The road to the adoption of blockchain and crypto in the marketing industry is a long and winding road. But make no mistake about it: Transformatio
The road to the adoption of blockchain and crypto in the marketing industry is a long and winding road. But make no mistake about it: Transformation is well on its way and the road will soon turn to a highway.
As someone who has been a creative director, agency owner/partner, strategic planner, chief marketing officer for fintech startups and an entrepreneur, I’ve seen the marketing industry from multiple vantage points.
What’s common in marketing revolutions?
And while every so-called “marketing revolution” takes a somewhat different path, there are many commonalities. First of all, marketing agencies will get ahead of the curve as a way to exhibit their competitive advantage and value to their clients. But a majority of brand marketers will move more slowly: They have the challenge of “socializing” change internally, are lured by the opportunity for competitive differentiation but also inherently more cautious, often have large and complex systems issues, and require leadership with a certain risk tolerance. It’s why companies like McDonald’s and Walmart are dipping their toes into crypto, yet still have a way to go.
Secondly, as with most transformative moments in marketing, a core challenge is a behavioral one: How to get customers/consumers to take that first step … to overcome confusion, fear/distrust, or simple inertia to make that first transaction. Think: the early days of the internet and connecting a modem for a dial-up connection; having to incent folks to adopt online banking and pay their first bill or electronically deposit their first check; or QR-codes, which were a big dud until Apple built a QR reader right in the iPhone’s camera.
The common denominator: simplicity. It’s why asking mainstream consumers to navigate an infinite number of exchanges, Metamask, Uniswap, hot and cold wallets, and the like is a tall task. Yes, early adopters are doing just fine, but they’re just a sliver of the total universe of the general population.
Related: Cryptocurrency and the rise of the user-generated brand
Third, innovation happens because there are problems to be solved. From the Cypherpunks to modern-day evangelists, champions of crypto talk of transforming how privacy, decentralization and the democratization of money will change the world. For marketers, the issues that have prevailed so far are related, but a bit more modest.
For example, projects like Lucidity and Rebel AI (now Logiq) offer to tackle the vexing issue of bot-driven ad fraud in digital marketing. The browser Brave, and its corresponding token, BAT, promise to tackle data privacy when searching the web. And AdsDax and IBM are working to drive more accountability and transparency in digital marketing performance.
Just around the corner
The onramp to the blockchain/crypto highway in marketing can be found all around us, right now. Consider:
Payments: With the rise of crypto credit cards like those offered by Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlcokFi… the ability to pay with crypto on PayPal… buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms like Klarna integrating Safello… and the dominance of stablecoins, it’s safe to say the payments category is rapidly evolving and will have a material impact on how products and services engage their customers.
Analytics: Data analytics is core to the digital marketing revolution, and the ability for marketers to leverage it shows tremendous potential in a decentralized ecosystem. The use cases for oracles like Chainlink, querying tools such as The Graph and onChain analytics have only scratched the surface of their potential for brand marketers.
Content creation: The rights of content creators and publishers have long been a hot button in the marketing ecosystem. Projects like Audius are demonstrating how a decentralized ledger has the potential to be a gamechanger in protecting copyrights, giving consumers more choice in how they pay for and consume content, and how content is stored and distributed.
Related: Capturing lost intellectual property revenues with blockchain
Social media: Twitter recently announced an executive role to spearhead its “BlueSky” exploratory for a decentralized standard for social media. Facebook is purportedly piloting a stablecoin-based digital currency of its own, dubbed Diem. Social media and content marketing have, arguably, been at the forefront of the brand marketing playbook over the past five years; there’s little reason to believe that that will not remain the case.
Loyalty: Loyalty/customer relationship management programs, which often struggle with creating a “currency” to deliver as a reward to motivate true behavior change vs. merely defending defection, will find an entirely new avenue to go down in NFTs — which projects like Cryptibles and Enjin is offering. Moreover, as experiences outpace “stuff” as a coveted reward for loyalty, the promise of NFTs for “digital tickets” to unique experiences like that offered by Microsoft, collectible…
cointelegraph.com