Effective Marketing News 001 – 2021 Marketing News Review

 

Welcome to episode 1 of the Effective Marketing News in which we do a review of the biggest marketing stories of 2021.

 

Apologies for the echo on Ionut’s voice, it isn’t quite so annoying if you turn the volume down a little bit – I haven’t been able to fix it but it won’t happen in future episodes.

 

Martin Henley 0:03
Hello there, my name is Martin Henley. This is the effective marketing company YouTube channel. And this is the very first episode of effective marketing news, which was an idea that I had when I was speaking to Ionut much earlier in the year of the talk marketing series. And he told me that he spends 90 minutes per day, just catching up on what’s going on in the news, and keeping on top of the different tools, etc, etc, etc. So I thought it would be a good idea if we had a marketing news aspect to this channel. So that essentially we will do the work, we will find out what the news is, we will tell it to you and you won’t have to go looking for it is the idea.

 

Martin Henley 0:47
Now because this was Ionut’s idea, I’ve got Ionut to commit to being involved in the first seven episodes of The Marketing News. So he is right here. How are you Ionut?

 

Ionut Danifeld 1:02
I’m doing good and seven episodes I was not sold for seven episodes. I know. I’m joking. Excited to be here. Let’s see, I came with zero expectations t hat’s always a good one. Right?

 

Martin Henley 1:18
Yeah. Well, I’m gonna have to do this manually. Because I can’t work out how to split the screen. I can split the screen, we will be splitting the screen in episode number two. So what’s the point? The point is that I was hoping to well, you with the technology, but now we’re here and doing it. I can’t I’ve got a beautiful little graphic overlay that says Ionut Danifeld with the Trapo logo, Chief Marketing Officer at Trappo, etc, etc, etc.

 

Ionut Danifeld 1:47
I need to show them some of these t-shirts.

 

Ionut Danifeld 1:48
You can show this t-shirt. So if we come to me to you, such as the Trapo t-shirt.

 

Ionut Danifeld 1:57
Okay.

 

Martin Henley 1:58
it’s very nice. I mean, I could do this quite easily. Do you want to see that thing I made? I mean, the expectation when we spoke about this was that it’s the first one that’s going to be shared, wasn’t it? That’s what we agreed. So I think it probably is. So while you’re on the screen name, title, Ionut. Name, title, overlays. Are you ready? They’re calm,

 

Ionut Danifeld 2:24
I’m ready to be wowed.

 

Martin Henley 2:26
Add animated overlay. Are you seeing the screen?

 

Ionut Danifeld 2:31
I’m seeing you, which I’m already used to it.

 

Martin Henley 2:37
Right. So the overlay is here it’s going to be in the recording, you’ll have to wait till you see it in the recording let me make it the right size, and then play it again. So it says Ionut Danifeld, Trapo CMO, it’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. Okay, good. So here we are bogged down in the technicals it’s fine, the first one is going to be shared. So we decided for this first one, what I think will happen in the future depending on how regularly it warrants it we’ll either do this weekly or fortnightly or monthly. And we’ll start trying weekly to see if there’s enough news to keep us busy. But what we’ve decided for this first one is that we are going to do a review of 2021, the big marketing news that happened in 2021. So your mission, whether you’ve accepted it or otherwise, we will find out now was to go away and find three or four news stories of 2021 that you felt were the major news stories. Did you do your homework Ionut?

 

What were the biggest marketing news stories of 2021? 

 

Ionut Danifeld 3:46
Feels like in school. Yes, I did my homework. And I have actually three studies. The idea from the studies came when we did the review with one of our tools, our email marketing tool, and we were going about okay, how was 2021 for Trapo, how we performed and what’s going to happen in 2022. And I realised about 2021. It was a really challenging year for all of us with this entire pandemic and especially for well, I will say everyone, but I mean also the people in marketing because we had to, I would say reinvent ourselves and find new ways to basically to escape the shitstorm. If I can say the shitstorm and the shitstorm I think it came from multiple fronts, it came with Apple. So here are my three topics. So the three topics are the iOS 15 and all of the updates that happened with iOS 15, and the entire saga that happened with Facebook and the world, the silent war with Facebook and iOS 15. So that’s number one. And quite challenging how this is moving more and more to privacy, and how a marketer needs to reinvent himself and go a little bit back to the origin. And what used to work in the beginning of the year is definitely not going to work properly next year. So iOS 15 and privacy. Another one is the single days I don’t know where exactly is your audience, but single days is actually starting to pick up really, really fast. So what I mean by single days, I mean, like 11 11, 10 10, 11 11, 12 12, and single day, so I was reading a really interesting statistic. So you can see, but I have also numbers. This one is boosting my credibility, right? Usually when someone is coming with numbers it’s like, ah, that guy actually knows what he’s talking about. So apparently, single days generated $84 billion in 2021.

 

Ionut Danifeld 6:09
Okay, we’re getting into the details. I don’t even know what single days is. So when we come to talk about it, you can you can tell us all about it.

 

Ionut Danifeld 6:15
I think that’s cool.

 

Martin Henley 6:16
So we’ve got iOS 15. Is it iOS 15?

 

Ionut Danifeld 6:20
iOS 15.

 

Martin Henley 6:21
And single days?

 

Ionut Danifeld 6:23
Single days. And the other one is the importance of, I would say analytics. I think that analytics plays a huge role in 2021. And is going to play an even bigger role in 2022.

 

Martin Henley 6:38
Okay, all right, good. My three are a little much more generic, and much more about, and a little bit may be contentious, also. So the first one that really intrigued me, or the first really big story of the year was Trump getting banned, like Trump getting cancelled, basically.

 

Ionut Danifeld 7:03
Oh we are doing politics?

 

Martin Henley 7:03
We’re not really doing politics, no, but we are doing marketing. And I think it’s going to be really interesting, because I think Trump was, we’ll talk about it when we’re going to talk about it. But this is my first. Yeah. The second one is the biggest story. It’s not really marketing story. But I want to talk about the COVID vaccine in a marketing aspect. Because I was doing a training recently, and I did like this product lifecycle thing. And it just seems to me that the COVID vaccine is probably the least successful marketing campaign ever for like a number of reasons. So I think if there’s a case study on how not to do marketing, it happened in 2021 on a global scale. So I’m interested in that. And then the third one that I wanted to talk about was, it’s gone out of my mind, in future I will write these things down. I think it might have also been the privacy thing. And no, the way I was framing it was the war between Apple and Facebook. But that’s the same. It’s the same as yours, essentially. So we’ve got five, if you’re happy to talk about those five?

 

Ionut Danifeld 8:17
Definitely.

 

Martin Henley 8:19
Okay, good. They’re not too political, not too contentious for you.

 

Ionut Danifeld 8:23
Depends on you, depends on the angle, let’s see.

 

Ionut Danifeld 8:27
Okay, no, I know what, we can go to it to a six, that the sixth one, then I want to be Meta. Because, like for me, that kind of book-ended the year so the start was Trump getting, cancelled. The end was kind of Meta, when was that announced two, three weeks ago? So I’m kind of interested.

 

Ionut Danifeld 8:29
A little bit more.

 

Martin Henley 8:49
A little bit more than that was it already?

 

Ionut Danifeld 8:53
Yeah, it was like, two months, three months ago,

 

Martin Henley 8:56
Somebody wanted to do so, I was organising to do something. This is how badly out of whack I am with the universe and what even month it is. Someone wanted to do something and they said, I will do it on like the 12th of December or something. I’m like, no, no, I want to do it soon. And then I’m like, no, no, no you’ve got that and then 12th of December was like, two days time. So that’s how out of whack I am with even what month it is.

 

Donald Trump’s social media ban and cancel culture.

 

So Okay, good. So where do we start then? Should we start with, yours are much more technical than mine. So let’s start with the Trump thing because I think this is marketing because the social media platforms are marketing tools.

 

Trump reportedly was getting ready to go to war with the social media platforms. The distinction is whether they are publishers or not, or whether they are just platforms for communication. So this was kind of like, the way I was thinking about it, like what does it mean? But always, in the last five, six years When I’ve taught social media, I’ve always said to people, what I want to say? What I say to people, like when I teach digital marketing, there’s a section always on websites. And for a large period of time websites weren’t particularly relevant because people could do their sales on Facebook or Etsy or any of these dozens of things, you know what I mean? And eventually, they could do it on Instagram. But what’s become apparent over the last five years is that nobody’s safe no marketing investment you make in a social media platform is safe, because the social media platforms can take away all of that work in a second, and there’s no recourse. So I suppose it’s not even about Donald Trump, it’s about the fact that if they can, if they can cancel the President of the United States, they can cancel any of us. So that’s what I think it was about. And the issue for us as marketeers is if they are cancelling the President of the United States, and he gets reelected in 2024, they are going to be bang in trouble. You know, so he’s coming out with his own social media platform now isn’t he? It is called The Truth media or something?

 

Ionut Danifeld 11:08
Which is basically not important. He has a bunch of supporters. Okay, continue.

 

Martin Henley 11:16
Good. Well, the argument there is, because I’ve been following this a little bit recently, is that, essentially 50% of certainly the voting population of the United States. So that’s maybe what is that 120 million people are Trump supporters. So the issue with launching a new platform, and maybe the reason that we haven’t seen one recently, is because there’s no audience. So I don’t know if you’ve been following this thing with Bumble and stuff. I don’t know if you’re as interested in these platforms as I am. But Bumble was bought out to combat the censorship on YouTube, by one of the leading political type guys, and now it’s being sold out to Wall Street, essentially. So it’s going back into the loop. So it’s going to go around again. But apparently, Trump’s thing is going to be alongside Bumble or one of these new platforms, but what Trump brings is huge audience. So that’s why Trump is central to this. You don’t do much YouTube, you don’t do much video. Do you?

 

Ionut Danifeld 12:23
I do a lot of tic toc, I’m fascinated about tic toc.

 

Ionut Danifeld 12:26
Ah, because you weren’t, you do a lot of marketing on tic toc, or you do?

 

Ionut Danifeld 12:31
Or you’re talking about the company? Yeah, we do tic toc, we do YouTube. We do all of this. I mean, like, I think that you need to do all of them to stay up to trends. And so yeah, I can say that I’m doing also Youtube.

 

Martin Henley 12:45
Okay. So this, I think, I mean, you snuck up on me saying, you know what’s coming up for 2022? Maybe that should be the first video that we do in 2022. Is what do we think’s going to happen? But it seems to me that the social media landscape is going to change quite dramatically because of this censorship that’s going on. And because I mean, I don’t know if we’re talking about products and services, if we’re marketers. I mean, it has changed dramatically, you know, the algorithm seems to me to be these days, if you want to play you have to pay, that seems to be the way it’s gone. And I just don’t think that occupying that space anymore is as secure investment investment as it had been previously. That’s what I kind of think.

 

Ionut Danifeld 13:33
Well, but a couple of things regarding, I want to shift a little bit. I mean, it’s in a way, it’s a connection with what you said regarding Donald Trump. I was actually while you’re talking, I was actually searching the definition of the social media, you know, the definition of social media?

 

Ionut Danifeld 13:51
I know about a dozen definitions of social media since there was a really good one about 2008. I remember that.

 

Ionut Danifeld 13:58
Well the simple one from Oxford is saying the following: The website is an application that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. That’s basically social media, according to the Oxford language, or the Oxford Dictionary. But I think that at the moment, and I think that we have basically for this discussion, I don’t think that there is so much social in social media, there is probably more media. So that’s basically my problem at the moment, I think exactly how you said in order to have that reach, and every time I was saying this also when I was doing consultancy before Trapo is the reach now is like what 1, 2% I mean, like look at us, I mean, like organically we have 140,000 people but probably the reach is about you know, like 2000-4000 people that are being seeing the posts. So that’s on the Facebook and I’m absolutely sure that everything that is regarding other social networks is the same. Regarding what happened with Donald Trump, once again, I don’t want to go so much into a political discussion is that a certain level of responsibility needs to come into action. So you’re going to ask yourself, Okay, where is that certain level of responsibility? Because if you’re a so called influencer, I hate the word influencer. I like to call it more opinion maker. So basically the one that is defining opinion, changing opinions, you need to have a certain level of responsibility. Now the certain level of responsibility, Okay, we shouldn’t agree with everyone, we should have different points of view, but definitely ended up to on a curve, that it was basically not okay. Now, where is actually the censorship coming? I mean, like, if I’m going now on the social media, and I’m basically saying that Donald Trump is a dick, nobody is basically going to censor me what is going to close my account, right? But because you’re about opinion leader, and you’re basically saying to the crowd to do X and Y, and Z, I think that here is where I have a problem.

 

Ionut Danifeld 16:18
If you asked me about the decision of all of this social networks to actually ban a character, even if it’s called Donald Trump, I think that was the right decision. Right. And what I think that was even more fascinating, it was probably the first big bold movements of the social media, because if you’re looking back to the numbers, people are actually coming on Twitter, people were actually coming on Instagram, they will come and go on Facebook, and they were sharing, retweeting, commenting, and etc, etc, yada, yada, yada, which is basically the purpose of the social media, and they were doing all of these things. So the engagement of the platform was doing. And I think that I’m totally supportive with this, even if I like or dislike Donald Trump, I think that you as an opinion leader, you should take responsibility and be careful how you target the message and you should be accountable for the things that you’re seeing on the social media. So that’s my view.

 

Martin Henley 17:28
Yeah. Okay. So I think what we’re talking about is this cancel culture. I think cancel culture has been a big story this year, hasn’t it? There’s all sorts of censorship going on. And yeah, I just see because I think essentially, there was some kind of judgement recently, where Donald Trump was exonerated not being involved at all in what had gone on. So actually, they weren’t justified. But the argument is that there are laws in place to manage this, you know, there’s freedom of speech type laws, and there’s principles where, you know, it’s establish what you’re allowed to say and what you’re not allowed to say. So I just think that this censorship and this de-platforming, and this cancel culture thing is going to change the way, like you, I don’t think there’s anything very social about social media anymore. I think it’s literally it’s a media, it’s you want to be involved, you pay.

 

Ionut Danifeld 18:29
It’s a media, it’s a media, right? And it’s a media in the end of the day, okay, we can talk, we can do basically 20 episodes every single week regarding this decision regarding the social media. But well, I stay really strong on it is about you at the moment, once again, if you’re opinion leader and you’re trying to influence different people to do an action, and most people are doing that certain action that is basically harming others, then I have me as a company, because in the end of the day, all of these social media platforms are company, right? They’re not open source, right? They have stakeholders, they have investors and so on. So I think that to a certain definition of how it’s being also to the law, right? The freedom of speech is there as long as it doesn’t hurt the others, right. But I think that we are going a little bit different from the subjects regarding marketing in the news.

 

Martin Henley 19:31
So I didn’t want to spend this long talking about it necessarily, but I just think that marketers need to be aware of this cancel culture. Because you know, I imagine that there are brands who are getting de-platformed. I imagine that’s going on because they aren’t quite where they need to be like, we know that hundreds of people are getting de-platformed every week or every month and I just think it’s interesting.

 

Martin Henley 19:54
I think the more this goes on, I think the more it’s going to affect the audiences. And you know, I think social media is under attack in maybe the more interesting ways we’re going to talk about it, the Facebook versus Apple thing is more interesting than this. But I just think, and I’ve been telling people this forever, you don’t own your social media, you know. So you, you need to be careful as a marketer in terms of how much you invest, because that could go away overnight, that really could go away overnight. And obviously, that’s just the way I think about it. We just started the year with the biggest example if they can cancel the President of the United States, then, arguably, they’ve got too powerful is what I would say. Right, let’s go to one of your stories. Let’s talk about something that caught your attention. Tell me about this single digit thing, what is that about?

 

Single Days

 

Ionut Danifeld 20:46
Single digits, single days, man.

 

Martin Henley 20:48
Single days.

 

Ionut Danifeld 20:50
The single days is, is basically a concept. Okay, so the single days is, it started in China, the concept is coming from Alibaba. And it’s double 11. So that’s basically the single days. And in the last years, it became the single day. So that’s the original, it started a few years ago in China.

 

Ionut Danifeld 21:19
So it’s the 10th of November is that what you are talking about? The 10th of October, the 1st of January.

 

Ionut Danifeld 21:27
1111 1010 1212. These are single days, these are called single days, right? So we started in China, the 1111, the single day 1111. That’s the original day, and basically bigger than it’s actually bigger than Black Friday. So okay,

 

Martin Henley 21:47
I still don’t understand you’re talking about 1010 is the 10th of October?

 

Ionut Danifeld 21:52
10th October 11th of November 1 of January. And so on and so on.

 

Martin Henley 21:58
Okay, so this is an ecommerce, it’s an online buying thing is it?

 

Ionut Danifeld 22:03
It’s an online buying thing, but it’s actually moving a lot offline. And in the beginning, it was in China, it moved to the entire Southeast it was catching rapidly to the entire Southeast Asia. It’s actually starting to be a global phenomenon. And I was reading something that even Australia, there are companies in Australia now that’s creating all of this single days, and by putting a little bit more focus on the single days rather than Black Friday. And as I was saying, it basically generated $84 billion in 2021, which is bigger than Black Friday worldwide.

 

Martin Henley 22:50
Do you know how much Black Friday generates?

 

Ionut Danifeld 22:56
Let’s see how much Black Friday. Okay, Black Friday. Thank you. I can search for it.

 

Ionut Danifeld 23:04
Okay. I mean, the interesting thing to me is it sounds like a Black Friday, but they get to do it every month. You know, that’s how it sounds to me.

 

Ionut Danifeld 23:18
What I want basically to say, besides the fact that it’s becoming a global phenomenon is becoming a little bit of absurd a little bit, because in the beginning, it was only double 11. And 1212. So recently from last year, they started to do 9 9, 10 10 Also, and for example, Shopee, Lazada, Shopee and Lazada product, for the ones that don’t know, it’s basically kind of like the eBay and Amazon here in Asia, they are doing now every single month for an event 1 1, 2 2, etc, etc.

 

Ionut Danifeld 23:59
The problem that I have as a company and as a business owner, is that for me for the marketing is it doesn’t create so much of the scarcity. I think that’s when it doesn’t create the scarcity because the basically the trend that you see people are just waiting for all of these single days, it’s kind of becoming a lot of a saturated market. Absolutely I was having a discussion with the guys from Shopee and I told them, Shopee Lazada, I don’t remember who and I told them that there is zero sense of doing the 1111 because basically people are not going to be on the platform and it’s already first day of the year. And they were like no but we need to stay trendy and we’re pushing the lot and etc, etc yada yada yada. And it’s getting a little bit ridiculous but that’s a fact that as I said, marketers we need to stay relevant and relevancy needs to be that in order to make sales, you need to be up to trend and you need to do all of this single days. And so interesting that I didn’t even I barely finished 12 12. And I’m already talking about 1 1 and 2 2 and 3 3 and signing packages, we follow this marketplaces and planning campaigns all of these single days, so I hope I gave you a better definition.

 

Martin Henley 25:21
Okay, so it sounds to me like, I’m a little bit, because I’m old, I’m a little bit upset about the way the world’s gone, where it seems like there’s something every month that is becoming like a consumer demand. When I was a kid, it used to be Christmas, and Easter, you’d get easter eggs, but now it’s like father’s day’s much bigger, mother’s day’s, much bigger, and Halloween is much bigger than it ever was before. So it feels like markets are really promoting, Halloween. Halloween was never a thing when I was a kid. And now it seems to be huge. So now they’ve got all of these kind of festivals, festival days throughout the year celebration days throughout the year. Plus, they will now get these single days that you’re talking about. And it seems to me like the way you’re talking about it, it’s a little bit like the tail wagging the dog, where the retailers are demanding of retailers like yourselves, that you have to put offers on especially for this every month. And you have to drive your marketing around these days every month. And it’s the offers thing, there’s like, why should they dictate that you should be discounting? Essentially, which is what you’re gonna have to do? It’s about offers is it? It’s about reducing the price.

 

Ionut Danifeld 26:41
It’s about reducing the price its about discounts. Because if not, the competitors are are going to do it. Right? So you as a company, you’re a little bit squeezed by the door.

 

Martin Henley 26:53
Yeah, yeah.

 

Ionut Danifeld 26:54
But I wouldn’t say necessarily by this, because it’s not necessarily all the time about the marketplaces is also about the trends. And if you’re not going to do it, basically the competitors are going to jump in. Because also, it’s interesting fact regarding the single day. Another interesting trend that I see is that during the pandemic, where it was all of this lockdown, all of these marketplaces they were doing a lot of incentives and creating all of these shocking sales, and they were creating all of these single days, including a lot of they were actually subsidising companies. So for example, me if I’m doing 10% a marketplace, you’re giving another 5%. Right? But I’m getting basically the 10% but the end user is going to see 15% off. So trend, the interesting trend that we’re seeing is that the traffic that is going into the print.com compared with the previous year, or even in the beginning of the year, is actually lower. Because the user behaviour is getting they actually going, when it was before the lockdown, they were actually going on the marketplaces. They were doing a lot of shopping online, they are usually buying online. And the first place that you’re going, you’re actually going to buy it from the marketplaces wherever the Shopee, Lazada, Amazon and so on. So the problem for me is that as a company, my revenue is going down, because I’m buying from all of this market, my customers are buying from the marketplace, but they’re not buying from the print.com. The question is, how can you incentivize them to come back to your website?

 

Ionut Danifeld 28:40
And that is a question. This has been the elephant in the room forever in kind of affiliate sales through Amazon originally, like you say Shopee, Lazada is that you never own your customer. You know, so when I spoke to people about what marketing is, it’s about finding, winning, keeping customers, but you never own your customer because they always own your customer. The thing is, there was some backlash, I think, this year on Black Friday, because they did like an expose in the UK, I saw where they were actually monitoring the prices for three, four months before Black Friday. What they saw is that people just inflated, like businesses inflated the prices in the run up to Black Friday so it could look like they were discounting them on Black Friday. The thing is, it’s not real, is it that it’s you’re still you know, unless you’re absolutely an angel that’s going straight to heaven, you have to factor in profit to your sales or else you won’t be in business very long that’s the problem. Okay, really interesting. I had no idea that was happening and you’re right, it has to be a scarcity. If everybody believes that this is the one day in the year that you get these amazing sales, these amazing discounts, then clearly that has some energy around it. If it’s just going to be every month, then that’s going to have much less energy around it and I think what businesses will have to do is inflate their prices so that they don’t get caught. Okay, good. That was interesting. I never I didn’t even know that was going on.

 

Was the COVID vaccine the worst marketing campaign in history? 

 

Martin Henley 30:21
Okay, good. What was my second one? My second one, I want to talk about the vaccine, it seems weird to me about like, if you think about it, I don’t want to get into if you’re vaccinated, not vaccinated, whether you believe in it, not believing it otherwise, it just seems to me that this is the least successful marketing, if this was ever a marketing campaign, it was the least successful marketing campaign ever. You have to accept that surely, it’s better that people consent to these things rather than are forced to do them. But it seems to me that they didn’t like, if I tell people like what marketing is, it’s basically landing the right message, having the right product, and that knowing your market, developing the right product, and then landing the right message on the right people at the right time. And it just seemed to me that they just got it completely wrong. They clearly didn’t know, their market, they came up with a product that doesn’t seem to work, the PR around it was appalling, because no one you know, occasionally what is the PR is like, the reputation around it is appalling. Have you seen this product lifecycle kind of graph. So you get the disciples, they are the first people to buy from you, and then the early adopters, and then the the mass market will come in, and the conservatives eventually and then the sceptics. But it just seemed to me that, if they stated like the objective of it was wrong. Like I don’t know why they had to get 100% of people or why they had to state that they wanted 100% of people. I think it goes to something that I’ve always said to people, like very often I’ve met with a client or prospective client, and they’d like people have to do this people have to buy from me. And I’ve always said to them, you might scare people into buying something once, but they will find someone to buy it from who is much less scary. Do you know what I mean? So it just seems to me that this is clearly the biggest story of the year, this is the biggest thing that happened this year and it just seems to me like they got it wrong. Or they got it wrong in places like in some places, Israel, they’ve had huge take up. So clearly, it’s worked there. I just think it’s interesting to think of it as like a marketing exercise what do you think?

 

Ionut Danifeld 32:48
I think that it’s important to understand how you’re putting the message and how you’re distributing that message to the mass market. So that’s one. And I think that the second is the culture. So where basically the entire vaccination campaign was working, was in cultures, that people are a little bit more obedient, in cultures where people they trust the government, right? So culture, I think culture and to a certain extent, the political environment, if I trust my politician that is saying XYZ to me, I’m going to do it. So that’s really important, culture in politics. And it’s really important to see your issue hunting, I’m going to always say, if you want your life back, I think that we need to do this vaccine. But I don’t want to once again to go into the vaccination, because I think that’s we’re talking about the marketing.

 

Ionut Danifeld 33:56
So if we take it one by one, the message is really important. I think that the message was because the manufacturers of the vaccine, that said they didn’t know nobody knew what was going to happen with the vaccine. And nobody knew until the end, I don’t think that we know also until now the all of the side effects or the success rate. I think that was in from the beginning, a lot of hit and miss messages. So you confuse that huge population that probably they wanted, or they were a little bit more neutral on the mutual respect. You confuse them a lot.

 

Martin Henley 34:41
Yeah.

 

Ionut Danifeld 34:41
So the moment that you confuse them, it’s like I’m telling you to basically to instal this app if I didn’t convince you from the beginning to keep it, you’re probably, or you’re going to forget it or you’re going to delete it. So a big pool of confusing people because of the confusing messages and that I tend to agree a little bit of a bad PR movement probably.

 

Martin Henley 35:08
Because of the mixed messages. Yeah.

 

Ionut Danifeld 35:10
Yeah. Because of the mixup. It was basically like a confusing goal and confusing, successful or unsuccessful campaign. So that’s one. The other one culture, I think that is playing a really huge importance, culture and politics is playing like a huge important factor for the countries that for example, I’m talking about, for example, Malaysia, China, Israel, the ones that are a little bit; that’s purely my opinion, nobody should shoot me but they are a little bit more obedient to the government, it was much easier, it was much easier to convince them. Right? I think that even Indonesia is in this place. Right? The ones that if a politician is telling me to do that, I’m going to basically do it. But if, for example, you’re looking in the Eastern Europe, where everybody does fuck all when the politician is saying something? Yeah, of course, the vaccination rate is probably like, what? 20, 30%?

 

Martin Henley 36:22
Yes, yes, yes. And I think you’re right. So it goes to the authority of governments. And it’s amazing to me how little authority they seem to have across the board. Like you say, some populations are more different than other populations. The other thing is that, you know, because I think in these terms, governments do marketing. So in my lifetime,

 

Ionut Danifeld 36:50
But purely marketing, sorry to interrupt you, Martin, purely because I think that you said that the interesting thing, you said something that we will use a lot of scarcity, if the message was positive, a little bit more, okay COVID is bad, we understand blah, blah. But hey, here’s the sunshine, here is basically to return to the beach and go to the beach I think that was a little bit more successful, because they used so much horror story. And horror is never, what is basically selling in marketing, is selling humor and a little tragedy, but tragedy did with a little bit of conscious, I think that they played tragedy plus scarcity and death, and so on, which, in my opinion, 14 years of doing marketing, I never seen a successful campaign.

 

Martin Henley 37:41
Around fear and

 

Ionut Danifeld 37:43
Around fear and death and…

 

Martin Henley 37:46
Yes, yes. Yeah, so I’m just thinking, like, in my lifetime, there have been three major health campaigns by certainly the UK Government. So the first one was drinking and driving. So when I was growing up in the 70s, and 80s, there were always ads about drinking and driving and basically, it was really effective, because over time, they brought down the numbers of people who were drinking and driving, and then the numbers of accidents and blah, blah. The second one, I think, was probably anti smoking, which has been more or less successful, I think. And the third one is seatbelts in cars. So they come up with catchphrases for each of these things. So like the seatbelts one was clunk, click every trip, you know.

 

Martin Henley 38:36
So it just seems to me like they’ve got like, and even during the war, so you could say, Okay, this was an emergency situation, so what could they do? But even during the war, they had these slogans and these phrases, like loose lips, save lives, we know them, I know them 70 years later, loose lips, save lives, dig for victory, keep calm and carry on, you know, like, they did marketing before. It just seems to me that at every level, this just went wrong. I met somebody recently who was very anti Vax but he had COVID and it was a nightmare, he was the first person I’ve spoken to who was seriously ill with it. And he’s like, you know, it’s a terrible thing. But I haven’t really heard from anyone who’s marketing this vaccine that you know, of the dangers, the threats. Yeah, I don’t know. So it just seems to me like if you think of it, like, if there is a case study for the worst marketing campaign, the most successful, like 80% of people are vaccinated in some countries. Yeah. I mean, they’re stupidly successful. But if they hadn’t said it had to be 100%, then we’d be saying, Wow, look how brilliantly they’ve done. You know, but yeah, so it just seems to me that we might have seen the best example ever of how not to do marketing this year.

 

Ionut Danifeld 39:57
On a global level on a global scale.

 

Martin Henley 39:59
On a global scale.

 

Ionut Danifeld 40:02
But you need to take also in consideration a few factors, but one of them is that principles in marketing and technology, in marketing is changing. I don’t think that they were using the latest trends in marketing. When I’m talking about the latest trends, I’m talking also about the latest technology, I cannot give you now an example. I think that we’re still using the same old stereotypes of doing the government campaign, and I don’t think that is actually, thinking out loud, do a video game or to do ad warrior someone is shooting the COVID? You know, like that.

 

Martin Henley 40:45
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

 

Ionut Danifeld 40:49
You know, like, I think that in the end of the day, in the end of the day, you could say that hey look how easy is to kill the vaccine, get vaccinated? Right. I mean, yeah, probably is the most stupidest thing that I could have said now. But that’s basically what I mean. Right? Be smart when you’re doing marketing. Right, right. I think I agree with you here.

 

Martin Henley 41:11
Yeah, find different messages and find ways to deliver those messages is like, so you’re right. It was nothing modern but the other thing is how quickly they gave up on it if you think about that curve, they were probably making headway into the conservatives and then all of a sudden, they just stopped. They’re like, we’re not marketing this anymore we’re just going to mandate this, we’re going to make everyone have it. And that, to me, seems dangerous. I don’t think it’s going to make it more or less effective. That’s what I think. Okay, good.

 

Ionut Danifeld 41:43
And just one thing I want to add, because I will not be able to sleep tonight, if I will not say this, I think that going back to the previous subject, your initial subject with the social media, I think that everybody has an opinion now. Everybody thinks that they know everything, which was not the case with all of these campaigns that you had with the seat belt, and so on.

 

Ionut Danifeld 42:09
I think that the the social media and the penetration of the internet gave to a lot of people a voice and it gave to a lot of people the power to think that if they’re reading a fake article or any type of article, they know everything about better than Doctors.

 

Martin Henley 42:25
Yeah.

 

Ionut Danifeld 42:27
It’s a little bit more challenging to actually to convince someone to take a certain action now because of the internet, and because of the power of knowledge, which is another discussion also.

 

Martin Henley 42:48
Yeah, yeah. So that also goes to the decline, I think in authority, which is like during the war in London, people were given gas masks. No one said, I’m not wearing this mask. Yeah. So I think I just think it’s interesting to think of it in those terms and I think you’re right, there’s nothing modern about the way they went about it. There’s nothing even like sensible, I don’t think. It’s just not good marketing, just not good marketing. Okay, cool. Back to you. What do you have for us? What was your second story?

 

IOS 15 – Apple at war with Facebook and the implications for privacy and marketing.

 

Ionut Danifeld 43:22
It’s quite interesting. We’re moving from Trump to single days, from from single days to vaccine, from vaccine to iOS 15. Yeah. I think I think that you have it, you have that story also.

 

Ionut Danifeld 43:40
Yes. So what is your take on this? And what’s it going to mean?

 

Ionut Danifeld 43:47
So what basically happened in the beginning of the year, and the entire drama in the entire world with the Facebook was the fact that with the updated iOS 15, people are, the ones that have an Apple device, I’m talking about people with an iPhone, for example, it’s going to be really difficult for Facebook to basically track you and this is going to be really difficult, for example, because privacy is basically the major factor. They’re not going to be able to, for Facebook to actually to understand that, hey, this is basically Martin and he went, he visited this website, what we’re seeing is also the audiences on Facebook are shrinking and is going to be really challenging for advertisers to basically track users that have iOS devices. Facebook completely shuffled globally, the entire platform, and now you have only eight events that you can put a priority to them, we see that the analytics on Facebook are not so relevant anymore now. The latest problem is that with iOS 15, and the latest update is that you’re actually able to hide your email address. That means if you have a funnel, let’s say Venom grossing in your abandoned cart or any other funnel, if you’re sending a series of emails, I’m basically going to be able to see only the first message and after this, I’m not going to be able to track you, although I cannot send you another message, another message and so on because the open rate is no longer a metric that you can basically detect in iOS for the Apple users. So that’s basically the entire story that happened with iOS 14, iOS 15, and Apple and privacy. That’s, I think Google is soon going to be followed, probably not to that extent, because they see literally, fundamentally on ads and tracking. But that’s something that is challenging.

 

Martin Henley 46:17
Yeah. So this is interesting, because I interviewed on the Talk Marketing thing, my friend, Tom, he runs a very successful, results only, YouTube Advertising advertising channel. And he was talking about this, and it’s the first time it really came up for me, I’m not doing huge amount of Facebook advertising, I’m not doing huge amounts of advertising at all. But he was saying that, you know, just get over it, like people have got drunk on the data and what they need to do now is just move on, it’s gonna be again, much less about the pinpoint targeting, it’s going to be much more about the message and the values and all of those things. So that was kind of his take on it. And what do I think about that?

 

Martin Henley 47:01
I mean, I think because, you know, I’m just a terrible old cynic. I think that Apple took full advantage of it, you saw the ad that came out where they’re saying, basically, you’re picking up all these spies everywhere you go, and Apple is saving you now. But interestingly, it was really only Facebook who, who weren’t allowed to give you cookies any longer or track you in the way that they were previously, and not Google. So Tom’s argument was that Apple and Google are in this together. And the thing about it is that the thing about it is that Apple are still tracking you, they are still tracking you, Apple are tracking you do not I mean, so, you know, it’s not a huge, like, basically, they’ve stopped one big company tracking you, which is Facebook.

 

Ionut Danifeld 48:02
It’s not only I need to contradict you here it’s not only Facebook is definitely also Facebook, but it’s also it’s affecting all of the email marketing tools, because once again, the issues with iOS 15, the issue for me, as a user is amazing, I can basically hide my email. So What’s basically happening, technically speaking, every time that you as a company, you’re sending me an email, it doesn’t matter if I open it or not. But what basically, I’m redirecting you, and you’re going to see the dashboards, but I actually opened the email, which I didn’t, so you’re basically not going to send me any more emails. So the numbers of the open rates are basically going to inflate it for iOS users. So the open rate is going to become a vanity metric, which is not going to be relevant. So you need to find ways of one, say to the user, maybe about a) can you please, because there is a setting, that’s not for all of the companies, I need to hide my email, which nobody’s going to do it, which you need for Facebook, every time that you instal an app. Sorry, for the Apple users, for every single app, you need to say, are you allowing to track my devices or not? And believe me, I said, so every single one, no, even Facebook, so the relevancy felt I cannot basically track you so much in the most targeted way possible. The privacy game is changing and what I need to do as a marketer, I need to go back to probably affiliate ads, I need to go back to doing SEO as I used to do it very well about four years ago, and it’s becoming trendy again, it probably was always but people were more comfortable. investing money in Facebook and Google and so on. You see what I mean?

 

Martin Henley 49:57
The thing is, I think it became lazy marketing. It became too easy for marketers. I think, that’s what I think. And so, what do I think? Yeah. So I, what I definitely don’t think is I don’t think Apple are doing this for the good of their users. I think they’re doing it for commercial reasons, I think they will come out with ways of generating revenue from the fact that they aren’t …. So if it’s the email service providers, they’re not playing with its Facebook, they’re not playing with, then marketers are going to be looking for other solutions. I’d be very surprised if Apple didn’t come up with a solution like that early next year. Interestingly, I don’t think it affects Google in the same way, I don’t think they have the same issue with Google.

 

Martin Henley 50:51
I, if we’re talking about privacy, I did some work with an ISP this year. I did some marketing strategy work with them. And when it came to targeting, they’re like, We know everything about all of our customers, we know if our customers about to leave us because they will go to our competitors websites. So they can set up triggers like they can, they literally know, like your ISP know everything about you. Like every single website that you’re visiting, they really do, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. But when they kind of laid it out, I kind of was surprised because we don’t know. So basically, your ISP know exactly what you’re doing unless you’ve got a VPN, in which case your VPN know exactly what you’re doing. And the handset manufacturers know exactly what you’re doing. So I don’t know that this was a step forward for privacy necessarily.

 

Ionut Danifeld 51:51
Depends who you’re seeing. Who once again, depends. Who are you seeing? From which point are you actually seeing? For me as a user, you’re probably not a Apple user, right? iPhone user.

 

Ionut Danifeld 52:06
I use Apple computers, I don’t use, because their mom’s phones remember?

 

Ionut Danifeld 52:12
Yeah, that’s on sale.

 

Ionut Danifeld 52:15
But you haven’t tried another fight where you know, you did use these different phones? Yeah, yeah. The force is strong with Apple, the brand is strong, that the thing about Apple.

 

Ionut Danifeld 52:26
The fucking ecosystem is probably what everybody’s talking about, but that’s not the point. The point is, me as a marketer, I need to be creative because times are changing whatever, Apple knows what the hell you’re doing on the device is not relevant for me. What is relevant is that is blocking the access to different platforms like Facebook, email marketing, ads, cookies, Safari, browsing history, blocking, different pop ups, etc, etc. That’s the part about me as a marketer, I have I need to be creative in order to find ways to find you.

 

Martin Henley 53:14
Yeah, yeah. So the thing is the laser targeting and the huge data has gone away. It’s gone away for Apple users or iPhone users, which I don’t know what percentage that is 50%, still of people in the world who are using mobile phones, use Apple phones?

 

Ionut Danifeld 53:35
I think that’s the statistics, you need to take it a little bit different. I think that you need to take it from a perspective of your industry, or your country. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2%, or why it depends a lot. In the your current market, how big it is. And if you’re looking on the Google Analytics, and you’re doing a splitt on devices, if it’s like 5%, you shouldn’t give a shit but if it’s for example 20% then you will have some problems, because in the end, these are a percent of your revenue.

 

Meta and the Metaverse.

 

Martin Henley 54:06
Yes. Okay. Okay, so that’s interesting then that brings us to my third story, which was the Metaverse. So Facebook don’t need to worry because people won’t be accessing Facebook very shortly through their, their iPhones, there’ll be accessing it through their VR headsets and we’ll get to know all about all of these people all over again. The issue is that what we’ll know about these people is that they’re spending all their day lying on their sofa with their VR headset on. They’re not going to be buying physical things anymore. You know, it’s not good for markets. It’s not good for marketers. And I just felt like I saw somebody talking about this responding to it, it’s like, basically, Facebook is a newsfeed. Do you know I mean, it’s like it is It’s a news feed. And they don’t do a very good job of that. I don’t use Facebook. I use Facebook to wish everyone a happy birthday. And then I’m done with Facebook every day. So I don’t know how you’re feeling about the metaverse and Facebook becoming Meta?

 

Ionut Danifeld 55:14
I don’t know if you remember this photo a few years ago. I think that this photo is basically was like four years, four years ago. So it was this famous photo with Mark Zuckerberg that was basically basically walking in the room and everybody was hooked. They we’re announcing the latest Oculus and it was basically this mask full of people, as you can see here, and Zuckerburg is basically the only one that didn’t have the VR set, which is quite funny. If you’re looking in perspective of the metaverse and the rise of the Facebook zombies

 

Martin Henley 56:04
Rise of the Facebook zombies. Is that what you’re saying?

 

Ionut Danifeld 56:09
That was one of the memes.

 

Martin Henley 56:10
Yeah. I think it’s kind of it’s frightening. Matrix kind of frightening is what I think it is. Oh, I’ve got a really bad view of me on now, I think I don’t know, I don’t know what we’re looking at anymore. Yeah, it’s kind of frightening matrix wise, but I don’t think, I don’t think it’s really going to fly. I mean, I’ve worn a VR headset for about 10 seconds of my life. I’m not engaged in computer games or anything like that. It’s clearly not targeting me. You know, but what’s the point of that? The point of that is yes, scary. Not good for marketers. You know, that’s, that’s kind of my my major point, because if people are spending their entire lives in these virtual environments, what are they going to spend money on? They’re not going to be spending money on car accessories. They’re not going to be spending money necessarily on surf photography, what are they going to be spending their money on? That’s why I want to know that

 

Ionut Danifeld 56:10
They’re going to spend the people are already buying lands in all of this Metaverse, because what basically was triggering Meta was, I know that you’re not a big fan of crypto, but it was basically triggering an avalanche of shitty Meta versus some with a really good potential some really shitty only going for the money, but we are people now buying virtual lands and buildings. I was reading a couple of days a virtual land in one of the Metaverses was selling for I don’t know how many hundreds of Ethereums. So if you asked me what people are going to buy in this Metaverses it’s probably going to be exactly the same thing what we’re doing now. Hey, you remember when people they were buying crops in Farmville?

 

Ionut Danifeld 58:17
Yeah, so I’m thinking Farmville. What was the other one? What was the life one called? Single life? One life? Something something something?

 

Ionut Danifeld 58:27
One life? Yeah. One life?

 

Martin Henley 58:29
Yeah. And the other thing, the other example, so the other thing that’s going on, of course, this year is NFTs. So NFTs. I don’t ,I don’t get that either but people are getting very excited about it. I like the world. That’s what I think, I like the world. I like being active.

 

Ionut Danifeld 58:53
Yeah,

 

Martin Henley 58:54
I’m quite happy with reality.

 

Ionut Danifeld 58:56
You’re quite happy and are quite happy also with the reality of the NSD. We’re going also in the short, long discussion. See, and I don’t want to take so much time. I think that the power of the NFT or the future of identity NFT is definitely where if you’re if you bought a crypto punk or another, any other entity like one of the top three NF T’s, you basically have X

 

 

 

WHAT DO YOU THINK?