0:00

Good Company is a production of I Heart Radio.

0:03

The Metaverse is really about letting

0:05

us feel that we're experiencing moments when we're

0:07

not together and actually sharing a space

0:09

together, and that's going to be the next big shift that

0:11

we're all going to play A Pardon Hi,

0:19

I'm Michael Casson. Welcome to Good

0:21

Company, where I'll explore how marketing,

0:23

media, entertainment and tech are intersecting,

0:26

transforming our lives and the way we do business

0:29

at a breakneck speed. I'll be joined

0:31

by some of the greatest business minds at strongest

0:33

leaders who will share how they build companies from

0:36

the ground up or transform them from the inside

0:38

out. My bed is you'll pick up a lesson

0:40

or two along the way. It's all good.

0:47

It's an extraordinary pleasure today

0:49

for me to welcome to Good Company.

0:52

Nicola Mendelssohn. Hard to describe

0:54

Nicola in the amount of time we have today,

0:56

but I'm just going to say that as

0:58

the VP of Global Business Group at

1:00

Meta, Nicola is arguably

1:03

and has been recognized in

1:05

in British press

1:07

as arguably one of the most

1:09

powerful women in

1:12

in the tech industry. So it's

1:14

a great pleasure to welcome somebody

1:16

as important as Nicola, but more importantly

1:19

somebody who is my friend. Nicola, Thank you and welcome.

1:22

Thank you so much, Michael. I am absolutely

1:24

thrilled and delighted to be able to have this conversation

1:27

with you today. Well, Nicola, first

1:29

of all, you've officially moved across

1:31

the pond. How's New York treating

1:33

you? I feel like I'm having the most extraordinary

1:36

adventure. I love this city, I love the

1:38

people, I love everything about it, the buzz,

1:40

and I'm just delighted that this is now my home.

1:43

Welcome. I'm not the official welcoming committee,

1:46

but I'm a Brooklyn boy, so I can welcome you to

1:48

New York by way of my

1:50

my own heritage. Nicola. Let's

1:53

start off when when Facebook

1:56

became Meta, I had a kind of funny

1:58

comment in the press, which was someone

2:00

said, what do you think I said you mean of? You know, Meta,

2:02

the company formerly known as Facebook.

2:05

Tell me a little bit, if you will, about

2:08

the y and obviously, whilst

2:10

you have a new role, you were obviously very

2:12

senior running a maya and whatnot during

2:15

that transition. But tell me a

2:17

little bit, and tell our audience a little bit

2:19

about why number

2:21

one. And you know, if you

2:23

change your name, that doesn't necessarily

2:26

mean you change your business, but in

2:28

this case, I think it reordered

2:31

some priorities within the business.

2:33

So I'd love to let you riff a bit on

2:35

the y and and what does it actually

2:37

mean once you just change your logo and

2:40

you know, change your business card if if anybody

2:42

carries business cards anymore, I'm not sure. But

2:45

I don't even know where my business cards are anymore.

2:48

So that's something else I'm gonna have to dig out when I when

2:50

we all get back to whatever new normal looks

2:52

like. So we did change the name

2:54

of the company, and I think it really

2:56

represents a new chapter. And I think

2:58

that's where you were going with the second part

3:00

of your question, because the name

3:03

Meta really captures where the company is going

3:05

and also the future that we want to help to

3:07

build. But it's not I want to be really

3:09

clear about turning away from our past,

3:11

because our mission hasn't changed. It is about

3:14

now helping to build the metaverse and letting

3:16

people to be able to connect, find

3:18

communities, and grow businesses. So

3:20

that's the same things we've always been doing,

3:23

but we're going to have new and more immersive

3:25

ways of actually being able to do that as

3:27

we go down the road, I

3:29

think if it's also fair to say there was some

3:32

confusion, and there was confusion by

3:34

having a company name sharing

3:36

a name with our biggest app, and and that

3:38

was fine, you know when we first started as Facebook

3:41

as a single app work nearly twenty years ago.

3:43

But today are our company is more than

3:46

just one brand and one product. So

3:49

you know, very much from a brand architectural

3:51

perspective, actually makes sense to be able to separate

3:53

out our company from our largest

3:55

app and bring all of our apps, all our

3:57

technologies under one new company

4:00

ran Matter. And then

4:02

the final area is really about,

4:04

you know, reflecting on the future that we're building

4:06

towards, which is you know, in plicit in the

4:08

name Matter is about going beyond.

4:11

And it's really about going beyond what digital

4:13

connection is today to where it's going to be

4:16

in the future, and really signaling what

4:19

we think the vision of the company is going to be going

4:21

forwards. And and Nicola,

4:23

you have an educational challenge, and I don't

4:25

mean necessarily for you, although we all do.

4:27

And you and I talked about, uh, you know,

4:29

going back to school together potentially on

4:32

on some uh on

4:34

some basis, because we all have to learn.

4:37

You know, I liken this to twenty years ago

4:39

when I started media Link a little less than

4:41

twenty years ago, but we were coming off

4:43

dot Com and I had had an eighteen

4:45

month period in my life where I was in a covenant

4:48

not to compete, and I used

4:50

that time to steep myself in all things

4:53

dot Com. Different period, and

4:55

because I wanted to be more conversant than

4:57

just at a cocktail party. And you know, I

4:59

didn't want to be somebody who had previously

5:01

run a large media agency, so that my

5:03

calling card was I ran a large media agency.

5:06

I wanted to be somebody that was current. And

5:08

if you're somebody that desires to be current

5:10

today, you need to have an education on

5:13

what the metaverse means. You

5:15

know, I know that I don't

5:17

know enough, so I'm going about learning. You

5:20

know that with your partners, and

5:22

you don't look at at the people

5:24

you do business with as clients. I know this because

5:27

it's ingrained in you. In

5:29

fact, I think your previous title had partner

5:31

in it. I mean, you know you you look

5:34

at the folks you work with as partners, whether

5:36

it's s MB or large multinational

5:39

advertisers. People need to be educated.

5:41

Can you give us a start and kind

5:44

of talk about what

5:46

does that mean the metaverse? What are we

5:48

what are we talking about when we say it so

5:51

that we level set. Is that a fair

5:53

and open ended question. It certainly

5:56

is, and it also speaks to why

5:58

I absolutely love the job that I

6:00

do because for the last d eight and

6:02

a half years at this company, I have learned

6:04

something new every single day, and now my

6:07

learning is in another kind of massive

6:09

hockey stick of learning. Because what is

6:11

the metaverse? I'm thinking of it as a

6:13

set of digital spaces, and that includes

6:16

immersive three D experiences and

6:18

they're all interconnected so you're

6:20

able to easily move between them,

6:22

and it lets you do things in the physical world

6:24

with people that you can't physically

6:27

be with. And it's going to feel, I

6:29

think, like a hybrid of today's online

6:31

social experiences sometimes

6:33

that they'll be expanded into three dimensions

6:35

or you know, projected into the physical world,

6:37

but then seamlessly stitched together so

6:40

that you can easily jump from one thing to another.

6:43

It really is the next evolution in social

6:45

technologies and also the successor

6:48

to the mobile internet. You

6:50

know, the metaverse is really about letting

6:53

us feel that we're experiencing moments when we're

6:55

not together and actually sharing a space

6:57

together. And that's going to be the next big shift that

6:59

we're all going to lay a parton. And

7:02

when you say that, you know the

7:05

solitude that we all experienced during

7:07

the pandemic when we weren't interacting,

7:10

and we've all heard what the impact

7:12

has been on children that you know

7:15

most acutely that you know the lack

7:17

of social interaction and the lack of

7:20

being in class and engaging with friends.

7:23

We're veterans. We missed

7:25

it, but we adjusted. When you

7:27

think about the impact it's had and what

7:29

psychologists are saying the impact has been

7:31

on children, are we as

7:34

we enter the metaverse? Is that

7:36

taking the place of I R L? Is

7:38

that taking the place of in real life? Definitely

7:41

not No, nothing beats being together

7:44

in person, but look, there is a

7:46

reality. We do spend time in front of

7:48

screens, different types of screens, and when

7:50

we can't be together in person, what

7:53

the metaverse does is get us together even

7:55

closer to feeling that we've got that in person

7:57

connection. And it's a quite a hard thing

7:59

to this gribe if you haven't actually tried

8:01

it. So some of the things that I've been

8:04

doing, I'm making sure that in my leadership meetings

8:06

that I'm actually spending time in

8:09

one of our products, Horizon workrooms every

8:11

week, so we're coming together. My current

8:13

setup has my my kind

8:15

of conference room has the looks

8:17

like the Alps and a beautiful lake altogether,

8:20

because that's kind of gives me pleasure to be able to

8:22

look and I keep changing the art because you can

8:24

keep changing the art by clicking your fingers

8:26

and having some fun with it. But the

8:28

wonderful thing is is that when you're sat

8:30

around this virtual table, albeit as avatars

8:33

today, and there's the opportunity for people

8:35

that don't have the headsets to be able to come in

8:38

on, you know, through video conferencing.

8:41

It feels so much different than just doing

8:43

it across the screen. Why because

8:45

where the sound takes you to where the conversation

8:48

is exactly like it does in

8:50

real life. It's amazing, and

8:52

so you do feel closer. You can brainstorm,

8:54

you can white board together in the way that's really

8:57

hard to do when you're just looking at somebody

8:59

else through a flat screen. Did

9:01

you participate. When we did the

9:04

version of can Lions and

9:06

we had that that metaverse

9:10

like event where um, you

9:12

know, within the context of it, you

9:15

would follow the people and you could

9:17

actually go have conversations. You could

9:19

actually be in the room

9:22

when we were all virtual and we were all

9:24

on in the metaverse. I mean,

9:26

you know, if I saw you on the screen,

9:29

I could say, Nicola, meet

9:32

me over here, and you and I actually engaged

9:34

in a conversation. And it was where

9:36

I first experienced it, and it really

9:39

worked. It really people were

9:41

like, whoa, I'm actually

9:44

in the room with Nicola. I'm actually in the room

9:46

with Sally or Bobby or Billy or

9:49

you know, Mary, and

9:51

and yet I'm not. I'm in California,

9:53

You're in London, You're in Cleveland.

9:55

I mean, you know, it actually

9:58

does work as you does, and

10:00

that technology is already eighteen months ago,

10:02

and so it's already moved on. But

10:05

you also are something around about children,

10:07

and actually the metaverse offers the most extraordinary

10:10

opportunities when it comes to learning

10:13

and to education and to bring it

10:15

to life in a completely different way.

10:17

Now, I don't know about you, but when when I was a kid, I was

10:19

I was pretty obsessed with with ancient Rome,

10:21

but also with the ancient Egyptians. And

10:24

you know, of course you can go and visit and see the ruins

10:26

today, but in the metaverse, you can actually kind

10:28

of walk down the streets and imagine what it

10:30

would have been like a couple of thousand

10:32

years ago and really experience that vibrancy.

10:35

I think it takes education to a whole

10:37

new level of engagement for young

10:40

people. So I'm excited about how that's going to

10:42

play out as well. Well, you

10:44

know, it is that moment, and it's

10:46

an inflection point for all of us as we are

10:48

getting back to somewhat of a as you said,

10:51

normal or a new normal. I'm not sure what

10:53

that means anymore, you know,

10:55

because lots of what we experienced

10:57

we're not going to experience any longer, and

10:59

we're going to experience new and different things. You know, if

11:01

you look around the corner, it's exciting

11:04

for me. So I want to go back, you

11:06

know, Nicola, eleven

11:08

years ago, now almost twelve

11:10

years ago, we lad, as

11:13

you might recall, you weren't at Meta

11:15

at that time, but media

11:17

Link led one of the early digital journeys

11:20

and we did that for Uni Leaver, and it became

11:22

quite famous and we

11:24

were very honored to be part of it. Now,

11:27

others had made the pilgrimage to Silicon

11:29

Valley before, but it had never been

11:31

done quite the way we did it. And that the test

11:33

case for us was Unilever, and

11:35

you know, in those days, they were and still

11:38

considered one of the more inventive and aggressive

11:41

and forward thinking marketers,

11:43

understanding what

11:45

digital meant. And I'm using the word digital,

11:48

which of course is meaningless today, but then

11:50

it wasn't. And we called it the Digital Journey,

11:52

and we took them out to California, and we

11:55

took the forty you know, senior leaders.

11:57

We spent time with all the tech companies.

12:00

We went up to Seattle to visit

12:02

the few that we're up there, and the

12:04

two then in Seattle that mattered

12:06

to us were Amazon and Microsoft.

12:10

And coming back to the Valley where

12:12

we spent three days. I believe,

12:14

and I could be wrong, it was Mark Zuckerberg's

12:17

first real meeting with advertisers,

12:19

which happened in May of two thousand and ten. Now

12:22

I'm sure that's not true that it was

12:24

his first meeting, but it was his first real

12:26

meeting at that level with an advertiser on the

12:28

scale and scope of Unilever, and

12:30

Chris Cox and Mark Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg

12:33

came in and entertained the whole Unilever

12:35

crew. And you know, Facebook

12:37

then was looking at advertising

12:40

as a necessary evil, not

12:43

the exciting part. That was how it

12:45

felt. I think

12:47

that was part of the transition to where

12:50

Mark Zuckerberg and the leadership at

12:52

Facebook embraced advertising

12:55

and advertisers in a different way. And

12:57

it's been a journey, god knows. You

13:00

know, back then it was probably single

13:02

digit millions of dollars of advertising.

13:05

Today it's you

13:08

know, dollars of advertising or some crazy

13:10

number, not crazy, a wonderful

13:13

number. That's been a journey, and

13:15

there's been some speed bumps along the way, Let's

13:17

be honest. There's been issues that have come

13:19

up in the in the conversations. But

13:22

as you have now transitioned into

13:24

your new role, what are

13:26

you hearing from the marketers? What would you

13:28

draw as the conversation on

13:31

the one hand, from the small and medium sized businesses

13:34

and on the other hand from the large multinational

13:36

advertisers, because both are critically

13:39

important to meta and to you fast

13:41

and foremost, I want you to know that the people

13:43

that partner with us matter disproportionately

13:46

to us, and what we want

13:48

to help to do is to help to be a place for

13:50

him to connect with that customers, help

13:53

them to grow, help them to transform.

13:55

That's the business we're in, and that's the business

13:57

that we care about. And you

14:00

know, there's there's a lot of conversations

14:02

that that I'm having, and you

14:04

know, it's the best bit of my job is when I get to be out

14:06

with with with our partners, whether they're the

14:08

smallest businesses on the planet or the largest

14:10

businesses. I think there's a few themes

14:13

that are coming through, and I'll leave kind of the far

14:15

future in the metaverse to the end, but

14:17

what's on top of people's minds at the moment

14:20

is very much the area of commerce. There's

14:22

a bit of a step change that's happening now

14:24

and I think that's really been ignited through

14:26

the pandemic in terms of people

14:28

buying online and what people are comfortable

14:30

buying online as well. You know, if you

14:32

go back, you you talked ten years ago, I don't think

14:34

people could have imagined buying clothes

14:37

or big household items or even

14:39

cars online that that all those barriers

14:42

are gone, and what people now want to

14:44

look for is, you know, what's the best way of doing

14:46

that? What's the most friction less way that a

14:48

business can engage with a customer. That

14:51

brings us onto so many new

14:53

innovations in terms of how we're working

14:55

closely with partners to be able to make that happen,

14:58

things like now that we're doing like live

15:00

shopping, how brands can partner

15:02

with creators. And we're putting a big investment,

15:05

you know, billions of dollars into the crater

15:07

economy in the crater universe is really

15:09

important for us messaging.

15:12

We've all run out of patients, right. We want

15:14

things instantaneously. We want service to

15:16

be fantastic. We don't want to sit on telephones

15:19

anymore. I interrupt just to tell you the mantra.

15:21

You know, I'm in l A today as

15:24

we're doing this. You know the mantra in l A is

15:26

instant gratification isn't quick enough?

15:29

So you can steal

15:31

that absolutely

15:34

well, But it's true, isn't it. You don't want to be dialing

15:36

one dialing to for a different extension. I know

15:38

what I want. I want to know where it is, if the products

15:41

coming, when is it going to get to me? And bringing

15:43

all that together on on

15:45

on, on Messenger or in what's

15:47

happ in different countries around the world just makes

15:49

it so much easier. And

15:52

so that's what we're in the business of trying

15:54

to do, which is to help the partners that

15:56

we have to be able to grow reach new

15:58

audiences in different ways. And

16:00

that brings me then to the future and the metaverse,

16:03

which the people that I'm talking to, the

16:05

CEOs, the cmos, are unbelievably

16:07

excited about this opportunity.

16:10

Why because it's not just meta that's going to be

16:12

building the metaverse. The metaverse is going

16:14

to be built by so many like

16:16

the Internet was, by so many different companies,

16:19

organizations, charities, all

16:22

entrepreneurs all coming together to create

16:25

it. And I think that that is very, very

16:27

exciting, and there's going to be lots of opportunities

16:30

for brands. There's going to be lots of opportunities

16:33

for people as well. And so one of

16:35

the things that people are saying to me, well, what does the roadmap

16:37

look like? What what do I need to be doing

16:39

today? You stole my next question, So

16:43

I'm going to switch chairs with you. That's good

16:46

exactly. Well, that's what the way

16:48

you know what they're they're talking to you as well and

16:51

looking to you for advice as to what to be doing

16:53

here. And the vision that Mark's

16:55

talking about here is probably some

16:57

five to ten years off, so we

17:00

know where that's going to be. So

17:02

it's about utilizing the tools that we have today

17:04

to get comfortable. What do I mean

17:06

by that? We already have a

17:09

R filters. We're already seeing

17:12

businesses out there that are actually selling

17:14

using them. So whether it's RayBan,

17:16

RayBan has got a whole a R

17:19

shop on its Instagram page where you can go on,

17:21

try on the different you know, glasses and then

17:23

click and by how wonderful and exciting

17:25

is there. We're seeing the makeup brands

17:28

like Charlotte Tilbury Sephora where you can

17:30

go on and actually see what the different

17:32

eyeshadows, what the lipsticks look

17:34

like on you. Home improvements

17:36

we've seen the likes of Ikea. We've seen

17:39

the likes of Walmart running ads where they've

17:41

actually got the products in that you can take a picture,

17:43

and those products are selling out because once

17:46

it's in people's homes. Then actually

17:48

you can see exactly what. It lets

17:50

your imagination run wild, but it fills in

17:52

the blanks for you obvious exactly. So there's

17:55

so many things that people can be doing to get

17:57

involved, even today in that journey

17:59

towards building the metavas that we're talking about

18:02

Nicola. Last year, a

18:04

lot of focus was on the the

18:06

the privacy issues

18:09

and the change that happened

18:11

with Apple and the operating system

18:14

and the impact it had on small and

18:16

medium sized businesses more than the large

18:18

multinationals because the large multinationals

18:21

have so much first party data. And

18:24

I know some of our listeners are going to probably

18:26

glaze over on this, but these are such

18:28

important issues that we're facing. And

18:31

you know where I've seen the small

18:33

and medium size or the smb s who

18:36

literally relied on Meta as their lifeblood,

18:39

and some of those changes have

18:41

made it more difficult, you

18:43

know, when targeting and other things. That was

18:46

was the promise and the delivery

18:49

of Facebook now Meta to

18:51

the small medium sized businesses because

18:53

what you allowed them to do the democratization

18:57

was to level the playing field and play

19:00

as smart as the big people, you know, as

19:02

the big guys and the

19:04

change has had impact on small and medium

19:07

sized businesses. How is that? How is

19:09

how is that wrinkle getting ironed

19:11

out? Because I've heard not

19:13

as much recently, but in the earlier

19:16

part, in the you know, kind of third quarter

19:18

of last year, second quarter, third quarter,

19:20

some of the small and medium sized businesses

19:22

were really squealing because it was

19:25

having massive impact on their ability to

19:27

market their their goods and services. Yeah,

19:30

I mean, you're you're absolutely right, Michael,

19:32

And we were very clear that we felt that,

19:34

you know, the impact would be felt in particular

19:37

by all those small businesses around

19:40

the world. So one of the things that we've been doing,

19:42

and we've been very clear and setting out the road map,

19:44

is around the fact that we believe in

19:46

personalized advertising. We think it's a good

19:49

thing, we think consumers love it, we

19:51

know that businesses around the world love it as

19:53

well, and so we've been working to make sure

19:55

that we're developing new technologies, privously

19:57

enhanced technologies in order to address

20:00

you know, some of the some of the changes that we saw.

20:03

But I think it also speaks to um,

20:05

you know, when we're thinking about the creation

20:08

of the metaverse and some of the guard

20:10

rails that go that go into this as well,

20:12

and the fact that we absolutely do

20:15

need to build in the principles of privacy

20:18

and you know, safety and security

20:20

as well. Those things need to be built in right

20:23

from the beginning, right from the start,

20:25

because if we get the principles right, then

20:27

I think that as a society that will be better

20:29

at tackling the new challenges with the technologies

20:32

as their eyes, to learn the lessons

20:34

from what has happened in the past

20:37

and to go forwards. And so one

20:39

of the things that we've done from a meta perspective

20:42

is that we announced a two year global

20:44

investment of fifty million dollars

20:46

in programs and also in external

20:49

research in order that we can go about being

20:51

able to build the metaverse responsibly.

20:54

And we want to work here with and we are

20:57

doing with people across the industry,

21:00

civil rights groups, governments, nonprofits,

21:02

academic institutions and others

21:04

to determine how these

21:06

sorts of technologies should be built from the

21:08

get go. But it's

21:10

so important because we all have

21:13

have become so reliant

21:16

on technology. As much as people say I don't

21:18

want to do it. I was at a breakfast this

21:20

morning with somebody and and

21:23

I said, well, you're aware of this or that, and the

21:25

person said, no, no, no, I come

21:27

to meetings without searching online

21:30

at all. I like to form my own opinions.

21:32

I don't want, you know, a third party

21:34

search engine telling me what I should expect.

21:37

When I meet Michael Casson, I said, well,

21:39

thank god, because had you done

21:41

that, you might have canceled the breakfast. No, but

21:43

but but but seriously, but

21:46

I'm not kidding. You know, there is

21:48

that moment where you go, do we have too

21:50

much information? Not? Not me,

21:52

because I'm I'm starved

21:54

for information. I'm a you know, I've

21:56

described my management style. I stole

21:59

this from a mutual friend of ours name Wendy

22:01

Clark, but I just sort of gribed

22:03

my management style and as Wendy

22:05

taught me as a micro nowhere,

22:08

not a micro manager. So I

22:10

like to know stuff, and you

22:12

know, then I try to let people make their own decisions.

22:14

But I like to know, so I understand

22:16

the levers and why people are making decisions

22:19

and management. But but that knowledge

22:21

that thirst number one and

22:23

number two. Look, I'm speaking

22:25

personally here as we always do. The

22:28

gift of Facebook for me,

22:32

the most important gift of Facebook for

22:34

me was what I think Mark's original vision

22:36

was was connecting people. I mean,

22:39

my entire life now is

22:41

connected my youth and

22:43

my old Okay

22:46

like that, you know the people that I'm in

22:48

touch with again that I had lost track of in

22:50

my life, And I'm sure there are billions

22:53

of stories like that. Literally, it

22:56

was a great gift for me. It connected

22:59

my entire your life. So I'm a happy

23:02

meta user from

23:04

that perspective. But I want to go back to

23:06

advertising. You know, we've

23:09

all grown up in this era on

23:12

trying to search for the right device, the

23:14

right time, the right message, the right context,

23:16

the right person, and all

23:19

of that is a wonderful thing to shoot

23:21

for if you're a marketer and you want

23:23

to make sure if you're an auto manufacturer,

23:25

you want to get that person when they're in market for the car,

23:27

when you're in whatever, you

23:30

want to make sure that if it's financial services,

23:32

you want to make sure you're getting the person when they need

23:34

a loan to buy a house or whatever it may

23:36

be, or for their business. But

23:40

I've been a big believer there is

23:42

still that moment and that desire for surprise

23:45

and delight. Sometimes you think

23:48

you're reaching the right person at the right time, on the right

23:50

device and the right context, with the right message.

23:53

And sometimes you want to surprise somebody who

23:55

wasn't actually thinking about buying a new car,

23:58

or buying a new dress, or buying

24:00

a new something, and you

24:02

get an AD in front of them and they go, WHOA,

24:05

I actually maybe do want to look

24:07

at a new car. You talked about the

24:09

creator economy, and we're

24:11

at a moment where content and commerce

24:13

are so inextricably linked.

24:16

That's exciting to me. And what you can do

24:18

with content as

24:20

you drive commerce, as you know the

24:22

other things that come off of that. The importance

24:25

of content hasn't gotten lost, right, I mean,

24:28

you know, talk about that for a moment in terms

24:30

of how you look at that marriage

24:32

of content and commerce. Oh, so

24:34

many exciting things to share. And you're right. The

24:36

early days of the Internet was very much

24:39

there was no serendipity. It was very

24:41

much I'm looking for this and

24:43

then you were served an add up for that. We

24:45

are now in a whole world that that I'm thinking of

24:47

as discovery commerce where it's like I

24:49

didn't know I needed that, No, No, exactly,

24:53

it's fantastic and I think

24:55

you know, so many of the people I think,

24:57

you know, the vast majority of people that are on Instagram

24:59

have born something as a result of an

25:01

ad that they've seen on Instagram or because something

25:03

that they've seen with a with a creator on

25:06

on Instagram. So it's definitely

25:08

there that serendipity. But that's when you can

25:10

hone it in more and you can make it feel

25:13

more personalized and get rid of the noise

25:15

in the background that wouldn't work. I think

25:17

of like my feed versus my Sun's feed.

25:19

It's completely different experiences.

25:22

All the stories that you know that we're seeing, but

25:25

we're also seeing that the ways in which people tell

25:28

stories is very different. So we're seeing

25:30

a big shift, you know. You know, we've been

25:32

going backwards and forwards, haven't With the early days of

25:34

Facebook, we're very text based, and then we moved

25:36

to imagery and now we're in videos

25:38

and augmented reality. But reels

25:40

is something that we're seeing that's really

25:42

really exciting, and so we're

25:45

making a big investment here in video

25:47

and reels is really it's the largest

25:50

contributor now to engagement growth

25:52

on Instagram. What it means we're

25:54

making it easier for people to make and

25:57

also watch great videos across all of

25:59

our platform And these are some

26:01

really significant changes that we're making on

26:03

both Instagram and Facebook

26:05

as well, in order to empower this greater

26:07

economy, in order to help brands

26:10

tell their stories, in order to help consumers to

26:12

be able to get those messages. So

26:14

all of this coming together is very

26:16

dynamic, it's very fast moving, and it's

26:18

exciting right because we're meeting

26:20

people where they are. Remember, Michael, we

26:22

always build, We always build

26:25

for people first. Well, it's a

26:27

great place to start. Nicola, I want to say

26:29

two things. As you said, I didn't

26:31

need I didn't know I needed in this

26:33

product. But our audience unfortunately

26:35

can't see that very very cool microphone

26:38

you have. So I have microphone envy.

26:40

Now I need one of those. I mean, you

26:43

know, I didn't think I did. I got a lot of microphones

26:45

here, but not as cool as that one. I

26:47

feel. I feel microphone

26:49

envy. I just want our our listeners to know that,

26:52

Nicola, you and I could and

26:55

we will chat for hours. Nicola,

26:57

I want to thank you for taking the time today

26:59

and and even in this short period

27:01

of time you've you've shined a light

27:04

on so many things that are so critical

27:06

to our audience. And look,

27:08

I think our industry and

27:11

particularly now with you

27:13

over here, is the

27:16

beneficiary of more of Nicola

27:18

Mendelsson. And I'm excited.

27:21

I know you've got a lot in front of you as

27:23

you've taken on this this much

27:26

larger remit and um,

27:28

I just want to say thank you for bringing

27:32

a fresh view. Your

27:34

damn British accent makes it sound so

27:37

so good. Um. You

27:39

know, I used to get around with our mutual

27:42

friend Rob Norman, who everyone thought was so funny.

27:44

I used to say, Rob, You're not that funny. It's

27:46

just your British accent. It makes you sound funny.

27:48

In your case, it just makes you sound smart. But

27:51

the good news as you are, so you

27:53

know, the promise and the reality.

27:55

You know, the fantasy and the reality have matched

27:57

up well with Nicola Mendelsson. So,

28:00

um, look, I

28:02

want you to promise me you're going to come back and

28:04

do pot do of

28:07

good company because there's so much more I wanted

28:09

to ask, and I know we'll have the opportunity

28:11

to do that. But I want to thank you, Nicola, Oh

28:14

Michael, thank you, thank you for a giving

28:16

me the time, and if people are

28:18

listening, the thing that I would say is, I'm here.

28:20

I'm new in America.

28:23

I am here to listen. I'm here to learn.

28:25

But also I want to be the bridge

28:27

towards all these new different ideas

28:29

that I am, my teams that are working at

28:31

matter. I want to be able to hear for all of

28:33

them. So where to help you grow,

28:35

to help inspire, and to build the

28:38

metaverse together. Doesn't get more

28:40

exciting than that, right, And and to have a

28:42

few laughs on the way, Nicola, Oh definitely,

28:44

I'm going to hold you to that when I see you, Nicola,

28:48

Thank you, thank you. I'm

28:53

Michael Casson. Thanks for listening to Good

28:56

Company. Good

28:58

Company is a production. I heart IDEA.

29:00

Special thanks to Lena Peterson, chief Brand

29:02

Officer and Managing Director of Medially for

29:04

her vision I'm Good Company, and to Jen Seely,

29:07

Vice President Marketing Communications Immediately

29:09

for programming amazing talent and contentm