Marketing Meets Web3 by Step3

Pioneering the Web3 Marketing Revolution: A Deep Dive with Drew Beechler

September 13, 2023 Alberto Mera and Nick Casares Season 1 Episode 19
Pioneering the Web3 Marketing Revolution: A Deep Dive with Drew Beechler
Marketing Meets Web3 by Step3
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Marketing Meets Web3 by Step3
Pioneering the Web3 Marketing Revolution: A Deep Dive with Drew Beechler
Sep 13, 2023 Season 1 Episode 19
Alberto Mera and Nick Casares

Strap in for an enlightening dialogue with the charismatic Drew Beechler, the mastermind behind Holder. Drew's journey from music enthusiast to pioneering the Web 3 world is anything but ordinary. His fascinating experiences with ExactTarget, Salesforce, and Ethereum serve as a backdrop for this rich conversation that promises to flip your understanding of marketing on its head.

Dive deep into the transformative potential of Web 3 marketing. With transparency, immutability, permissionless access, and co-creation at its core, it’s a game-changer for the traditional marketing landscape. The discussion extends to the power of aligning incentives and leveraging the traditional funnel to foster more honest and transparent connections with customers. This is your chance to peek into the future of marketing!

How would it feel to have the power to shape customer experiences like never before? Marvel as we explore how Web 3 and CRM's are sparking a revolution in customer data and experiences. As we unravel the intricacies of blockchain, you'll learn how it can be a potent tool for marketers to deliver personalized and automated experiences. That’s not all - we'll also discuss how control over customer data is shifting to the consumers. All this, plus the exciting emergence of NFT artwork and traditional consumer brands dipping their toes into the Web 3 space. This conversation with Drew Beechler will leave you inspired and eager to explore the vast possibilities of Web 3 marketing.

If you like this episode, please help us liking and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can follow Nick Casares and Drew Beechler.

This content is for informational purposes only.

Do check our sponsor Step3 if you want to learn more about how Web3 can help companies create better communities for their users.

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Strap in for an enlightening dialogue with the charismatic Drew Beechler, the mastermind behind Holder. Drew's journey from music enthusiast to pioneering the Web 3 world is anything but ordinary. His fascinating experiences with ExactTarget, Salesforce, and Ethereum serve as a backdrop for this rich conversation that promises to flip your understanding of marketing on its head.

Dive deep into the transformative potential of Web 3 marketing. With transparency, immutability, permissionless access, and co-creation at its core, it’s a game-changer for the traditional marketing landscape. The discussion extends to the power of aligning incentives and leveraging the traditional funnel to foster more honest and transparent connections with customers. This is your chance to peek into the future of marketing!

How would it feel to have the power to shape customer experiences like never before? Marvel as we explore how Web 3 and CRM's are sparking a revolution in customer data and experiences. As we unravel the intricacies of blockchain, you'll learn how it can be a potent tool for marketers to deliver personalized and automated experiences. That’s not all - we'll also discuss how control over customer data is shifting to the consumers. All this, plus the exciting emergence of NFT artwork and traditional consumer brands dipping their toes into the Web 3 space. This conversation with Drew Beechler will leave you inspired and eager to explore the vast possibilities of Web 3 marketing.

If you like this episode, please help us liking and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

You can follow Nick Casares and Drew Beechler.

This content is for informational purposes only.

Do check our sponsor Step3 if you want to learn more about how Web3 can help companies create better communities for their users.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Marketing Meets Web 3, a podcast that helps marketers navigate the news trends, opportunities and insights surrounding Web 3. Today's conversation is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back everybody to another episode of Marketing Meets Web 3. Today we are spending time with Drew Beechler, the CEO and co-founder of Holder Drew, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Thanks so much for having me. It's good to see you both. I am excited for this.

Speaker 2:

Likewise, to kick us off a little bit, would you mind just telling us a bit about your background and your journey into Web 3?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I would love to. I like to call myself a lifelong marketer. I studied marketing in college and have spent most of the last decade of my career really in digital marketing. A lot of it even stems back to I showed this story because it's a good way into Web 3, but I don't always share this part of it. A lot of, actually, my interest both in entrepreneurship and startups, and even into Web 3, leads back to my early interest in the music industry. I'm a musician. I play bass, guitar and a number of metal and hardcore bands, even in high school and college.

Speaker 3:

Originally, I wanted to go into the music industry. This was in the 2006 to 2010 timeframe. During that time period, napster and just the music industry was being completely disrupted. I ended up deciding that was not the route for me and felt more in love with what I realized. What I loved about starting bands was more of the entrepreneurial side of it and the marketing side. I loved marketing our band. I loved building our website. I loved back in that day, myspace was king Learning how to HTML code or MySpace pages and everything, which was really great.

Speaker 1:

The good old days.

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah, that's what got me interested, I think, in just tech and entrepreneurship and starting things in general. I worked at an agency. I interned at an agency when I was in college. All of our clients at that agency were these Nick actually it's an agency probably in a well studio science that worked with TurnPath in the day. Back in the day, too, all of our clients were people like ReturnPath and ExactTarget and Angie's List and StackOverflow and these software companies. That was my first introduction into B2B software and the idea of recurring subscription revenue. That blew my mind and I fell in love with that world.

Speaker 3:

After I graduated, I started my career at a company based in Indianapolis. This company was headquartered here, called ExactTarget, and we were email marketing 1.0. Back in the day, exacttarget was massive ESP, a partner with ReturnPath. We went public in 2012 and then sold the Salesforce in 2013 and I joined just a little bit before the acquisition of Salesforce. I worked in the marketing department there at ExactTarget and at Salesforce early on in product marketing and content marketing roles A lot of digital marketing background by doing it, but also we were selling digital marketing software and so we had to be experts on that front, especially in the content marketing team, I was writing a lot and helping marketers understand digital marketing and social media and mobile marketing was very new. Back in that day, too, it was an amazing place to cut my teeth in marketing and absolutely loved it.

Speaker 3:

In 2015, the CEO and founder of ExactTarget again named Scott Dorsey. As he was leaving Salesforce, he and three other partners started this venture studio called High Alpha. The whole idea with High Alpha was how do we take venture investing and combine it with the actual formation and founding of companies and create this studio incubator-like environment where we just create companies for a living. I joined that team early in there kind of first couple of months in 2015. And built out the marketing organization there over a seven-year period and we started companies for living. So Got to start 35 or so different companies Wow, a lot of them and kind of marketing tech and sales tech, but all in B2B software and it was an amazing journey and Got to work with so many different CEO, so many different founders and it was just it got to learn so so much, and so that was an incredible experience.

Speaker 3:

You know that was my kind of dream job, but I always loved still marketing tech and getting to work on marketing tech companies and I think kind of personally I this was probably 2017, so like early Ethereum days. Like you know, I had the idea around kind of crypto and kind of digital Payments and currencies. Is is interesting to me, but kind of Bitcoin other than like I wish I would have invested and made a ton of money on it. You know, bitcoin was never like super, super, like interesting to me. But like seeing Ethereum and the idea around smart contracts like that kind of that really like blew my mind in kind of 2017 when I first started kind of really is probably a Fred Wilson blog or something like that where I feel like I first Started to really understand smart contracts and Ethereum.

Speaker 3:

But but that was kind of the unlock for me was like and it kind of went back to the music business side of things. So when I was in in college and, like you know, we went deep, deep down and a lot around kind of royalty rights and you know, back then like streaming was a very, very new and so streaming rights and you know all these kind of performance royalty organizations and everything and kind of thinking about Literally we would get mail to check, you know for 50 cents or something from some of these PROs and like this whole idea of like a smart contract could and should manage the entire royalty experience for for music. You know, that was kind of the unlock for me was like hey, hey, we could like Digitally prove the ownership of one of these files and if that happens, like Napster never exists, you know I mean, and like you can prove that like I can't just copy and paste this file. You know, the whole like right-click-save thing is kind of funny like now. But that was like you know, and that was five, six years ago and we still haven't seen that kind of happen. But I think that was when I first started thinking about like what's.

Speaker 3:

What's interesting around smart contracts and kind of Web3 in general, as like that industry started to get created, was just how it changes the relationship between a Customer, the good that they're buying especially if that good like lives on chain and then the brand that's selling that good. And that was kind of what Sucked me in and kind of 2021 and 2022, where I was just kind of fell in love with this world and kind of that idea. And you know there's lots of hype around it as well at that time, which made it more, more fun, you know and Drove into kind of the NFT world and, over time, though, really kind of started to see this challenge, which you know I know you all have seen as well, and kind of what you do is. Step three is, you know there is no marketing and kind of Sales and kind of just you know, no software tool set really for any of these businesses that are operating this space, and it's so, so incredibly hard to understand you know who your customer is when they're anonymous wallet addresses and Even harder to communicate to those people. And so that's kind of the big idea with holder.

Speaker 3:

Where it started was, you know, these businesses can't use a sales force or a hub spot For their business because their wallet addresses, not email addresses, and so what does kind of a system around marketing and you know this idea has evolved a lot since a little over a year ago when we started but what is the system around kind of marketing and CRM look like when I'm managing wallet addresses, and so that was kind of the the original idea for for holder.

Speaker 3:

What kind of sucked me in like professional day job, wise, doing it full-time I started working on, came up with instead of working on that idea in kind of late 2021 I was still at that high alpha fell in love with it. Enough that I was. They went to the four partners there and said, hey, I want to, I want to jump out and go start this thing it's all my own and ended up partnering with them and so they're kind of a co-founder with me in the business, which has been awesome, and an early investor and and it's been, it's been a wild ride ever since. But anyway, that's kind of my a little bit of my kind of background, from from music business to marketing and startup, startup creation to web three marketing tech.

Speaker 2:

Now it's a great, great story, a great background to.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, it's interesting that you you introduced an after and then you talked about web three and marketing. Because enough, sir, I mean after wasn't the what brought the change to the to the music industry, but it was, let's say, the catalyst. Right after that, all the changes happened. And Well, we all think also that the web three changes the way marketing is done, and you've already introduced the idea of holder the problematic with Aiming our targeting to clients in in web three. So so, in your opinion, how does web three change marketing, and Do you require a new skill set to attack this opportunity?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I think the I think it does require some new skill sets, but I also think it requires a lot of the same skill sets that I think sometimes we overlook at the end of the day, like I think you know, at the end of the day, I think marketing, you know we really think about it like it's all still just a funnel. You know it's about like how do I get awareness of what I'm doing up at the top, so people know about us, how do we get, you know, engagement with our brand in some way, and whether that's like an activation through signing up for, you know, an email newsletter or whatever, and then kind of down at the bottom, the conversion to becoming a customer or you know whatever. That conversion event is B2B. It's like, you know, becoming a marketing qualified lead by requesting a demo or you know whatever that is. And I think sometimes we in Web 3 kind of forget about that. But I think we still need to kind of think about, like the fundamentals of like it's still a funnel and it's still going from kind of awareness to engagement to kind of activation and conversion. What you do in that funnel, you know, varies very differently, I think, in Web 3, but I think kind of we still need to think about that. It is still just a funnel and how do we move people through an increasing level of engagement with my brand, the kind of couple points that I think are like dramatically different and interested to kind of hear. You know your all's thoughts as well.

Speaker 3:

But I think with Web 3, you know, what makes it different is this idea. What makes it kind of fundamentally different from Web 2 is this idea around kind of transparency it's immutable and it's permissionless and even kind of this idea around co-creation and co-ownership, in particular around how you can align incentives. Like I think, at the end of the day, a lot around Web 3 is just like a different way to leverage and align incentives. And so I think that that's when I think about kind of you know, we've seen the explosion around community management in Web 3 and, like you know, how do we engage our community and a lot of that is just around how do we co-create and find co-ownership kind of with our customers and building this, and I think there's a lot of different skill sets that when you start kind of moving down that route, that it's still like how do I, you know, gain awareness, engagement, activation, kind of conversion in that funnel?

Speaker 3:

But there's a lot of different ways to do that and there's a lot of other challenges. I think there too, you know, like one is just it becomes a 24-7 job, especially like around the community management side of things, like when you're trying to. It's just such a different beast when you're trying to truly be kind of co-creative and kind of drive this co-ownership type of mentality with your audiences and customers. And you see that a lot in, you know, in the discords and things like that. And so I think that that's just kind of one like highlight. I think that's very, very different and so because of that, it leads to a lot of different channels and campaigns and activities. But at the end of the day, we really should all still kind of be trying to like their purpose should be how do we drive people down, kind of this awareness to conversion funnel.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean there's there's a ton to dig into there. And maybe I'll start with. You know the idea that marketing and Web 3, I think a lot of people up to this point and maybe this is changing but kind of come to the space and think like well, this technology is so different, this community narrative is so different. Marketing must be completely different and I completely agree with you that it's really not right at the end of the day, like humans are pretty repetitive creatures and we tend to do the same things and we responded the same things. And so just because we're using a new technology doesn't mean that you don't have to capture our attention. It doesn't mean that you don't have to give us a reason to want to engage. You know, the second thing that you touched on around aligning incentives I think is so huge in Web 3. And I think it's again, it's not so much that it's this brand new way to do things, it's about doing things differently.

Speaker 2:

So if you think about the structures in the systems today in marketing, tech and advertising and the way that, as a marketer, if you want to reach an audience, you go through this broker, through this ad platform, and that's collected data in unknown ways. Right, they just have a lot of data on a lot of people. That gives you pretty fine tuned controls for targeting people, but at the same time, at what cost? At the cost of consumers who are up to their eyeballs and being targeted, who are sick of ads, have kind of reached their saturation point and don't feel like there is a fair trade off between the data that they're exchanging for whatever value you're providing. And so I think Web 3 is actually to your point about transparency. It's a much better opportunity for marketers to just be much more open and forward with their customers and their prospective customers and say you know what we have value, we have benefit that we want to offer you, and be very clear that we may ask for something in exchange. Right, maybe I want your email and I want to know about you because I want to be able to give you better offers.

Speaker 2:

But here's the clear relationship, here's the clear trade off, and I think that as this space matures, that's going to be a real opportunity for marketers to kind of rethink the narrative around just open and transparent communication with customer bases, something that you mentioned around the funnel kind of brought to Alberto's question about tooling In Web 2, we've got plenty of ways to measure the funnel right. We've got hundreds, if not thousands, of systems that we can use to capture analytics and use those analytics to tell us things about where people are dropping off and where they're engaging, and I think that's a little bit different in Web 3. Number one, it's just not the tool set isn't as broad. But number two, we also have this challenge of how do we start thinking about Web 3 activity in a way that can be framed as a kind of a funnel narrative? What are your thoughts on the tooling and kind of how it needs to evolve to support mature marketing practices?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think it's a good question and I think we're still in the early days and so a little bit it is I'm not entirely sure and I kind of go back and forth a lot, spending the first 10 years of my career in traditional marketing tech, seeing I'm sure you both have seen the kind of marketing tech landscape that Scott Brinker has done for years that has 10,000 plus vendors.

Speaker 3:

On this graphic it's probably like 20,000 now or something. But I remember the early days, the first few versions of that graphic. We're just kind of even seeing the proliferation of marketing tools and kind of Web 2, the consolidation around the Adobe's and Salesforce's and Oracle's kind of marketing clouds. It's going to be interesting to watch that and then kind of think about how will Web 3 kind of tooling evolve and will it go a very similar way? Will it just kind of have its own landscape and it'll be kind of very siloed, or will it become sock pop China in a different category of marketing tech tooling, or or will it become you know that then eventually kind of the, the bigger web 2 marketing clouds kind of gobble up, or will it kind of be Enough of a paradigm shift that it kind of starts to eat the lunch of like the traditional marketing clouds and I I don't really know. I don't know like where that's going to kind of evolve, but I think it's one of those kind of three paths, and and and so that's what I think about. A lot too is more around like what are they kind of the symbiotic relationships both among like the, the web 3 kind of tooling that exists today and kind of how they are working together and kind of and building each other up. I think very big proponent of you know rising tides kind of lifts all ships, but then also like, what is the symbiotic relationship between, like the web 3 tooling and the web 2 tooling, and so I think I think it's all really really interesting.

Speaker 3:

I look a lot at the Spaces that are completely novel to to web 3, you know, and so specifically around some of the some of the attribution you know, related kind of kind of technology is really interesting Because attribution is going to be so wildly different but arguably Much easier to track. And web 3, which I find kind of interesting because it's going to be I can track the attribution publicly down to, you know, a specific transaction on a ledger, which is kind of cool. You know track the conversion point of, like the dollars you know flowing or whatever, and Anyone of your competitors can also go and see that same exact kind of conversion path, which is which is kind of interesting. So I think there's going to be lots of different tooling around. This is all public data, you know. So it's as if, like all of our Google Analytics traffic is all kind of public to everyone and along with our, you know, purchase data and our Shopify ecosystem, you know, for like web 2 analogy, and so I think a lot of the interesting things are around. What does that enable for the future is completely novel, and I think kind of the, the, the tooling around how do I better Understand and leverage Blockchain data kind of in mass is really interesting. How do I use that data for new ways of Engaging and rewarding Loyalty?

Speaker 3:

You know, among like some of the some of the things like you all are doing too, like the, however, find novel ways to use the technology to engage with the customer, like those are the things I think they kind of really excite me In kind of the areas around technology wise that I think like where does it make sense for like a new platform to exist or like a new set of technology versus kind of the traditional kind of platforms?

Speaker 3:

That's kind of what I would, I think a lot about and I think to back to like the funnel Technology vendors, oftentimes in early stages of, like market maturity, like they focus on different areas of of that funnel, you know, and so I think to kind of thinking about like where it is.

Speaker 3:

As you know, if you're a marketer kind of thinking about like your, your tooling and your tech stack, you know, where does this tool that you're looking at kind of fit in that kind of marketing funnel journey and is it more on kind of the the conversion side of things around the engagement or on the kind of awareness side?

Speaker 3:

And so that's kind of also just like what you know. We're on the loyalty side and kind of the other end of the funnel really like it's kind of where you're in that realm, so. So that's where kind of I think too, just like having that awareness and I think I Don't know, you know where it's all going to evolve. But I think we should take some cues with what would happen in web 2, kind of marketing tech and what made those companies successful and kind of how that industry Evolved, and kind of net it out because it just followed the same pattern that many other industries also followed, you know. So I think I think that's always like really valuable to kind of take, take in and kind of think about and and what made those kind of companies successful and kind of how can we do that? Hopefully better this time around as well.

Speaker 4:

We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

Speaker 1:

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Speaker 4:

Have to confess that I struggle a bit with CRM's. To me it feels that they haven't been around for so long. It doesn't come so naturally, but they do exist and they they do provide value right to companies because they've Imploded right over the past few years. But now, in the very few past years, web 3 came along right and with it more opportunities. So For a person like me that is, that understands the value of web 3, understands barely the value of CRM's. So what does a marketer that is in this situation, you know, what does she need to know? You know about CRM's and web 3. How can one improve the other? What do they need to not understand both and fit them together?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I think you know, when you think about a CRM is really like traditional CRMs are really tools for managers to understand what's happening within their sales team, like that's who you know I mean like sales reps and like end users, like they're not the, they're not the target for. Like the CRM, it's like the sales manager to kind of like manage the process. You know that is the biggest value that get out of the like the CRM and manage and store the customer data and the customer data kind of an aggregate. And I think the most unique thing about Web 3 and blockchain is that your customer data all lives on the blockchain, like it's just it is blockchain data and so I think that's where kind of like the biggest thing around.

Speaker 3:

What makes something different or unique or novel in Web 3 is that data structured in a ledger. You know it is meant to kind of help be able to tell you know this wallet is sending this amount of money to this wallet and is this wallet good for it? And so how do we make that kind of open and transparent to make sure that, in a trustless manner, I can transact with that wallet and know that you know I'm not being scammed or that they're good for that money. Basically, and that's kind of the core tentative, like what makes you know a transaction, a blockwork, and because of that the data is not structured in like an easy way like we're used to with marketing data and kind of CRM data, and so that's what that's what I just kind of find is the most interesting and kind of valuable part around, like how do we think around customer data with with Web 3, is just how do we re transform all this data that already exists into a way that I can use it in a more kind of easier way? And so a lot of like how I talk about even just what we do at Holder is like taking this data that is very accessible to data engineers and developers but not accessible to marketers, and so how do we give them kind of that like power and usage to use that data to drive, you know, more meaningful, personalized and kind of automated customer journeys and and kind of communications? And so that's kind of like where I think about it and it's it's a lot more to have like a you know the customer that most of the companies now that are interacting in Web 3 and building big audiences or more consumer companies to and so like.

Speaker 3:

When you think about a CRM like, it's less of like your Salesforce kind of CRM and it's more like a bigger customer data repository. It's more like your POS system, you know. It's more like your Shopify of like who's buying what and what product line and and when did they buy it and how much did they spend on it, and aggregating kind of that and like a in a in a really kind of easy to use ways. But anyway, those are those are some of the things that I when it excited me at least most. When I think of you know, customer data in Web 3 and kind of what does that look like? Then it's really really exciting, kind of interesting. When you think about kind of all of the, all the possibilities there too, with it being kind of open and transparent.

Speaker 2:

I want to dig into the specifics specifics of Holder in just a minute but I want to dive into a quick, just observation on something that you said. So this idea that you know all of your customer data is on chain it's all public I think at least my observation is that there's going to be sort of an allergic reaction for marketers in the beginning of adoption of this technology, because that that feels sort of counter to what companies want to do, which is defend their customer base and create moats. And you know there is some proprietary advantage in having access to customer data that nobody else has. But it also reminds me of the early days of the internet, when people were hesitant to put information online, like companies didn't want to publish things online, they didn't want to share too much, because they felt the same way, like our information, it's our competitive advantage. And I think that it took a while but it's definitely evolved.

Speaker 2:

And now I think that the companies that are most progressive and when most often they're pretty open with their information you know I mean you look at like the Tessels of the world who publish their master plans and that's sort of become a theme of company strategy is like make this known to the public, so that the public understands where you're going with the company. They can get on board with the vision. And I wonder if we'll see the same thing with with customer data. You know, just marketers rethinking the way that we structure it, the way that we publish it, what it means to share customer data and how that can actually be net benefit to a business. I think there's a lot of opportunity and evolution to be had there.

Speaker 3:

I totally agree, and I think it's also shifting the like, the ownership and control of that data, to like back into the hands of the end consumer, which I think inevitably will, will ultimately just end up with better customer experiences. You know it will drive the brands to improve their customer experiences. It will drive the brands to, you know, care more about that customer experience, and so I think all of that kind of net net is is also good for the end consumer and kind of the consumer experience to which excites me.

Speaker 2:

So, going back to Holder, you gave us kind of the conceptual intro at the beginning and started to talk a little bit about how you empower things like journey building for marketers. But let's get into some more specifics. What is Holder doing specifically with blockchain data? How do you help marketers today turn that into actionable information?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so today a lot of what we've built is a.

Speaker 3:

It starts with just understanding you know who are my customers, and so if you have a contract on Ethereum or Polygon or the two that we work with today, we ingest that contract to create a CRM database out of those wallets that have ever interacted with that contract and then we enrich those wallets with other on-chain data we can find and know about those wallets based on you know what they're interacting with.

Speaker 3:

And we have kind of a lot of marketing tools whether it's a form builder or messaging tools that help you then kind of craft these campaigns in order to connect and engage with those folks.

Speaker 3:

So I can segment down my list to see you know who are my top 100 holders, who are my VIP members and how do I drive them into, you know, a personalized, automated journey, and so our most recent launch, actually a couple of weeks ago, was our kind of automation suite, our automation builders. So now you know, anytime someone buys or sells an NFT or Transax on a specific event on a blockchain, you can use that as a trigger in a workflow campaign that then would send off, you know, an email message or text message or a wallet, message directly to that customer or send yourself an alert based on a really you know refined set of filters and criteria for what you're looking to be kind of notified around. And so that's where you know we're trying to bring this idea of marketing automation and really, like a lot of kind of claveo is a great kind of analogy of like what they did for, you know, e-commerce. Marketing automation is kind of a lot of what we're trying to help empower for kind of decentralized commerce and, you know, purchase activities that are happening on the blockchain. How do I drive, you know, email, sms and kind of messaging customer engagement campaigns based on those activities?

Speaker 2:

No, that's great, that's great.

Speaker 4:

Since you're looking into this and you have a vantage point, I guess, from the position that you're in, what excites you the most? What are you looking at these days that really is capturing your attention.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think I guess there's two things. We talked about this a little bit before the show. One thing and I only had one thing, but I have two things One thing is just, I would say, the resurgence among NFT artwork and kind of on-chain art I've been really excited about. Vekon was hosted here in Indianapolis two weeks ago. I had the opportunity to sit in a ton of. They had a ton of just amazing artists that were speakers, from Vinnie Hager and Thank you X to Snowfro and Fuosius and Andre O'Shea. It was incredible to get to see a lot of them that have admired their artwork for a long time speak.

Speaker 3:

Anyway, all of that week re-energized my interest, particularly around on-chain and generative art. You've seen it even just in prices and everything too and the ecosystem. That's been really interesting just to see and see people just push the boundaries there. That's kind of outside of marketing. The other is really just seeing kind of the I would say the acceleration and continued interest among the traditional consumer brands that are moving into Web through and kind of trying to find ways to leverage this technology to build better customer experiences. Just even the last couple of weeks we've seen Mercedes-Benz and Michelin and Nike continue doing their kind of on-force one or our force one drop, Just a lot of these major Fortune 500 brands moving into this space and kind of doing it in big and bold ways.

Speaker 3:

That's been really exciting for me and I think just kind of is a good kind of gives us a glimpse, I think, of what we'll see in the future too, which is just that I think, especially if we're a consumer company but my belief is that every company in the next five to 10 years will have some sort of wallet or blockchain data in their system and kind of the idea of Web 3 will basically just become another channel and kind of their omni-channel marketing toolset. I think that that's kind of where we're heading and I think that's been kind of exciting to see all of these brands already kind of really lean into the space, A lot of the brands like ABM, Bev and Budweiser continuing to double down too, which is exciting that they didn't just kind of like launch a campaign for PR and headline sake, but are continuing to kind of push into the space and figure out new ways to engage those audiences and kind of continue to push the space forward.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no great takes. Drew, you and I were at consensus and one of the themes that I heard in a lot of the talks and a lot of the side conversations amongst the marketing crowd is build for the future, build for the long haul. Don't think about this as a drop in your done, because you need a bigger strategy that plays into your overall marketing program. I think it's refreshing to hear people talk about that long term view, especially after such a crazy bull market and a lot of froth around NFTs. But people kind of coming around to your point like this is another tool in our toolbox. This will become another channel and it has a lot of opportunity and potential for marketers who want to kind of create better customer experiences. Drew, thanks for hanging out with us today. It's been a great chat. Where can people go to find out more about you and about Holder?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you so much. This is an absolute blast. You can learn more about Holder at holderxyz. We are at Holder XYZ on Twitter and I am at Drew Beachler on Twitter. Those are probably where we are most active Holderxyz, if you want to learn more.

Speaker 4:

Yeah, if it's true that all of these companies are going to be coming over, they better find a way to get to you. Thank you, drew, I hope so.

Speaker 3:

That's the goal, I agree. It makes what we're doing, hopefully, much more valuable on both of us, which is good. Thank you, thanks, drew, see you all.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to Marketing Needs, web 3. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like and subscribe in your favorite podcast app.

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