00:00 Introductions/ Catch up.

Martin Henley: [00:00:15] Hello there. My name is Martin Henley. This is the effective marketing content extravaganza. And if this is your first time here, you couldn’t possibly have the first clue that I am on a mission to give you everything you need to be successful in your business. Providing of course, what you need to be more successful in your business is to know more about and be implementing more efficiently, more enthusiastically and more effectively sales and marketing in your business, which is of course what you need. You need more customers more profitably, and eventually everything you need to do that will be right here on this channel. So what goes on is I’m giving you everything you need to know about marketing, everything I know that I can give you that you need to know about sales and marketing. That’s the what the series that happens on a monday. On a Tuesday, I bring in anyone I can find with experience to share with you. If you are looking to be more successful in your business, that’s talk marketing. Every other Wednesday, Melanie Farmer comes along and we look at the marketing news and speculate wildly about what that might mean for you in your marketing life and your marketing career. And on the other Wednesday, I do marketing reviews so you don’t have to. On a Thursday I’ll be here thinking out loud, and on a Friday we respond to the very best and the very worst of marketing content on the Internet. So if that sounds like it might be interesting and useful, please tell me it does, because we’re only here to be interesting and useful. Now would be a great time to like, share, subscribe and comment because that will give us the motivation that we need to continue on this epic, epic journey. So today is that other Wednesday when Melanie Farmer comes along and we look at the marketing news and speculate wildly about what it might mean for you in your business and your marketing career. So here we are. After her mammoth Christmas break. It is the concierge of co-creation at Crazy Might Work. It’s Melanie Farmer.

Melanie Farmer: [00:01:57] Good afternoon, Melanie. Wow. What a what a a promise. There’s so much amazing content. Martin. Good for you. Good for you.

Martin Henley: [00:02:06] We are trying. Melanie Farmer It’s not a very English thing to do, to be seen, to be trying, but we are trying. We don’t care who knows it. We don’t.

Melanie Farmer: [00:02:13] Care.

Martin Henley: [00:02:16] How are you, sister, after your mammoth Christmas break? It’s summer holidays as well as Christmas, isn’t it? In Australia? That’s kind of what happens.

Melanie Farmer: [00:02:23] Yeah, Yeah. And you know, I’ve just I’ve spent a couple of weeks really smashing out a lot of gardening. I have now I know things about how to grow herbs and ones that are legal, in case anyone’s wondering. But maybe I’ll move on and to advance herbs later. But yeah, I’ve got this amazing herb garden and all my tiles are looking beautiful. I’m ready for summer barbecues and so forth. So it’s been quite holiday and lots of times sitting on beaches and just hanging out.

Martin Henley: [00:02:59] Yes. Because this was your promise before you went away, is that you were going to do absolutely nothing. After we saw what was going on in Tasmania, you have the opportunity to go to not you, but everyone has the opportunity to go to Tasmania and do absolutely nothing. Look like you’re dead when your children need to be taken care of.

Melanie Farmer: [00:03:16] They did things right. That’s right. Yeah, absolutely. So I did that. I took that advice, did very little apart from the gardening. That’s when I got kind of active and I feel good for it.

Martin Henley: [00:03:28] Fantastic. Excellent. Cool. So we start typically with a little post. Do you have a post? I mean, have you?

Melanie Farmer: [00:03:36] Oh, that will be it. My herb garden. That’s a post. Because I will say because I spent a year killing the original one. And now I went and actually ask questions at a plant nursery and learned why I killed the first one. And now I feel like I know things not enough to be really dangerous, but I’m so my boast is I have planted herbs. Look at me go.

Martin Henley: [00:03:59] Fantastic. And so you willfully killed these things, or was it through ignorance and negligence that you kill?

Melanie Farmer: [00:04:04] Total ignorance. Yes. Overwatering, No feeding, feeding the wrong thing. And it didn’t help that we had two floods and a drought in one year. So the guy at the nursery said to me, Don’t take it personally. Everyone’s herbs have died. I’m like, okay.

Martin Henley: [00:04:24] Okay, good. All right, well, don’t take it personally, but don’t willfully kill the plants. That’s that’s.

Melanie Farmer: [00:04:28] Not.

Martin Henley: [00:04:29] Okay. My post is I think my desk is nearly finished. I’m really happy with it. All the lights, all the everything seems to be here. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life. You’ve experienced this already. This is my amazing overhead camera for when I actually feel the need to draw pictures on my, which I think is astounding. So I’ve got the camera I want here, I’ve got the camera I want here. Everything is just amazing. It’s just amazing. It’s finished. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life now that it’s finished. There was another post. I’ve lost five K since the last time we spoke, so that’s good. I’m trying to lose some weight. I’ve taken up tea. I haven’t drunk caffeine for 20 years, so you can imagine now with that tiny little bit of caffeine, I’m going at 1000 miles an hour all day, every day. So that’s good news. We’ve got a very a real plan for what’s going to happen with the content here. I am really weirdly excited and motivated for 2023. I think it’s going to be important. I think I’m going to write a book this year. I’ve told you about my book, haven’t I? The answer is listening. So I think I’m going to get that done this year. I think I’m weirdly excited about 2023 while the world goes to shit. I think I’m going to be all right.

Melanie Farmer: [00:05:39] That’s how I feel. That’s awesome. Best post ever. That’s the best post this year, man. Good. Good job.

Martin Henley: [00:05:47] Yeah. It’s my only by so far of the year. How are you feeling? About 2023.

Melanie Farmer: [00:05:52] I’m really excited. I’ve. I’ve started my master’s degree in biomimicry. For those who don’t know, then emulating nature’s genius. It is completely blowing my mind on a daily basis because we’re just diving into a lot of case studies right now. So yeah, it’s nice to kind of think about lifelong learning. I haven’t studied since 2011, so it’s really nice to to go back to it and just be investing in learning again in a subject that’s so weird and new. And yeah, and I’m feeling really good about work. Some good things are happening. So, you know, it’s, it’s yeah, I’m feeling in my health, you know, like, I wouldn’t have imagined, like, gardening man, that is energetic. Yes. So, yeah.

Martin Henley: [00:06:50] We are officially old at this point, I think.

Melanie Farmer: [00:06:51] Melanie Farmer You get excited about growing herbs, you know, that it’s, you know, that’s a step away from having a cup of tea while you watch the herbs grow.

07:01 What’s on Marketing News.

Martin Henley: [00:07:01] Yeah, very, very short. Step away. Okay, Super cool. So we’re not here to talk about herbs. We’re not here to talk about my desk. We’re not here to talk about 2023 necessarily. We are here to talk about marketing news. So what has caught your Farmer? What’s going on that you think is interesting and that people should know about?

Melanie Farmer: [00:07:26] What a couple of months it has been in the world of marketing. A couple of things I’m looking at. One is what’s happening in the UK where the Prime Minister is trying to put CEOs in jail when their platforms, social media and so forth fail to protect children from online harm, and in particular when that leads to suicide. So the idea that you could jail a CEO for content that should have been vetted, that’s a bit of a different move, particularly in the UK. Yes. So there’s a lot of freedom of speech stuff going on over there with bills being put forward and so forth. The second story is the inevitable story about Elon Musk, which sort of comes up all the time. But the interesting, like him being in court, this is just from three days ago where he told a jury on Friday, well, he was trying to defend his tweet, which was quite misleading, suggesting that he had already secured funding for Tesla and he actually hadn’t. And then a lot of investors, of course, started making decisions, assuming that it was true. So he had not followed the legal rules around how you might make announcements about selling a company or taking investment.

Martin Henley: [00:09:04] Okay. Well, we’ll get into that.

Melanie Farmer: [00:09:07] Yeah. And then the third one is about teenage data. So Meta, parent of Facebook announcing that they are going to shield teenagers from advertisers to avoid certain targeted ads. And I guess that they’re specifically talking about gambling and alcohol and that sort of thing. Yeah. So there’s some interesting nuances to that story as well.

Martin Henley: [00:09:34] Okay, super cool. I’ve also got three stories. My first story is from The New York Times, and the headline is Google Calls in Help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for AI Fight. So this is about the fact what’s gone on while you’ve been on your holidays is that chat GPT has happened and it is amazing is ridiculous. I’ve done a review so yeah so Google are concerned about the AI fight that’s going to go on between them and chat. But my second story is from BBC.com. Aam and it’s about Google’s parent alphabet cutting 12,000 jobs. But that really goes into my third story which is from marketing week is how the headline is chief growth officer among most in-demand roles for 2023. So those three things I think are kind of connected so that’s what I’m that’s kind of what I’m interested in. So we need to prioritize these things, don’t we? What do we think is the most important of those six stories? Where do we start? Which do you think is the most important of your three stories? We’ll start with that one.

Melanie Farmer: [00:10:50] I think for me, it’s probably putting CEOs in jail.

Martin Henley: [00:10:55] Good. Put in jail. That just has a beautiful poetry to it, doesn’t it?

Melanie Farmer: [00:10:59] You know, I feel like that’s got your attention as a man.

11:02 Tech CEOs face jail.

Martin Henley: [00:11:02] Yes. Okay, good. So here we are. Tech bosses could be could face jail as UK government backs down on online harm the government has. Why do you want to tell us what’s going on with this story?

Melanie Farmer: [00:11:15] Yeah, look, this is. And I thought I’d just reference the source Aljazeera, who I don’t normally go check out, but I thought it was interesting to see what their take on on this story was. So what’s happening in the UK? There’s, there are some side stories around this where freedom of speech. Rowan Atkinson if anyone’s a fan, made a fantastic speech about freedom of speech. But anyway, that aside, this story is about platforms such as social media apps and platforms taking responsibility for for having content that may negatively influence particularly children or teenagers and lead them down a path of suicide at worst and self harm. And so there’s a new online safety bill that has been introduced by the Prime Minister, and there have been some tweaks already and a lot of pushback and so forth. But really it’s saying that if these CEOs willfully ignore or don’t act in good faith, you can see this just saying there, they willfully ignore the rules when it comes to constraints around content. And they’re listing of course, they’re TikTok, YouTube, all of these that if in the event that that can be linked to a suicide of a child or a teenager that CEO faces, I think it’s three months in prison. And so, I mean, I think in essence, it’s highly unlikely that anybody will end up in prison over this. But I think it is putting a big spotlight on the fact that this there needs to be some accountability around what content is allowed to go online.

Martin Henley: [00:13:21] Yeah. So who are the CEOs? Are we talking about the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter and Tik Tok and those businesses? Are we.

Melanie Farmer: [00:13:30] Well, those those CEOs don’t, I guess, reside in the UK. So I would imagine and I know I haven’t got the full detail here, that it would be those domiciled in the UK. So more likely than managing director at a country level or the CEO of a country level who’s who’s allowing because these laws are UK laws, there may be different laws in other countries. So this what it’s doing is saying that within the UK if this content is making its way to UK children and teenagers and damaging their their health, then there needs to be consequences at the highest level. And I guess that what has happened historically is that you could create a situation with full or full guy or girl and you say this person put that content out there and then that person allowed it from my marketing department, whatever. So the the message from the PM is the CEO is going to jail over something if that can be linked. But you can imagine how challenging it would be to make the link that this content has led to a suicide.

Martin Henley: [00:14:58] Yes, well, this is interesting, isn’t it? Because the platforms hide behind the fact that they are just the communication channel and they’re not publishers. But I think we’ve seen enough evidence to know that they are deciding what gets posted. What doesn’t get posted, I think. The interesting, exciting thing about what Musk is doing at Twitter is that he is just going to war with these things and he is like more changes going on. You know, he just goes straight to the root and cuts out these issues. So we spoke, didn’t we, a few months ago about the fact that Twitter were profiting from child pornography, pornography which is just absolutely disgusting, that they are, but nobody seems to care. So what’s interesting to me about this I’m only aware of this now is that it’s a political issue. And he was faced he’s being forced to do this. It’s not because he’s a good guy. Literally, this could be his could have been his first defeat on a bill in the House of Commons. But there are 50 lawmakers who said that they would oppose it if it wasn’t stronger. It’s aimed at making companies stamp out illegal content on their sites, such as revenge, pornography and encouragement to commit suicide. The thing that frazzled my mind and I talk about things that phrase in my mind all the time, like maybe my mind is easily frazzled. But who in their right mind is not interested in protecting children from revenge, pornography and encouragement to commit suicide? What kind of world are we actually living in? You know, the environment for young people now is just so far removed from anything that makes any sense to me. It’s just like it’s crazy. Like Twitter are profiting from pornography. Everyone’s like, Yeah, okay, that happens. It’s like, No, it shouldn’t happen. So why are we.

Melanie Farmer: [00:16:48] Are we.

Martin Henley: [00:16:49] Why is society happy to for our children to grow up in this clearly, clearly toxic environment that is the online world? You know, it blows my mind. And and and the government of the UK wouldn’t be doing anything about it except for politically they have to because they’re not getting the support they need politically. It’s disgusting.

Melanie Farmer: [00:17:12] Yeah. Look, I mean, in essence, I’m happy that it’s a story in the sense that there is a new bill that can be referenced and it’d be interesting to see like there’s a there’s a sentence in here about 50 lawmakers from from his own party. And the main said they would support another amendment. Also, there’s lawmakers, not lawyers. I would be interested to see whether this shows up in law and see if there become some case case law to to to you. How is that going to play out? Because because I do think there is definitely something to be said for accountability at the highest level, which is missing. And it becomes very easy to not deal with that now. And I would say that in defense of a big company that you are dealing with volume, you’re dealing with the public. So the ability to monitor and understand that something has not been given consent. And so some boyfriend and girlfriend have filmed each other, you know, doing the act and then they’ve broken up and then let’s say the boyfriend posts that tape without the consent of the girl. That’s the kind of thing that’s happening all the time now. But how would how would they know that that is without consent? Certainly. Why are they allowing anything like that to be posted full stop without evidence of consent? So there’s a lot of, I guess, signalling that change has to happen about how content makes its way onto your site in the first place. And because these are global platforms, then there would need to be a globally impactful change. And I think there should be like I mean, absolute bloody should be. It’s just horrific to think of what that might do to somebody’s reputation and also how violating just for.

Martin Henley: [00:19:24] That susceptible these people are already to suicide. I mean, I had an amazing conversation with a guy called Frank King. It’s coming up tomorrow on the talk marketing. He’s a comedian and a suicide prevention speaker. And it was amazing. It was literally amazing. But it’s 800,000 people a year globally commit suicide and that isn’t the entire number because that doesn’t include like opioids over what do I call that when you overdose on opioids? Because unless they leave a note, you don’t know if it was a suicide or it was just an overdose.

Melanie Farmer: [00:20:05] So.

Martin Henley: [00:20:06] Yeah, So I think above and beyond above and beyond like the legal requirement, like. You would hope that advertisers would say, we are pulling all of our content from your platform until you remove all of the child exploitation, child porn, all of that stuff. But they don’t do you know what I mean? So it should be beyond the legal, beyond the regulation, beyond the whatever it should be. As human beings, children need to be protected. And anyone who is failing to protect children should be going to prison. So they may not be domiciled here. The CEOs of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, but they are domiciled in the United States and surely the United States and the UK, Australia, we have similar values or we should have a similar value, which is children should be protected from this absolute vileness. Do you know what I mean? And they certainly should not be the subject of this vileness. Yeah, I’m with you, but I wouldn’t even put them in prison. For me, it would be capital punishment. It would be immediately. You’re happy for this to happen to children. You should be happy for it to happen to you. Yeah. And advertisers are without wanting to get into a political conversation, they’re very outspoken on what are much less impactful issues around. I don’t know. All of the dozen things that woke people are really excited about, but when actual harm is being committed, they’re nowhere to be seen. You know, and this isn’t the beginning and the end of it. We’re talking about slavery and the chocolate trade in the mobile phone trade in all of children. And they’re nowhere to be seen on these subjects. I could get very.

Melanie Farmer: [00:21:50] Angry how devastating that children because, of course, they will find groups, for example, on Facebook or any other TikTok which are instructing the value, benefit and method of suicide. And so, you know, the idea that that’s cool is really quite worrying, right? Yeah, not acceptable. And how you’re creating a safe place to, you know, to generate an increase in suicide. And by the way, in the last couple of years through COVID, the tracking of suicide, certainly in Australia, I don’t know what the data is globally, but there was a big spike not just in mental health, mental illness, but over in that 20, 20, 2021 lockdown. The data is telling us in Australia that there was a spike in suicide. It’s yet to be proven that it’s attributable to the isolation we experienced and so forth and the and the anxiety around job losses and all the other thing. But you would imagine that’s probably what did it. Lack of social connection. So but a big spike in suicide and and a very very big spike in mental illness and in fact funds for research and support services also spiked in response. So it’s something that the government knows that this is the thing. But I think if you look at what is happening in parallel in the in the marketing platforms that we have, these social media, the at least this is a signal about accountability, but it does look like they’ve kind of chop the legs off it a bit and there’s not. But I would like to see the first case, successful case tried where somebody is forced to take accountability. And I mean, I can see that coming in. This person becomes the evil purveyor of whatever, and they’re just one of many. But, you know, I want to see that there are actual consequences. And I think that’s what their intention is. But yeah, it’s shocking. It’s just like you say, these are these unacceptable content. That’s just it’s not it’s not freedom of speech. It’s it’s unsafe, dangerous and and leading to deaths that that that doesn’t make sense to me that that’s that’s fine.

Martin Henley: [00:24:28] It’s not freedom of speech. It’s abuse. It’s actual abuse and it’s actually profiting from abuse. And it’s and it’s abuse of the most vulnerable people in society, which are children. There’s not enough going on to protect children, I think, in in our society. And there should be lots more.

Melanie Farmer: [00:24:45] Okay. So I think that’s an important story. Right? You started with it.

Martin Henley: [00:24:49] Yes. What a story that would be. But you know what he is like if you are a brand and you want to you want to pick up on a a cause, there’s a cause wouldn’t cost you any money. Do you know what I mean? You’d save some money on advertising to say, actually, we’re not going to we’re not going to support this industry anymore. But you don’t see brands doing it because I don’t know these much more watered. For me. Issues get all of the attention and in the meantime, actual people are actually suffering. Okay, let’s draw a line and move on from that because I think that’s pretty emotive. I could get myself cancelled. Okay, good. Right.

25:29 Google vs ChatGPT.

Martin Henley: [00:25:29] So let’s go to my I think most important story. This is a little bit reminiscent of the headline Google Calls in Help from Larry Page and Sergey Brin for I Fight a rival chatbot has shaken Google out of its routine with the founders who left three years ago re-engaging and more than 20 A.I. projects in the works. So this is about I’ve highlighted this. I don’t know why it’s not. Oh, here we go. So last month, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, held several meetings with company executives. The topic arrival’s new chat bot, a clever AI product that looked as if it could be the first notable threat in decades to Google’s $149 Billion Search business. The reengagement of Google’s founders at the invitation of the company’s current chief executive, Sundar Pichai, emphasized the urgency felt among Google’s executives about artificial intelligence And that chat bot chat GPT, the new AI technology is shaking Google out of its routine. Mr. Pichai declared a code red, upending existing plans and jumpstarting AI development a moment of significant vulnerability for Google because this thing chat GPT is also it’s like a writing thing and it’s like a search thing. So for example, this is what it looks like. So for example, if I were to say, give me an outline for a five day training on biomimicry, I don’t know if you’ve seen this. Have you seen this?

Melanie Farmer: [00:27:08] Oh, go on.

Martin Henley: [00:27:10] Are you ready to be astounded and amazed? It goes like this. Thinks about it. Day one Introduction to Biomimicry. Right. So maybe I should move us. Can I move us right now?

Melanie Farmer: [00:27:28] Holy. Day for.

Martin Henley: [00:27:52] Is that insane or is that insane?

Melanie Farmer: [00:27:56] Well, it’s it’s not entirely like, you know, there’s obviously things, but yeah, that’s. That’s incredible.

Martin Henley: [00:28:05] Yes. Okay. So you’re forging a career in biomimicry. You might want to put together a five day training there in a minute is a pretty useful, interesting starting point for a five day thing. And then you might want to think about, well, who.

Melanie Farmer: [00:28:21] Are.

Martin Henley: [00:28:23] The you know, who should I research? So who are the leading thinkers in biomimicry? And it goes to work. There are several leading thinkers. Janine, Ben, Ben. Yes.

Melanie Farmer: [00:28:40] Well, she has to be She’s.

Martin Henley: [00:28:45] Michael Palin, British architect and founder of Exploration Architecture, Dana Baumeister.

Melanie Farmer: [00:28:53] Yes, she well, she’s right up there with Janine. She’s she’s my lecturer.

Martin Henley: [00:28:59] Okay. Janine Banus is there twice. Julien Vincent.

Melanie Farmer: [00:29:04] And yeah, there’s a comment on how Dana and Janine work together.

Martin Henley: [00:29:07] Okay. Karim Khalifa These are just a few examples, but there are many other leading thinkers in the field of biomimicry who are contributing in different areas and aspects of the field. So then maybe so you’re plugged in. You’ve gone straight shortcut straight into like this is the actual stuff. And then you might say, okay.

Melanie Farmer: [00:29:26] Well, what are.

Martin Henley: [00:29:29] The best case studies?

Melanie Farmer: [00:29:32] Oh, yeah. Or bio. What is this what did you say? Gpt.

Martin Henley: [00:29:38] Gpt. Everyone’s been talking about this while you’ve been on holiday.

Melanie Farmer: [00:29:42] Oh, my gosh. I’m going to be talking about it. Yes. Goodbye. Google. What the hell Now? What? Are they worried?

Martin Henley: [00:29:48] No wonder they’re worried. So Velcro Swiss engineer Jorge de Mistral was inspired by the way Burs stick to his clothes and his dog’s fur to create Velcro a hook.

Melanie Farmer: [00:29:59] And that is.

Martin Henley: [00:30:00] Shark Technologies, Stirling engine zephyr solar biomimetic self-healing kingfisher bird inspired bullet train.

Melanie Farmer: [00:30:11] Yeah, in Tokyo.

Martin Henley: [00:30:13] These are all. This is insane. This is absolutely insane. So then you might say, okay, so now I know who the leading. I know I’ve got my five day outline. I know who the leading thinkers are. I know I’ve got some amazing case studies.

Melanie Farmer: [00:30:30] So about all you can say.

Martin Henley: [00:30:32] Okay, what.

Melanie Farmer: [00:30:34] Tools or methods?

Martin Henley: [00:30:36] Okay, So what are the leading methodologies.

Melanie Farmer: [00:30:43] In.

Martin Henley: [00:30:46] Bio mimicry?

Melanie Farmer: [00:30:51] So the should know about the design.

Martin Henley: [00:30:54] There are several methodologies that are commonly used in biomimicry. Some of the most notable include bio inspiration. Biomimicry Design spiral. Nature based design processes life’s principles.

Melanie Farmer: [00:31:13] Just working through those now?

Martin Henley: [00:31:15] Yes. So we don’t have to wait. We can say what are the leading bio mimicry?

Melanie Farmer: [00:31:27] Mimicry tools. That’s the.

Martin Henley: [00:31:33] Hardest thing I do in front of people leading biomimicry.

Melanie Farmer: [00:31:39] Tools.

Martin Henley: [00:31:41] Only to enter biomimicry.

Melanie Farmer: [00:31:43] We asked. Nature is the number one. If they don’t come up with ask nature.

Martin Henley: [00:31:49] Okay, biomimicry scan. This is a tool used to identify potential natural solutions to design problem. Biomimicry Design matrix. Nature’s Playbook. Biomimicry framework.

Melanie Farmer: [00:32:06] Yes.

Martin Henley: [00:32:07] Biomimicry design lends biomimicry innovation methods. And who started giving us information about this? So biomimicry innovation, a method developed by Michael Paulin in which the process of biomimicry is used to generate innovative solutions to problems.

Melanie Farmer: [00:32:27] And the toolkit is amazing.

Martin Henley: [00:32:30] We can say, okay, what is right?

Melanie Farmer: [00:32:34] Is this this dive in and say, show us.

Martin Henley: [00:32:38] How does it work?

Melanie Farmer: [00:32:42] It’s just freaking me out that you’ve gone five day conference sort of training like, Well, this is going to save a lot of time, but of course you’re going to tweak that because there’s you’ve got to think about what problems you’re solving and who’s the audience. But in general, every every every training should start with a definition and have some theory and applied. So, you know. Things that you could, you know, that you need to do in that program no matter what. And then what’s.

Martin Henley: [00:33:17] Happened in like we’ve been on this for 5 minutes have we like this is just given us what is that 400 words on biomimicry, innovation. That’s just one of these seven tools. So we could have three and a half thousand words on these biomimicry tools. We could have there’s six of these 3000 words on biomimicry methodologies. You know, we know who the leading thinkers are. So then you might say.

Melanie Farmer: [00:33:42] Recommended reading. Recommended Recommended reading.

Martin Henley: [00:33:46] Yes. What is the recommended reading?

Melanie Farmer: [00:33:53] And I’ll tell you if I have these three, because, of course, this is so fresh in my mind from the last month. Now it better say innervated by abundant. Yep. Good. Janine. That is the classic 97 Dana and William. Yes. Yes. Okay. So all of these are. Absolutely. But this what this tells me is that I’m studying in the right place because I have Dana and Jeanine as the creators and whatnot. That’s who I’m studying under.

Martin Henley: [00:34:31] Okay, good. So you’re getting some some positive reinforcement. That’s good. But what this is telling the world is we might be the first people who’ve actually asked about biomimicry.

Melanie Farmer: [00:34:42] Right. And if I got your back.

Martin Henley: [00:34:45] Do you know what I mean? It’s like. So it’s all there. So then you might say, okay, I should write my own book. And you could say, Give me an outline for a 60,000 word.

Melanie Farmer: [00:35:02] Book.

Martin Henley: [00:35:03] On bio mimicry.

Melanie Farmer: [00:35:07] This is way too much fun. Like, this is much fun. Fun. It’s kind of terrifying. And I mean, no wonder Google are like, Holy crap. Yeah, well, because this is.

Martin Henley: [00:35:23] This is taking it to where it’s useful. Do you know what I mean? We’ve just generated in 5 minutes. What do you think? 4000. 5000 words. It would not us the tool. And the thing is I think about this is clearly it’s about what’s it about? I mean, in 5 minutes we’ve put together, we know who the leading thinkers are. We know what the leading methodologies are. We know what the leading tools are. We’ve got some great case studies. We’ve got an outline for a five day training. It’s giving us an outline for a book like. Right. It’s giving us the outline for a book. Do you know? I mean, now.

Melanie Farmer: [00:36:01] I’ll tell you what’s missing. Like it is interesting because like, when you look at AI versus humans, the one thing that’s missing is anything about myth busting, which is a big so what biomimicry is not and people get confused. So by a Morpheus or Morpheus, for example, is where you make a building that looks like nature, but in no way emulates it like it’s inefficient, it’s made of plastic, it’s really harmful to the environment. It might be beautiful, but it’s not actually helping the environment, nor is it actually mimicking nature. It just looks like nature. So and then there’s bio robotics also is not.

Martin Henley: [00:36:42] But it’s only because we haven’t asked the question. We then we ask the question, it gives us the answer to those as well.

Melanie Farmer: [00:36:49] Only about copying nature. Good. Yeah, not about copy nature. It’s about understanding underlying principles that we’re learning from nature rather than about it. Yep. Yep. There you go. There you go. Your key message. So you would probably have to know that you need to ask that question. And that should be almost well early on in in in a book to say know because it is a really it’s a new method. So people would be sort of going, oh, well, I’ve made something and it looks like a butterfly, like it’s not made out of spider silk and it’s not biodegradable and such like. So that’s the whole thing. Agree. It’s like a holistic, systemic approach to learning from nature and applying smart solutions based on on nature. Yeah. There you go. Yeah.

Martin Henley: [00:37:43] I’m thinking about writing a book. So I’m thinking like, this is like, what are the components of a book? Do you know what I mean? So that so that’s why it’s about the quality of the question you ask is two and a half thousand words we’ve created in about 5 minutes. You know, so this is why Google are scared, rightly so, because what they do compared to what.

Melanie Farmer: [00:38:10] Chapter two is.

Martin Henley: [00:38:11] Doing, Jack GPT And the thing is this, um, this has gone on like somebody sent me a link to this in July and it had an $18 free and I consumed $0.03 of it because it was junk, you know what I mean? And I’m saying to my friend Jim, who’s a friend of the show, I’m saying to her, This is junk. It’s not exciting. December 1st week of December, this happened. It’s amazing. And now because of machine learning, it’s taking all these responses is taking all of these questions, all of these answers, and it’s now going to start teaching itself. So where is it going to be in May? Where is it going to be in August? Was it going to be in January 24? Do you know? I mean, it’s like it is insane. So all of a sudden, in the last three, four months, you’ll see the AI generated images. Ai has happened, AI has happened, and it’s going to be interesting. Everyone’s like.

Melanie Farmer: [00:39:08] This is like when voice commands happened, when Siri got her act together. Because I never you might remember when when you very first went ask Siri, hey Siri, Siri would would manage to tell you where a restaurant was. And that’s about it. Now I can get all sorts of, Oh.

Martin Henley: [00:39:31] Now she’s helping you out right now.

Melanie Farmer: [00:39:34] Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Siri. So but now full on recognition and instructions and usefulness so I can ask her to play X, Y, Z on. And she’ll just know it’s on Spotify, which I happened to use it. She’ll know where to find X, Y, Z song. So I don’t need playlists anymore. Don’t anything. Just go, Oh, fancy, listen to this one song or that album. But that was that was sort of overnight as well. So it’s really to me, this feels like what happened with voice commands. They were useless and and everyone rubbished them and say human beings are too complex until they got a larger library of accents, which is what they did, which meant that Alexa and Siri and all these others could understand all these different dialects successfully. And now look at this. This is amazing. I’m going to spend my weekend looking at that and I’m going to fail my degree because of, well, actually what I might do really well because of it.

Martin Henley: [00:40:42] Well, you might. And I think what I think the thing that’s actually missing is the well, the thing that’s always going to be missing from artificial intelligence, the emotion, the empathy, the experience. So all those things are going to be missing. But the thing that will, I think, will always be missing, who knows? Maybe it’s not is the nuance is there like I’m like 94, 95% of copywriters are now out of work. Anyone who is just producing bland copy about commodities is essentially out of work. Why would I employ that person and pay them whatever it costs them to when I can actually just produce the content about any subject in about 5 minutes? Why would I do that? So the opportunity for people like you and I is to look at this as the starting point is to say, okay, I want to write a book about mine is going to be listening, yours is going to be biomimicry. This is how I do it. Now I know that I should go and read those books and I should open my synapses and I should allow myself to be thinking about what goes on. That’s what’s interesting and useful. Just the information on its own is really interesting and useful. Maybe, but it’s not going to capture people’s attention and their imaginations. And what it’s not going to do is transform people to make a change in their lives, which is what I think you actually have to be doing. But yeah, they’re bringing in Sergey Brin and Mr. Page, and it is reminiscent of when Apple brought in Steve Jobs to rescue Apple. Here’s what I think.

Martin Henley: [00:42:20] You know what I think? I say it all the time. Google are offering nothing like the value that they could be offering. They could have done this a long time ago. You know, they are sitting on the world’s data. And the reason they’re not is because they’re not customer focused. They are revenue focused. And so this is we could probably nail another one of my stories with these 12,000 people getting laid off from Google again. They shouldn’t be laying people off. They should be leading us out. If we’re going into a recession, everybody is going to need customers. If you are in the customer acquisition business, if you are in the business of providing people with customers cost effectively, then you shouldn’t struggle. You know, you absolutely shouldn’t struggle. But Google AR because either they don’t know or they forgotten that this is their core business is actually generating cost effective customers for their businesses. They are a marketing platform. And even the fact that they’re excited now about it coming through and they’re seeing this is the threat and now they need to launch 20 eyes, this has got nothing to do with Google. I mean, it’s a great search function and it gives it to you in a much more usable way. But it’s not referenced. You know, you can’t use this academically, essentially. So but the fact that they feel threatened by it indicates, again, that they’re not actually focused on their customers. There’s a recession coming. Everybody’s going to need customers. You are in the customer acquisition business, but now you’re being distracted again by artificial intelligence and copywriting tools, you know?

Melanie Farmer: [00:43:54] Yeah, I think so. With Google, Google having Google scholar where you can source find download many of the scientific papers on saved by mimic or whatever. So they they have organizing in that way. So I can see GPT starting to badge things like this is you know we can show you 50 things and this thing is a reference to such and such. So you could go and say, show me all the group things, you know, group it so I can go to the actual PDF and find the citation and whatever. So you know, people will want those things. Google’s already done that. They’ve grouped things under Google News, Google Scholar, Google, whatever, and whether you know, so I don’t know. I haven’t engaged yet with chat. I imagine they’ve also got sort of some way of grouping these things as well.

Martin Henley: [00:44:47] The thing is. Google has some amazing tools, but there is no innovation like I use Google keep a lot to like reference all these things, which is really useful. There is Google News, which I use when I’m looking for stories to have around these conversations. There is Gmail, there is. But when? When was their last like an innovation? When was there a step change in This is how it makes it better. Yeah, like this. So for example in this article they’re talking about they’re talking about Gmail. And so apparently Sergey Brin or Larry Page or one of them said they were showing them an update to Google. And they’re like, Well, that’s stupid. Why doesn’t it just write the email for them what it is doing that people are building plugins which will automate your email responses. So instead of writing emails, you’re now checking emails and they go, Do you know what I mean? So I think it’s insane. Like the Google angle is interesting. I reviewed this like a couple of weeks ago. It’s insane. Google should be worried, but not because they haven’t got an AI copywriting tool because they’re laying off 12,000 staff, because they still don’t seem to understand they are in the customer acquisition business, they are a marketing sales platform and they’re not doing a good enough job of that for customers. Now, when customers are going to need when businesses need more customers than ever, that’s what I think.

Melanie Farmer: [00:46:08] I wasn’t expecting Google to be disrupted so soon by something like this. It’s it’s yeah you were yeah. I mean I’m I’m wondering what’s happening in the background because like the first port of call is acquisition so and then emulation which you don’t want you want to be in your own category. So I wonder what they’ll do. It starts to make Google look like Microsoft when Microsoft is trying to. For example, I miss teams trying to follow Zoom, who suddenly came out of nowhere? Not quite, but you know, so it looks like and you do not want to be in a land of emulation. You want to be creating category, not.

Martin Henley: [00:46:53] Want to be ahead of the curve. You don’t want to be trying to catch up with these companies. Okay, good. All right. So there you go. There you go. That will just. You and your biomimicry status. If I search in six months time, I honestly expect Melanie Farmer to come up as one of the leading thinkers in the.

Melanie Farmer: [00:47:10] Field of Bloom. Oh, my goodness. But book, I always get it to me.

Martin Henley: [00:47:16] Yes. Let’s go to your second subject. What’s your second most important.

Melanie Farmer: [00:47:21] To the quite heavy mine? Let’s let’s try I don’t know if there’s a light angle to this, but. Right. So the one is gone.

Martin Henley: [00:47:30] Yeah. Let’s keep it. Let’s get the heavy stuff done, shall we? We’ll get the heavy lifting done. The story about the headline. Your story meter protects teens data. What is this about?

47:46 Meta protects teens’ data.

Melanie Farmer: [00:47:46] So this is a story from when is it? A week? Just over a week ago. And it’s about Meta slash Facebook changing their data access so that certain advertisers won’t be able to advertise to teenagers in particular. And so they’re just tightening that. So there’s there’s apparently a string of new measures and and and these posts are being restricted by gender and age and so forth. But what is interesting is they’re saying that the user’s age and location would still be available if they were to say, consume some data. So that means that if I was advertising to a group and and some 14 year olds, which I happen to be travelling were in Sydney and they were clicking on the thing I and maybe the family organically, I’d be able to see that, but I wouldn’t be able to have Facebook filter those or that audience for me and directly market to them. And the idea is that they’re trying to hide explicit material and gambling and alcohol kind of thing. So it does look a bit light on that. See anything I would say, but it is at least some kind of a move in the direction of protection of young people, which is, you know, building on the story that we touched on at the very start. And so it’s just about not being able to show ads to teens, but but it’s not stopping the teens discovering that content anyway.

Martin Henley: [00:49:43] Yeah, I think that children should be off limits, like let’s end the exploitation of children. You know, actually, children don’t have money. So actually what you’re doing is leeching adult’s money anyway. I think it really is time for a really different attitudes. But it goes to I don’t know, it goes to like people are just so, so devalued, you know, and children are so devalued. And I think it’s time for a really different attitude where businesses that exploit children either for through advertising or through any of these other disgusting things that we’ve said, it should just be outlawed. And as consumers, we should, but we’re not organized enough, I don’t suppose. Yeah, it worries me because we know that this isn’t because Instagram and Facebook are nice people. We know that they’ve just been done, haven’t they, for releasing the contact details of was it a million children in Ireland through a hack? They got hacked. So it’s not because these people are nice people, it’s because they just got busted. They just got busted and fined for doing this thing. Yeah, I don’t like it. I don’t know what else there is to say about this.

Melanie Farmer: [00:50:57] Yeah, I would like to I would like to feel that this was some accountability showing up. And I don’t believe that that is the case. But and I also don’t feel like it’s really a strong enough measure because you’re still going to be able to see who’s consuming your your ads effectively. How how do these people find me? Because people will share and I’ll click on my friends thing and whatever. It’s just an interesting I just think, how is it this stuff can be even seen when when you’re of an age, it should just not be able to be seen.

Martin Henley: [00:51:47] Yeah, well, the thing is it’s about targeting them as advertisers in it. So they’re saying the move to tighter data restriction was still see some information being available for advertisers from February the gender and types of post they engage with. Will be protected. However, young users age and location will still be available. And it’s the idea that we are spying on children so that we can advertise to them. You know, that’s that’s what’s going on. That’s what concerns me. So we shouldn’t do it, you know? And the thing is, it’s all very well met Facebook, Instagram doing this right now. We know that Apple have taken them down at the knees. You know, I mean, they’re not making this data data available or they’re giving consumers the opportunity to not have this data. So too little, too late. She cried.

Melanie Farmer: [00:52:36] There you go.

Martin Henley: [00:52:37] Real good. People matter. And Facebook and Instagram, you’re not good people. Okay, cool.

Melanie Farmer: [00:52:43] Thank you. Carry on. And you had another one?

52:46 Growth skills in demand.

Martin Henley: [00:52:46] I’ve got another one. Yes. So my other one is this one tickles me a little bit. Chief Growth Officer among most in-demand roles for 2023. New data from LinkedIn reveals growth managers, growth marketing managers and chief growth officers are among the roles most in demand two 22,023 Jobs on the Rise list shared exclusively with Marketing Week, blah blah blah. The fastest growing market and sales job in the UK is customer success consultant, followed by Sustainability Manager, product operations manager and Sales development representative. In fifth place is Chief Growth Officer with Growth Marketing Manager coming in seventh. In between the two growth roles is enterprise account executives. Sales and marketing roles are among the fastest growing jobs globally. Vice President EMEA and Latin America for LinkedIn Talent Solutions. Olivier Sibiya tells Marketing Week in periods of uncertainty is easy for companies to become insular. But is it important to remain focused on customers, engaging with them, delivering value and keeping your brand front of mind, he says. Noting customer centric roles are highly valued amid a global hiring slowdown. So part of me celebrates the fact that actually now our business is waking up to the fact that they really should just be delivering value for their customers. And part of me is astounded.

Martin Henley: [00:54:05] I’ve never heard of a Chief growth officer before. I researched this an hour and a half ago. And what is chief growth officer mean? Like, isn’t weren’t marketing always responsible for growth and sales? Weren’t they always responsible for growth? It feels to me like they want to cut out the I tell people marketing is the investment you make in finding, winning, having customers profitably, and they just want to cut out the investment bit and they just want someone to do the grow bit. And it just seems to me to be completely stupid and shortsighted and stupid because I have only worked in marketing for 25 years. You know, I’ve only run my own marketing business for where are we, 18 years, 17, 18 years this year. And I’ve never heard of a chief growth officer before. So where on earth are these Chief growth officer is coming from all of a sudden weren’t yesterday like just marketing people And it isn’t it just like instead of changing the titles every 20 minutes, like moving the deckchairs on the Titanic, just understand that you need to make an investment in your business if you can have customers, that’s it. Chief Growth Officer Bollocks. I say.

Melanie Farmer: [00:55:11] I think we like to change words because it makes us feel good about ourselves, like something has changed and therefore different things, different results will happen. And but the other side of the word growth is you’ve got chief risk officers. So those two are really going to have a great time collaborating, aren’t they? The Chief risk Officer and the chief growth officer who have opposite mindsets? So you’ve probably heard in business you’ve got a risk mindset and a growth mindset. And depending on what’s going on in the world, you’ll adopt one or the other. Makes sense. So the fact that they’re signalling we are in a growth mindset because we’ve got a Chief growth officer, then new recruits might feel, Oh good, that means I’ll my job is going to be more secure for 2 minutes because they have a growth mindset. But you know, yeah, I mean it’s just it’s just like any field of endeavor. We, we have a favorite word and then it probably lasts a decade, maybe less these days. And then it’s old news and we don’t want to hear it anymore. Like, I don’t think ten years from now we’ll be using the word work, for example, it’ll be something similar, but not that worked. And ten years ago we didn’t know the word work. We had other words that meant the same thing. So we just you would just change words because we we like to feel that we’re evolving and it’s a safe way to do it.

Martin Henley: [00:56:46] Except I would say this doesn’t happen with anything like the regularity in any other function in business other than marketing. Businesses are failing because they don’t understand what marketing is, and they don’t understand that they have to invest in marketing. And etc., etc., etc.. So what does marketing do that about that? It changes the phraseology again. So it used to be marketing. Now it’s growth. Do you know what I mean? But nobody knew what marketing was. So only ever becomes more and more, more confusing. And they are moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Titanic, you know, it’s marketing it sales when everyone understands that, maybe we can start freestyling with the vernacular. Do you know what I mean? Then? Then that would be cool. But this is just more of you station from the marketing and sales industry. It’s like Chief Growth Officer. Where does it come from? Who cares? On the other side of that, I applaud this 100%. Now is the time to invest in growing your business, in having more customers more profitably, because what’s going to happen is that the the the economies are going to become much more dynamic.

Martin Henley: [00:57:52] There’s going to be movement, there’s opportunity in movement. You will have competitors who will go out of business. Their customers are going to be looking for new suppliers. They should be finding you so 100% if we are going into recession, I don’t know if we officially are or not. I think we officially were. But then they change the definition. So maybe we’re not anymore in these recessionary times. This is when you push your pedal to the metal. This is when you drive hard because you will pick up new customers more cost effectively now than at any other time in any other kind of economic cycle. But you don’t have to now go out and employ a chief growth officer actually invest because because the other side of this is they say, you know, marketing people are the first people to go in a recession. So maybe they’re avoiding that and saying, okay, we’re not looking for marketing people now. We’re looking for chief growth officers for as was my mind.

Melanie Farmer: [00:58:43] Melanie Farmer It is what I think is interesting about this is it is an outcomes title. So does that mean that a chief risk officer will become a chief safety officer? So that person’s title signals the outcomes we’re looking for, which will be safety. And so then we need to change all titles to reflect outcomes, focused titles. And this again, is another way to spend a lot of time naming things. My title, Concierge of Co-creation is a mystery to quite a few people, so but it’s what you do with it that counts in the end. So if you’re asking for.

Martin Henley: [00:59:26] Starter apart from anything else, your title. But the thing is, this is why I dig to have these conversations with you is because you think about it differently. Outcomes. Is it outcomes based? I think it’s interesting. I don’t think it matters so much what people are called. I think it matters what they do. Sales for me seems to be a stupid title. Don’t put sales on your business card. You might as well write, Please don’t like me because people expect to get ripped off by salespeople. So it’s interesting, but it’s not like I’ve never heard of it. I mean, how no one can be having a career as a chief growth officer or else I would have heard of it, you know what I mean? That’s what blows my mind. So where are these people coming from? They’re coming out of the woodwork.

Melanie Farmer: [01:00:11] Okay, good. And shoved the word marketing into a thesaurus. I think we could ask g p t. I’m sure it would tell us the history of this, this title, but let’s not do that right now. I go out to our.

Martin Henley: [01:00:28] Last story, shall I? Shall we? So your last story is it wouldn’t be news without something about Mr. Musk. So let me.

Melanie Farmer: [01:00:41] And you read that from Al Jazeera.

1:00:45 Elon Musk on trial.

Martin Henley: [01:00:45] So have you been what’s the word? Oh, what is the word? How is my mind? What’s the word? Anyway? Let’s they all come to me. Musk on trial says his tweets don’t always affect Tesla stock Just because the tweet something does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly. The Tesla boss told the jury, Elon Musk, Tesla, okay, you tell us what’s going on here.

Melanie Farmer: [01:01:12] He tweeted sometime in October, I think it was sometime late last year before this trial. Anyway, he tweeted, I’m considering taking Tesla private at 420, full stop, funding secured. Now, that wasn’t quite true. And you can imagine if Elon Musk tweeted such a thing, you start to sort of make decisions if you’re an investor, all that you work for, for Tesla and whatever. Now, the he’s in court because they’re saying that you you did this. It was misleading. It wasn’t how you go about. Out seeking funding to do anything like this sort of behavior. And and he’s saying, oh, not everyone believes me on Twitter and acts on it. So his defense is that the audience realize that he’s that it’s fictional. I don’t know that Twitter is a fictional consumption platform. That’s that’s his defense that we all know and trust that it may or may not be real, which is it’s pretty weak defense, in my opinion is. But his thing is literally just because I tweet something doesn’t mean people will believe it and will act. But of course they do. Of course, they would take this seriously, that he is saying that he’s got funding screwed. Wasn’t actually true.

Martin Henley: [01:02:50] Yes.

Melanie Farmer: [01:02:52] So I just I guess.

Martin Henley: [01:02:58] Okay. So sorry. You say what you were going to say and I’ll say what I was going to say.

Melanie Farmer: [01:03:05] I feel like this is another accountability moment. It is interesting that it’s on his own platform now. Twitter, which it wasn’t at the time he tweeted this, but this is this is people’s money and lives. And there’s a way to go about selling your company if we’re going to do all that. So I think that it is a direct impact. It’s, you know, I think you need to be responsible for for people who’ve given you their money. Yes. And this is really reckless, I think, with people’s money, because it might change the valuation of like if I had put let’s say I had $1,000,000, I put it into Tesla, and he tweets that my million dollars might suddenly plummet down or it might go through the roof. But either way, he hasn’t consulted me. I’ve got no warning. I can’t make decisions about it. You just put it on Twitter. So I think it’s reckless. And I do think he needs to be held to account for that kind of thing. If everyone could do that. And it’s not only his freedom of speech, I think it’s like freedom to just play with other people’s money like it’s monopoly. And there’s a lot of people’s lives in tied up in Tesla. And, you know, his tweet led to it going through the roof in valuation, in fact, is what my understanding is, but falsely so. So, you know, that’s all I just think a bit reckless should be a bit more responsible. And I think it’s appropriate that some body in that position who’s had that impact should probably at least be held to account to consider the impact of their actions, whoever they are.

Martin Henley: [01:05:06] Whoever they are, even if they are. Elon Musk Okay. So here’s what I think. This is what is known as the Rachel Meadow or the Tucker Carlson defense. So basically you can say whatever you like on the on the news, on the whatever, and your lawyers turn up in court and say, oh, now everyone knows that this is fiction. Everyone knows that these are making it up. I mean, so nobody takes this seriously. So it can’t have had an effect. The thing is that Elon Musk has previous, doesn’t he? I mean, he is an extraordinarily influential person. So the big example was Dogecoin, wasn’t it, where he said, Everyone, let’s do Dogecoin, everyone did it. Lots of it went up in value hugely. Clearly lots of people will have made money. Clearly lots of people will not have made money. I think this is like securities type stuff because it’s insider trading, isn’t it? It’s basically saying, I’m going to do this thing. Everyone responds. So but then he doesn’t do it necessarily and it costs people money. The thing is, we’ve got now Logan Paul has cost people with his zoo coin. I don’t know if you’ve seen this thing literally cost individuals millions of dollars because they invested in his cryptocurrency.

Martin Henley: [01:06:17] It feels to me like the world’s gone mad when I collect content. Sometimes there is a category called World’s Gone Mad, where it’s just got examples of things that are just completely stupid. Shouldn’t happen. I don’t know what the I don’t know what the answer is. People. This is where we’ve got to with the state of media is like some people have access to tens of millions of people and some people pay a lot of attention and react to what it is that they say. And that has a material effect on people’s financial wellbeing and arguably their wellbeing. And this is where we’ve got to with the platforms that we use in marketing to find a. Or attract, win and keep customers profitably. I don’t know what the answer is. Melanie Farmer But I just know that it’s not going to stop. And I think we’re seeing a slightly alarming trend towards people with this huge audiences and influence just ripping people off and not actually giving a shit about people at all. You know, their followers, the people they’re supposed to care about.

Melanie Farmer: [01:07:24] I mean, I see it as an opportunity to think about my own responsibility because I can’t be dealing with other peoples because I don’t see like at the moment. But I it does it’s, it’s a takeaway for me to say that’s interesting. I can take a lesson to say, am I being responsible? And I believe that I am and so forth. But when it comes to online and all of this. But, you know, if I, if I, if I can at least start with myself, that’s one person. And, you know, there is there are things which can really, you know, when I’m when I’m at that point that I’ve got several billion and whatnot, I would hope that I would take some responsibility about it is worrying to me. And I’m glad that he’s in court at least having the discussion.

Martin Henley: [01:08:25] But he’s always in court. I think this is a feature of being rich, is that you are always in court. You know, this is why when you’re rich, you have to have lawyers. The thing is, if you were able to, because I’m sensing a movement where people are enjoying Elon Musk, much less, I feel like you might be in that camp. But can you imagine being Elon Musk and you can sit there and you can write a tweet on your phone. He could be sitting on the toilet, he can write a tweet on his phone, and he’ll think this could you know, this could make me millions of.

Melanie Farmer: [01:08:55] Dollars or.

Martin Henley: [01:08:56] This could affect millions of people. Like, do you have the fortitude to not send that tweet? You know what I mean? Do any of us. So I think.

Melanie Farmer: [01:09:06] There is an.

Martin Henley: [01:09:06] Issue. Yeah. Like could could you resist the temptation? Like they say that he’s not particularly interested in attention, but he certainly profits from the attention that you get. I thought this was going to be about. So the share price went up because they thought there was going to be a forced buyout. So it actually probably generated him billions of dollars at a point in time where he could really use the billions of dollars because he was going to be forced to overpay. Now to buy Twitter, you know, it’s like, could you resist the temptation to do that? And is this the worst example of this happening? Because I would say Logan Paul is worse because he has cost individuals like millions of dollars. But at the same time, those people invested those millions of dollars should also take some responsibility. And maybe people individuals shouldn’t pay so much attention and give so much credence to what people write in their tweets. Maybe that’s the lesson.

Melanie Farmer: [01:09:58] Well, that is also true. But this guy is his own bull and bear market, isn’t he? Like Wall Street on his own because he can just influence the value of of a particular share by having it voicing your opinion about it. And then, you know, the world responds. That’s quite terrifying to think that he can. Yeah, it’s like a world, you know, he’s the puppeteer. And I like the fact that there’s at least an attempt to have him go through an awkward conversation. If nothing else in court, who knows what’s going to happen at the end of it. But you know, it is.

Martin Henley: [01:10:33] Going to happen. It’s all part of the soap opera.

Melanie Farmer: [01:10:36] Oh, yeah.

Martin Henley: [01:10:36] All part of the soap opera. And I don’t think he’s the puppet master. I don’t think. But he’s no, no. People who spend money on shares and there are people who spend money on cryptocurrencies. And so every time he says something, it has an effect. And the thing is, I think if that were me, I’d be 100 times worse. You know, every 20 minutes it’d be like.

Melanie Farmer: [01:10:59] Why doesn’t.

Martin Henley: [01:10:59] Everyone send me a dollar? And then do you know what I mean? It’s like, you know.

Melanie Farmer: [01:11:04] And then with power.

Martin Henley: [01:11:05] Comes great responsibility. But, like, he hasn’t asked for the power. Do you know what I mean? He’s maybe earned the power is the right word or the. Or the power has come to him. I think I’d be worse if I was Elon Musk. I honestly think I’d be. I’d be worse. I’d be. Every 20 minutes I take I’d take a share that was a sent and say, this share is amazing. I’m going to spend $1,000,000 on this share now. So now I’ve got whatever that is, 100,000 now 10,000 worth of shares everyone goes out and buy. You just need to know what I mean. And that share price goes up. The thing is, it’s it’s a feature of the way media is working in 2023 and not necessarily a feature of his personality that he’s doing this. And I think, yeah, in terms of just being rich, you are in court all the time. That’s the way it works.

Melanie Farmer: [01:11:52] And we don’t make rational, logical decisions where it comes to investment anyway. We never, ever have. It’s fictional. That we don’t make emotional decisions around investment. We we do. Yeah. And this is this is just happening overnight. So that’s an interesting twist on things because it used to be a little bit more like.

Martin Henley: [01:12:15] Yeah, it would be over a period of time.

Melanie Farmer: [01:12:18] But yeah, you’re not reaching people overnight.

Martin Henley: [01:12:21] What better, what better reason is there for investing in a in a cryptocurrency then? Elon Musk has just told everyone to go invest in this cryptocurrency. 100% demand for that currency is going to go up and the value of it is going to go up. And I know money who’ve made I know people who’ve made money just by following Elon Musk, you know. So yeah, I don’t think he’s the bad guy that you seem and the world seems to want him to be right now.

Melanie Farmer: [01:12:47] You know, I think there’s a there’s a lot of worship in a musk and I hopefully put in some other ideas, but I am very happy. I would rather it was Elon Musk than many others. So, for example, the fact is that as a result of his tweet, Tesla electric cars have significantly benefited. I haven’t just bought my hybrid car. I wonder if Toyota would have invested as heavily in building that nice hybrid car so I can save the planet if I’m going to drive a car at all without this, without this all of this around electric cars. So I, I think of all the people who are going to be a bit mad in this area. There’s there’s this appetite for the sort of products that he’s coming up with, the solutions, the efficiency, you know, things like PayPal, things like Tesla. These are fantastic. These are fantastic projects. So I’m glad it’s him and not maybe others. But, you know, it’s interesting because Apple nearly went bust in the nineties eighties knows and then Bill Gates came along and gave Steve Jobs $150 million is not that widely known to invest in Apple. And so there’s always been this idea that there’s this rivalry between Apple and Microsoft, but there’s so much co-investment between them. You know, it’s like they would have gone bust now. Bill Gates could have gone Brilliant, See you later. But he didn’t buy them or anything like that. Didn’t let them go bust. He gave them $150 million to keep on going and of course is benefiting directly from that. So it is very interesting what’s actually happening by the collective puppeteers, if you like, and what we think is reality at the front line and who hates who and what’s actually happening.

Martin Henley: [01:14:55] It’s all just stories. Melanie Farmer It’s all just stories. And you know what? It’s a soap opera, and the soap opera needs its villains and it needs its good guys and it needs the good guys to go bad and the bad guys to go good. And this is the whole story. So this is what’s going on with Andrew Tate. I don’t know if you’ve missed this, but he’s like, the media needs these.

Melanie Farmer: [01:15:16] Personalities.

Martin Henley: [01:15:17] These characters.

Melanie Farmer: [01:15:19] Again.

Martin Henley: [01:15:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So however you feel about that, this is this is the game we play. I think if we are in, in the business of sales and marketing, you know, we play these games.

Melanie Farmer: [01:15:31] Yes we do. Yes we do. They go so yeah. Can we go to the end. I think we did, we did it.

Martin Henley: [01:15:40] Brilliant work. I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. I always do. I really hope people get as much satisfaction out of listening to us as we do have in these conversations, and maybe they could let us know. So we did get to the end. Is there anything you haven’t said that you would like to say?

Melanie Farmer: [01:15:55] Melanie Farmer Well, I guess I’m just saying if there’s anything you want us to talk about that we have completely missed the boat on. We’d love to know that, wouldn’t we?

Martin Henley: [01:16:07] Yeah, because over Christmas, you know, when Over Christmas. I don’t know if you get this, I always get, like, really good ideas of things that I should be doing right in that moment, but then just don’t do anything. But I was thinking it would be really cool. I was going to get somebody else in to replace you to do a review of like 2022 and look at all of the news stories that we’d looked at. But we did that kind of in December, didn’t we? And we were pretty much on the money. We were covering the things that the media, the paid media, the mainstream media were covering. So I think we do a pretty good job. I think we do a pretty good job. So the last question is there is there anything you’ve said that you feel you shouldn’t have said?

Melanie Farmer: [01:16:47] Are you trying to make me accountable for my own? I’m trying to get.

Martin Henley: [01:16:51] You to say something interesting so that we go viral. Oh, yeah. Don’t say it. Don’t do.

Melanie Farmer: [01:16:59] It. I was doing really well.

Martin Henley: [01:17:04] Super cool. Okay, brilliant. So we got to the end. So we just need to let people know if you found this interesting or useful, you know, like, share comments, subscribe, get involved. Because we need motivation to keep on on this epic journey. We don’t really we’re having so much fun. It doesn’t matter. But if you do find it interesting and useful and you can support us in some way, that would be amazing. Okay, I’m going to put something in your calendar for two weeks today. Melanie Farmer If that’s cool and I will look forward to seeing you then.

Melanie Farmer: [01:17:31] Yay!

WHAT DO YOU THINK?