0:09

Hello. And welcome back to the finite podcast

0:11

on the podcast today, we're joined by Julian deco

0:13

, who is senior director of marketing partnerships

0:16

in EMEA at Facebook, which is I'm sure

0:18

a company you have heard of before. Julian's

0:21

got enterprise technology background

0:23

in strategy and marketing at companies like text

0:25

me and Skype and eBay. And

0:28

today we're talking about the relationship

0:30

between technology and marketing, how

0:32

technology can democratize marketing enables

0:35

storytelling and find the right audiences

0:37

for creative campaigns. I hope you're looking

0:39

forward to this episode. As much as I am enjoy

0:43

the finite community is kindly supported

0:45

by the marketing practice, a global

0:47

integrated B2B marketing agency

0:49

that brings together all the skills you need to design

0:52

and run account-based marketing demand

0:54

generation channel and customer marketing

0:57

programs had to the marketing

0:59

practice.com to learn more. Hi,

1:04

Julian , welcome to the finite podcast. Thanks for joining

1:06

me. My pleasure. Thanks for having me over.

1:09

I'm looking forward to talking , uh , we're going to be diving

1:11

into the world of technology

1:14

and marketing and I guess where they intertwine

1:16

and then they do so I have a more these

1:18

days, but before we do that, I'll let you, as

1:20

we always do. Tell us a bit about yourself, your

1:22

background experience and your current role.

1:25

Sure. So I , um

1:27

, yeah, I'm born and raised in

1:29

France and small town spent

1:32

the bulk of my professional life

1:34

outside of France, mostly in between

1:37

the U S and the UK where I've lived for

1:39

the last 10 years. Uh

1:41

, my background is sort of in technology at large

1:44

work for Amazon in the early days of Amazon worked

1:46

for Skype in the early days of Skype, had

1:49

my own startup for about four years

1:51

in the messaging space and then joined Facebook about five years

1:53

ago. So mostly tech on

1:55

the business side of things. And , um,

1:58

and my current job, I basically

2:00

managed the ecosystem of companies

2:03

that help Facebook , uh

2:05

, solve problems for its clients. So it's a

2:07

bare logic . A system of company is about 2000,

2:10

2000 of them around the world , uh,

2:13

that sits in between , uh, native tools

2:15

and a platform that everyone uses when they,

2:17

when they buy ads on Facebook and

2:19

our clients on the other side. So , um, that's

2:21

the ecosystem that I look after

2:23

with my team all around the region.

2:26

Cool. And what about, I'm always

2:28

interested in marketers? Well, I guess

2:30

you're not pure marketers such, but everyone's education,

2:33

how you ended up, ended up doing what you're doing. Did

2:35

you, what did you study? What kind of drew

2:37

you into the technology?

2:39

It's pretty random, to be honest with you. I , um,

2:42

I am a finance

2:45

major, a uni, so,

2:47

you know, could have done investment banking and I was just kind

2:49

of a numbers guy. I just happened to be

2:51

46 and I sort of came out of uni

2:54

in 97 when the internet sort

2:56

of came out and pretty quickly,

2:58

this was very interesting to me for,

3:01

for a whole set of reasons. I was into books and some of the Amazon

3:03

came out and some the , wow , you had a store where

3:05

you could buy a million books and search

3:07

was getting started with Alta Vista and Yahoo.

3:09

And so you continue to emerge

3:12

and something interesting. And I, I

3:14

had a kind of an open mind and it was such

3:16

that sort of drew me into that space, but Amazon

3:19

and then sort of, I lingered from one

3:22

interest or the other that took me

3:24

to Skype, which was a really interesting piece of tech

3:26

that was having a profound impact on

3:28

people to building

3:30

my own messaging company, to joining Facebook. I think the

3:33

common theme, which I realized later

3:35

was I'm really interested

3:37

in the connection between technology and people. I

3:41

think I'm not a technologist. So like I don't get a

3:43

kick out of building, you know, an API.

3:47

That's why I didn't , I didn't study engineering, but

3:49

I really get a kick out of understanding

3:51

the impact that technology can have in the real world. That's

3:54

really fascinating to me. And

3:56

he's getting more and more interesting. That's probably why

3:58

I work at Facebook because I

4:00

think this is the place where you see this both

4:03

in the good and the bad, probably the

4:05

greatest extent and the most interesting place to

4:07

work given sort of my profile

4:09

and my, of interest. How did I end up

4:11

doing marketing part to say, I, I

4:13

stumbled into ads when I was building my startup.

4:16

I probably had Skype is like, we want to diversify

4:18

the Skype business. We'd be able to bunch of ad business.

4:21

Then I'd be in my own startup. And I realized I needed

4:24

to , um, it was going to be ad

4:26

funded. So I learned

4:28

a lot about MarTech at the time as it was building

4:30

it. And then when I got

4:33

into Facebook originally, I was working on non-marketing

4:35

stuff. I was working on developer programs and

4:38

then the , uh , and then the sales

4:40

team needed to see a partnership person besides

4:43

it was just like random one step up

4:45

to the other, which took me here is

4:47

not necessarily super helpful for a new grad

4:50

who is wondering what to do with this lab. I would say

4:53

if you're , if you're in interesting places and you're

4:55

curious, and you're willing to do things

4:57

you haven't done before, you might have

4:59

a similar journey, which is you ended up in someplace

5:01

really interesting, mostly

5:04

by virtue of fully your own interest and passion.

5:07

Cool. And I think that leads us nicely into the

5:09

subject. We're going to be talking about. I mean, you've just said

5:11

that I think is, is accurate that

5:14

Facebook's probably at the, at the forefront of this intersection

5:16

of technology and marketing and

5:18

people , uh, which is where your interest

5:20

lies, I guess, to start and to set

5:23

the scene. How do you see the

5:25

relationship between technology

5:27

and marketing at a top level now?

5:30

Yeah, I think it's , it's very interesting. Cause the, for

5:32

example, in my team, you really have a

5:35

, I think it's a good rep . My team has a good repetition

5:37

of the industry and

5:39

you have a very wide variety of talents

5:42

from people that are extremely creative.

5:45

Some have gone to art school or

5:47

design schools, and I've worked

5:49

in agencies before doing very

5:51

creative work, the chase storytelling work on

5:54

this, call it visual storytelling and

5:56

they have in magazines before they were

5:58

a bit older. And on the other spectrum,

6:00

you have people who are really popular engineers

6:03

who worked in complex technology.

6:05

We're building for example, conversion API, which

6:08

is a server to server integration and

6:10

everything in between. And

6:12

to me, they represent this industry in its

6:14

richness, in this complexity, meaning

6:17

it used to be that it was mostly storytelling

6:21

I would argue. And then it was a bit of production, but mostly

6:24

the storytelling. And I think in

6:26

2021, that industry is

6:28

storytelling and technology

6:31

and a little bit of policy and many other

6:34

dimensions all bundled into what we called

6:36

MarTech , which is a Ablow word, cause

6:38

doesn't mean much in my view, but it's , um, it's

6:40

really the subset of those skillsets

6:44

, which have to do with technology and humanities

6:46

combined, which is really interesting.

6:48

I find,

6:50

And I think we're seeing, well, I guess there's a lot of

6:52

debate in the industry. And as you say that the kind

6:54

of the market word has maybe lost the meaning in terms

6:57

of it being used so frequently, but in

6:59

different, I think throughout the world of marketing

7:01

and technology, right? We have so many words that we

7:04

use to describe the same in different

7:06

things. And we've kind of, I guess the industry

7:08

or the world that we're working in is relatively

7:11

quite new and we're still kind of almost defining the

7:13

terminology that we use, but there's a lot

7:15

of debate around MarTech

7:17

and just kind of this data-driven analytical side

7:19

of marketing is MarTech replacing

7:22

jobs. Is it replacing human

7:25

beings and traditional marketing roles or

7:27

is it kind of empowering them and making them more effective

7:29

and stuff that I'm sure we'll come on to , to talk about a bit

7:31

more, but how do you see that intersection

7:33

between MarTech and traditional

7:36

MarTech or

7:39

So, I mean, just that debate is as

7:41

old as, you know, progress, but my

7:44

view is that what makes

7:46

marketing and ads really

7:48

interesting is that

7:51

every time you think technology has taken over, someone comes up

7:53

with a great story. I'll

7:56

give you one. Um, I don't, I'm

7:59

into football a few weeks ago. There was

8:01

this sort of drama around this new league

8:03

being created. And then the next

8:05

day Heineken comes up with this campaign, which was

8:07

basically a BSA don't

8:10

drink and create a league. And

8:13

whereas the creative person who came up with that is a genius. It

8:15

was perfect timing, visual,

8:18

everything like no technology

8:20

can come up with that stuff. And

8:23

that ad was seen by X million, had all

8:25

the attributes of a great ad. But

8:28

on the other side, you know, you need

8:30

technology for us to reach the right people so

8:32

that they interact with those products. They hear

8:34

those stories and the stories feel personal

8:37

and like the debate of like one versus the other,

8:39

for me as long dead, it's

8:42

, it's entirely a debate over how'd

8:45

. You use technology to maximize creativity

8:48

and storytelling, which is what makes advertising

8:50

interesting and which makes it

8:52

work. So you buy more stuff

8:54

and you're with a message and such et cetera.

8:56

So to me, they really feed each other. I

8:59

think it's starting to happen now

9:02

because storytellers are becoming

9:04

more tech savvy and tech companies are

9:07

understand that it needs storyteller. So

9:09

there's two worlds are getting closer. And I think

9:11

it's our view as a, as a large tech company

9:15

to make it such that the both live

9:17

together. It's also why

9:20

taking in their portraits is a very tech approach. Like the one

9:22

we have, which is we're going to create a set of API to gen

9:25

marketing products. And then that developers

9:27

build on top of that. This is the way technology

9:29

functions as an industry for

9:31

software, for anything. And then you

9:33

need to bring sort of the world of agencies

9:35

and more traditional marketing into that. So

9:39

that more and more and more, you have those two components,

9:41

which are completely necessary

9:44

for advertising to be relevant in , in

9:47

the next 10 years. Uh

9:49

, that's kind of the way, the way I look at it also,

9:52

I would say this there's also a something

9:54

magical, which I think we enable to some extent

9:57

in Facebook is we've democratized incredibly

10:00

advanced techno marketing technologies.

10:03

I don't mean to sell Facebook block the impact

10:05

of Facebook and Google and many others is that

10:08

there were things that were only accessible

10:10

by very large agencies and very large brands

10:13

20 years ago. You know , those data sets

10:15

would exist if you were working for Coke or Pepsi.

10:18

Now you can do a startup tomorrow morning and have

10:20

pretty much access to the same data , set

10:22

the same tools. And to me,

10:25

that's wonderful because it allows

10:27

for people that are not technologist to have access

10:29

to that technology and that dataset . And

10:32

it also creates a much more level

10:34

playing field, which I personally see

10:36

as good for the world and for

10:38

the young companies to have a chance to compete with big companies.

10:41

And , um, and that's all part of the mix of what's

10:44

going on, not just what we're trying to empower. Yep

10:47

.

10:47

And I think that's, I mean, it's a powerful, powerful

10:49

mission, I guess. There's that there's that whole ecosystem

10:51

of tools and products and

10:54

things which are really enabling small businesses

10:56

or

10:58

That's all I can give you. Just a couple of examples,

11:00

a company we work with and two of the creative space, a

11:02

very interesting one , one is called Canva and

11:05

the other one's called promo. And there

11:07

might be companies you've never heard of, you know, one

11:09

of them is an Israeli company. The

11:11

other one was more of the part

11:13

of the world, but the deponent is they've

11:16

democratized creative for

11:18

small companies in ways that was impossible before

11:21

they made it such that if you do decide

11:24

to sell books tomorrow morning, you want

11:26

to run campaigns. You can do a

11:28

level of sophisticated work in terms of

11:30

imaging and testing, many,

11:32

many, many types of creative

11:34

for your campaigns in ways that only

11:37

exist in various sophisticated creative agencies

11:39

before an attitude with 50

11:41

pounds in your pocket, you can use

11:43

their tools. And that's something I'm excited

11:46

about because suddenly, you

11:48

know, as I said, a good storyteller has access to more

11:50

assets and more technology, so they can

11:52

find multiple will buy that books, feel happy

11:55

by reading them. Yeah .

11:56

Yeah . Great point. But I think the point remains is that it's not

11:58

one of the other, right . It's a , these tools exist

12:01

to support and democratize and empower

12:03

. And if you , as you said, in

12:05

your previous example with Heineken, that unless you have the idea

12:07

to begin with, you're , doesn't matter

12:09

how good your attack is. Probably not going to probably

12:12

not looking at fire , I guess maybe somewhere on the horizon,

12:14

there's some kind of a creative AI

12:16

that might , uh, may eventually one

12:18

day have created the Heineken example that

12:20

you gave. But I think we're maybe a bit of a distance,

12:22

a bit of a distance off that happening. I've seen

12:25

a few kind of AI , uh , copywriting

12:28

tools taking off without visit GPT

12:30

three or whatever it's called. Then the AI framework

12:33

kind of tools that you can feed in a blog

12:35

post title. And it will basically just like write

12:37

a blog post for you that I test a few and

12:39

the quality was,

12:42

But it's interesting. It's um , there's also a

12:44

, um, like last

12:46

year I gave a talk about this

12:48

idea of called flip the script,

12:51

which is , uh , in a world of creative, which is

12:53

interesting, which is it used to

12:55

be in the old world that , you know, a brand

12:57

would come and say, I'm trying to launch a new

12:59

beer, or I'm trying to think

13:02

the example of a Coke thing . Uh , and

13:04

I've designed this, this drink, I think is wonderful.

13:07

And we've done a lot of research. We think the audience

13:09

is wide French guys who

13:12

like football go and build

13:14

a nod for this. And then they come

13:16

back a month later, a meal , a few million bucks,

13:19

and then they have three ideas of messaging. And that

13:21

makes its way into TV ads. What's

13:24

interesting is when you think about this for a lot of products,

13:26

we'd buy, we all drink Coke. We

13:29

might not admit it, but we all do, except

13:31

that we do for different reasons. You might

13:33

drink Coke because you're like me a cyclist.

13:36

And after a long ride, a Coke is really nice.

13:38

Cause you need to love sugar. At the time, you might

13:41

drink Coke because you don't want to drink because you're

13:43

driving, you might drink Coke

13:45

because it's hot. There's

13:47

the bottom line. We won't drink Coke. We do for different

13:49

reasons. And what technology can do is to

13:51

basically you can tell now brands tell

13:54

me the best story you can about your product. Forget

13:57

the audience, ignore

13:59

entirely the audience, which is very concerned to do

14:01

for marketer to tell me a story

14:03

about this product. And one that

14:05

that's like wonderful will

14:08

machines will tell you what the audience is . And

14:11

if you can do this, you find yourself finding

14:13

customers in places you never knew existed. And

14:17

realizing that basically once you have this, you

14:19

realize that, okay, now I can sell Coke to

14:22

athletes. People who don't drink, people

14:25

would do Peloton whatever. And

14:27

now I can craft a better story, but

14:29

like you went from a basic story to sub

14:32

stories through technology, and

14:34

then you can make technology run at

14:36

scale to run all these different audiences, which

14:39

to me makes a creative process so much more interesting. If

14:42

you , if you can write a book and

14:44

understand that you book in touch people all

14:46

around the world for different reasons, men

14:49

is that exciting as some entrepreneurs

14:51

and people who have stories to tell

14:53

and things to sell. And that's the part I'm probably

14:55

the most excited about because as

14:58

I said, the promise of the internet when

15:01

it was invented was like, you know , 7

15:03

billion people connecting to another to

15:05

7 billion people and all the business in the

15:07

world's connecting to all the prospects customers in the world

15:10

for a longest time, it never happened.

15:13

And we ended up all shopping on Amazon buying the same

15:15

thing, the same way for the same

15:17

price, which is kind of really

15:20

sad. When you think about the

15:22

investment that went to this tech and

15:24

the way the world has evolved. And finally

15:27

you get to a place where we're

15:29

starting to come to the other end of it with, you

15:31

know, the creatives economy or Shopify

15:33

or Spotify for music, which

15:36

means finally we consuming things are different.

15:39

They're personal to us, to our own preference , to who

15:41

we are to our culture, to our stories.

15:44

It's a funny, the 7 billion people are meeting their audience

15:47

anywhere . And when you see

15:49

this in Shopify being

15:51

three or four times the size of eBay, and you

15:54

will see with the creative economy, you'll see it with, with

15:56

Spotify, with everyone, enjoy it. You see with Netflix,

15:58

people consuming, shows teller

16:00

to them. I think there's a mega

16:02

trend which marketers can really benefit

16:05

from in marrying as a storytelling

16:07

and technology.

16:08

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess as you say,

16:10

the traditional linear route is do market

16:12

research, understand audience craft

16:15

messaging, and then it ends up in the ad campaigns and

16:17

the TV adverts it's . But,

16:19

but you're saying that where the state is now, where

16:21

actually the data about who's

16:24

already aware of or engaging

16:26

with a brand exists,

16:28

right? And so it's flipping it around

16:30

and working backwards from that

16:32

rather than, I guess you need a brand that's of a certain,

16:35

certain size and scale and a

16:37

brand like Coke has obviously, you

16:40

know , I guess tens of millions of people on that,

16:42

maybe hundreds of millions on their Facebook page, engaging with

16:44

them. You've kind of got that audience

16:46

already there and you can start to tap into its different

16:49

segments and different interest areas. Does

16:51

it work as in does something similar work

16:53

for a small startup with

16:56

no audience and product ,

16:59

But the point is, and

17:01

that's a very good question actually, because the point is

17:03

the reason why he didn't work in the day in the

17:06

old days for a small startup is the cost of testing

17:08

was astronomical. So

17:11

when in order to test, if my book is going to

17:13

sell, I Manchester, I need

17:15

to run billboard ads for a hundred thousand pounds

17:18

then because have no no chance of doing it because

17:21

of what I described, the cost of testing is now

17:23

a fraction of what it used to be, which

17:26

means I might build something. I built my entire startup

17:28

thinking. It was a messaging app thinking

17:30

my audience was going to be immigrants.

17:33

I was basically selling free calling services. It was

17:35

like, I'm going to compete with Lamara . And

17:38

then we launched it. And we realized

17:40

a lot of our audience had to do with people who

17:43

were using dating apps and

17:45

it didn't want to give away their real number. There

17:48

was no way for me get that. And

17:50

then I realized I was, I was building business a

17:53

and then realize that I actually had business B

17:56

and it was a lucrative business with a real audience

17:59

and yet get yada yada. And my point

18:01

is like the cost of testing being much

18:03

lower smaller guys can

18:05

discover the audience and figure out they have product

18:07

market fit much quicker, which

18:10

means wasted marketing spent

18:14

testing things for too long, with the wrong audience

18:16

can be risky . That

18:18

money can be put to work other than products

18:20

or hiring good people or remarketing

18:23

to more customers, which I

18:25

think is it makes the whole system work

18:27

better, build better return

18:29

for advertiser , more money to be made by everyone.

18:31

We sell more products. Everyone's happy. Maybe

18:34

that's a little bit of an idealistic point of view, but

18:36

that's , uh , that's the way that I think the

18:39

system should be designed.

18:40

Yeah , it makes sense. Yeah. I think the ability to start

18:42

small and scale up, I guess, with any paid

18:44

ad platform, same with Facebook

18:46

ads, you can start by not

18:48

spending very much, but it's still got enough data

18:51

to , to learn from and, and figure out what's

18:53

working on gaining traction. As you say, much

18:56

marginal cost to phase three, then , uh , a billboard campaign

18:58

across, across Manchester or whatever it

19:00

is.

19:01

The finite community and podcasts

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to find out how they partner with marketing teams

19:17

in B2B technology companies to drive

19:19

growth. What about

19:22

,

19:22

Um, I guess we've touched on this from a few different

19:24

angles already, but this , this idea of MarTech

19:26

enabling creativity and actually, I

19:30

guess kind of solving the, serving

19:32

the storytelling, any other examples of

19:34

perspectives on , on that side of things?

19:36

I mean, I , honestly I could go on and on, I would say

19:40

there are many, many companies that do this, even,

19:42

you know , in , in the influencer space

19:44

with Walmart or, you know , Genero for example,

19:47

was another partner that we work with. Um

19:49

, does a flurry of companies that are emerging in that space,

19:51

they're doing this? Well, the one

19:54

thing I would tell your audience is really the

19:56

opportunity there is immense. Exactly.

20:00

For the reason I described, which is, you

20:02

know, there are ways to automate a

20:04

large portion of the creative process and

20:07

there are ways to test it more. You know, for example,

20:09

we're doing a lot of work with creative insights, with

20:12

many of our partners, you know, Fitzy

20:14

the source, VidMob all the

20:16

creative companies in that space are invested into creative

20:18

insights, which is pretty much a

20:20

big word to say, we're

20:22

going to be able to, you know, run 20

20:25

campaigns at once and tell you very quickly,

20:27

the very detailed what's working, what wasn't

20:29

working, how quickly do you need to

20:31

tell the name of the brand in the ad, which

20:34

is, should the first person to show up in the ad

20:37

via mail or women , an older

20:39

person or younger one, she was back around

20:41

the blue or green, like

20:43

all those iterations you can,

20:46

you know, it's it's, I mean, computers

20:48

should tell you what they are, how people function

20:50

today. The underlying idea of the story

20:53

is to be human driven, like

20:55

computers should tell you, you want distinct to be green and

20:57

blue. And based on this, you'll get

20:59

more and more response and engagement.

21:02

And that's what I'm talking about, which is use computers

21:04

to make them do more work quicker

21:07

for you. So you can focus on

21:09

your storytelling, your voice, what you

21:11

want to say. It's a central , uh

21:14

, it's really coming back to my bookstore is like, can

21:16

you be the best writer you can? And then we'll figure out

21:19

who's going to read your story. And that's

21:21

really the, the idea of everything

21:23

we built and with the critters economy,

21:25

it's even greater now because it's really,

21:28

anyone can be a writer because everyone has a story to tell

21:31

whether through music, art shops, you

21:34

name it, which also frees

21:36

up the chance for a lot

21:38

of people to make a living out of their own passion. Which

21:41

to me is that's, what's , that's the commonality

21:43

between sort of Facebook shops.

21:45

But if I shop , if I , during the same business,

21:48

my view, which is, can you make

21:50

someone find an audience for their passion

21:52

and their interests and potentially

21:55

make a living either through ads, commerce,

21:58

branded content, you name it, or combination of all those

22:00

things, which I think if we

22:02

do we'll we'll first be , uh

22:04

, I think a force of good for the world. It'd be interesting

22:06

in terms of the cultural aspects are

22:09

forever for all of us, but also will

22:11

deter people from taking the wrong jobs and,

22:14

and make sort of the next generation of people

22:17

who are in uni those days

22:20

have a chance to have a very fulfilling

22:22

career and where they don't have to

22:24

suffer at work so they can do the things they like outside

22:27

of work, but more and more bring it together, which

22:29

maybe that's the old guy speaking. I find

22:32

it really exciting. Um, and I'm , I'm

22:34

really pumped that we can sort of help that.

22:36

Yeah . Yeah . I mean , yeah. I think I

22:38

love the idea that the solo marketer

22:41

in a new startup can jump on Canva

22:43

and create some really effective assets

22:45

or whatever it is. Where does the, you

22:48

know, the example you gave of like the technology optimizing

22:50

the green background or the blue background or whatever

22:52

, where does a typical

22:54

creative designer who would normally be

22:57

and creating that kind of asset set

23:00

then in that process, are they, they're almost, you know , they're almost

23:02

like an operator of a piece of technology at that point

23:04

and still designing, but

23:06

then they're quite data-driven as a designer

23:09

and that I guess creatives and

23:11

data analytical people, usually,

23:13

it's kind of, like I said, I left left side, right,

23:15

right. Side brain thing, isn't it. And they don't necessarily overlap.

23:18

So do you think we'll see more of a, on

23:20

the people's side, more of a merging of different

23:23

roles and kind of new

23:25

, cause I I've seen some , uh, you

23:27

know, creative technologists and there's all kinds of

23:29

fancy job titles out there. Right. For, for

23:32

different things. But where do you see that happening?

23:34

Yeah . Yeah . I mean, I mean, just like in any

23:36

revolution, you know, the first reaction is

23:38

fair and then it's disruption and

23:41

then people sort of pick up the

23:43

pieces and move on for me that

23:45

their jobs are going to go away. We're

23:47

already going away. So we might protect

23:50

them for a period of time and they will go away because

23:52

computers actually do this way better,

23:54

cheaper and more economically. Um,

23:57

and then the enormous value

23:59

to be built by bridging the gaps between

24:02

the crafts, as you said. So for me, data,

24:05

let's say insights in general and creative is

24:08

an extraordinary space and

24:10

you see it in the funding of like VidMob and all those companies

24:13

were getting incredible

24:15

amount of funding because VCs understand that this

24:17

is big. And to me, that's a space

24:19

where, I mean, I I've always seen.

24:22

And for me, like invention comes from people

24:24

who work in different crafts , funding , working

24:26

together. I mean, all the companies

24:29

are built this way. Look at Steve jobs , uh,

24:32

being Dean in the yang. Like, and to me

24:34

, creativity , I feel very much like this. So

24:37

either side of the house is going to have to move towards

24:39

the other and be able to write tools

24:41

so the others can use it and understand it. There

24:44

are some jobs that will be probably less relevant.

24:47

I think it's fair to say, but I also

24:49

think the price is so

24:51

big. And so,

24:54

so near , like you

24:56

can build companies in the next six months during

24:58

that this is not like a futuristic view of the world

25:00

where, you know, one day we all robots and stuff like

25:04

they're big companies being built right

25:06

now during this. So to

25:08

me, that's the part that's exciting is like , yes, we predict

25:10

disruption. But also the price

25:13

is now like Shopify has taught us that,

25:15

you know , there's a real business. And there's one thing we learned

25:17

a new pandemic is that as demand

25:19

for this from the consumer perspective is

25:22

the brands want to play ball. Uh,

25:25

so to me, the opportunity is really now it's

25:27

part of our job as a big platform

25:29

to both accelerate

25:31

the transition, but also doing it in a way that's respectful

25:34

to the whole ecosystem and make sure, you know, for

25:36

example, agencies play a

25:38

key role in that. And then they can transform themselves

25:41

to becoming more and more technology companies that

25:43

are, you know, my technology partners learn

25:46

to think a little bit like agency . Sometimes it'd be

25:48

only more strategic about the way they engage their clients.

25:52

Um, while also building a lot of SAS

25:54

tools because,

25:57

you know, there's a wide

25:59

variety of clients that will never be able

26:01

to pay or fold full

26:04

managed service because they're are

26:06

going to mix , don't allow them. And, and

26:09

to me, if you enable them, and the only way to enable them

26:11

is that scaled we'd like, as it says, software

26:13

tools that they pay, you

26:16

know, I dunno 20, 50

26:18

pounds a month to use now the canvas

26:20

and the promise of the world. That's why this companies are so successful

26:23

because they , they serve an immense need.

26:25

And then yeah , a lot of jobs are going to change. My job

26:27

is going to change. Yours is probably going to change as well. And

26:30

because of that, I feel okay because I think

26:32

it's moving the industry in

26:34

a direction, which I like, which

26:36

is better ads , better

26:39

stories, better ads , better stories, better ads,

26:41

which I think is kind of the reason

26:44

why we all in marketing.

26:46

Yeah . I guess what's the , what's your perspective on the agencies

26:48

that are , you know, the big, big creative

26:50

agencies that may have clients on retainer

26:53

at tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of

26:55

pounds a month delivering this type of

26:57

stuff. How do you think there's a real, real

26:59

rest of those? The , you know , the 20 pound a month

27:01

canvas replay some of that work

27:03

or, I mean that , that's two opposite ends of a very

27:05

wide spectrum. I know. And there's always going to be that

27:07

Niche . Yeah. I get that question quite a bit and I'm

27:09

, you know, I don't manage the agency

27:12

team, but they work very close to us.

27:14

And you know, we, we've

27:16

done a lot of work with those teams at Facebook and also

27:18

with the big agencies, I would say for

27:21

me, the key is understanding what your unique

27:24

value proposition is. And

27:27

if you do something which you're not supposed to do

27:29

and you do less well and more expensively than others you're

27:31

going to lose is true for any business.

27:34

Every market, every product, the, for

27:36

me, agencies are uniquely positioned.

27:38

For example, do amazing. Cross-platform

27:41

work that you cook and you

27:43

want your stuff to work across tick-tock and

27:45

Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp and

27:47

, and, and print and TV.

27:51

Then an agency has an incredible value to add.

27:54

If you want to be able to consult coconut very

27:56

long futuristic trend, you

27:59

have a lot of value too . If you're in

28:01

the business of overcharging for something that

28:03

can, that can do, you're probably not

28:05

going to have a lot of business stuff . So , and

28:08

you see this in the way they're transforming themselves. In

28:10

some ways they , they won't, they will never become full

28:12

technology companies. I think it's a different DNA.

28:15

It's like we are a technology

28:17

company. We think this way I

28:19

would argue agencies have to become

28:21

more tech savvy, but that's not who they

28:23

are. They should keep

28:25

building on who they are and what it means. But I understand the

28:27

stuff that only they can do. And then

28:29

probably their pricing model is going to have to change.

28:32

I like the idea of a big retainer, no matter what

28:35

is great as a business, if you can do this, this

28:38

is great. As a consultant, as a real estate agents,

28:40

as a professor, as anything, the

28:42

amount of market power you need to assist in

28:44

this is massive. And,

28:47

and I'm not sure they all

28:49

then collectively has the market power to do

28:52

this sustainably when

28:54

there is price, competition,

28:57

freedom of choice, and a very

28:59

open marketplace like Facebook. So Google

29:04

opinion of one, but that would be my,

29:06

Yeah . Yeah . It makes sense. And I guess

29:09

to wrap up final couple of minutes, where do you think we are

29:11

in, I don't know , three years, five years. We've talked

29:13

a lot about the future, I guess, throughout this , uh

29:15

, this conversation, but I guess looking

29:17

a bit further ahead. Are there any, any big trends,

29:19

anything you're particularly excited about, anything you think?

29:22

Yeah, so I would say it might surprise

29:24

you, but , um , I'm quite excited about privacy,

29:27

which might be concern intuitive

29:29

for people listening to a physical

29:32

exec , but I I'm really excited about our

29:34

industry reinventing itself

29:37

in a way where we

29:39

are way more, I would say

29:41

cautious collectively about

29:45

the information we collect, we store

29:47

and we use and

29:49

trying to figure out a way to keep serving

29:51

great odds that work, that perform well,

29:54

but people feel like we're using just to say

29:56

the right amount of information, not, not a niche

29:59

mall . And I think that's a , that's a very

30:01

exciting space, which is both

30:03

technology, but AI, but also

30:06

storytelling as part of a policy as part

30:08

of it. So that scenario I'm particularly excited about

30:11

collectively for the industry. I think we have a role

30:13

to play at Facebook, but I think it's really an industry

30:15

mindset to change. And I really recommend

30:18

people listening to , uh , Benedict Evans , uh

30:20

, ad tech podcasts , and a couple of weeks

30:22

ago. I think it was really spot on, on that topic. I'm

30:25

very excited about building marketing

30:27

tool for small businesses. That part

30:29

is really fun. And I

30:32

think a lot of marketers have been trained to

30:34

look for big clients, but

30:37

very few think of small clients. And

30:39

I think the ones who think about small clients are gonna make a lot

30:41

of money and do a lot of good in the world.

30:44

And third is I think you see

30:47

a lot of blurring lines between sort of ads

30:49

and commerce. It's

30:52

true with Google shopping through with Facebook shops,

30:55

with like Tik TOK is building was not such a

30:57

central . So for me, marketers

30:59

need to think about ads, but also neighboring products

31:02

and commerce is one of them. I don't think the merger

31:04

of ads and commerce is really interesting. I mean , ads

31:07

is like a $20

31:09

billion business for Amazon already. And

31:11

to me, like that's another area, which is super

31:13

interesting as any commerce guy who ended up working

31:15

on ads. Just two spaces are interesting

31:18

as they marched . So as I said,

31:21

privacy is interesting for me and a

31:23

particular privacy . I hadn't seen technologies. That's a second

31:26

building, more tools for small businesses. Um

31:29

, like the only companies we listed in

31:31

this podcast and I would say third,

31:34

the merger of commerce and ads into

31:36

one offering for everybody, for agencies,

31:39

for , for marketing partners, for,

31:42

for developers. That's really three trends

31:44

that I see to be particularly exciting.

31:45

Cool. Yeah . Good ones. We're

31:47

out of time. I appreciate you joining the show.

31:49

I know you've been super busy, but I appreciate you sharing

31:52

your thoughts and insights with us

31:54

and the listeners. So thanks again for joining.

31:56

Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.

31:59

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