with your beliefs Okay, thank you. All right any other question from the audience. I Don't see it's pretty bright. There we go. That's much better No, nothing All right, I need a really big because we're not that many people and we really should be a really big final round of response here for Lord