Marketing News 004 – Facebook falls, 2022’s top DM skills, Air Asia Corps up, Google AI explained, M&M’s go wok

Martin Henley  0:00  

Hello there, my name is Martin Henley, this is The Effective Marketing YouTube channel and this is episode four of Effective Marketing News, with the brilliant, the amazing, the astounding, the beautiful, the soon to be Daddy Ionut, on the 16th of March, its Ionut Danifeld. Good morning. Ionut, how are you?

Ionut Danifeld  0:23  

Good morning, Martin. I’m good. I’m starting to enjoy your introduction. The  same thing that I said also last time, people are going to think that I am paying you.

Martin Henley  0:35  

Okay, but they can know that your not I am just madly in love with you brother.

Ionut Danifeld  0:41  

Not judging, 2022.

Martin Henley  0:45  

Okay, good. Interesting comment. Interesting comment. Okay, so the format is established now, we bring three stories each. Do you have three …. No, before that, you have to have a little brag about the brilliance you’ve achieved in the last few weeks.

Ionut Danifeld  0:59  

Is that the format. 

Martin Henley  1:00  

That’s the format. Yeah, that’s what goes on because the first time you said I have to brag, the second time, you said you had to brag. So you did a little brag. And then last time, I gave you the platform to brag, and I’m giving you the platform to brag again, what brilliance have you achieved in the last two weeks Ionut?

Ionut Danifeld  1:20  

Not so much because it was the Chinese New Year. So everybody was quite a little bit off. I’m speaking in one conference, that’s one personal achievement.

Martin Henley  1:31  

Okay. You told us about that. That’s coming up in February, is it?

Ionut Danifeld  1:35  

Actually, yes, one coming in February, and another one is on, I have basically two conferences lined up. One is the MAR Tech Summit Asia and the other one is the Lazada global conference.

Martin Henley  1:50  

Wow. Okay, so when are these things and how do people register to hear what you have to say?

Ionut Danifeld  1:56  

Yeah, so the one I think that you can put it also in the description, but one is the MARTech Summit Asia, if you can, people, they can  Google and it’s a free event, and the other one with Lazada. So this one is going to be 22 and 23 of February if I’m not mistaken. The other one is going to be much the dates are not fixed, but I have the link from the event page. So that’s on the personal side. Work wise. Work, work, work, hustle, hustle, hustle.

Martin Henley  2:35  

Okay, good. Is it going good still?

Ionut Danifeld  2:38  

It’s always going good when it’s about me and my team.

Martin Henley  2:42  

Hey, good. Excellent. I thought you were gonna say oh, no, it’s terrible, the wheels have come off, but of course they never will for you Ionut. Okay, good. So, what do you have in the way of news for us this week? What has caught your eye?

What’s in the marketing news?

Ionut Danifeld  2:57  

So I have three news. I have a feeling, my gut feeling is telling me that you’re going to have the same one. Meta which is basically Facebook erases 251 billion in value biggest wipeout in history. Yes. This one you have?

Martin Henley  3:18  

Let’s call that the fall of Facebook. I’ve got three I’ve got kind of as the story unfolds, unravels. So I’ve got this because this is a huge told you so, I’ve been saying this for like a year and I’ve been saying this in these conversations for the last six weeks. The fall of Facebook, okay, so that’s number one.

Ionut Danifeld  3:38  

The second one is also regarding Facebook. I had a conversation with our Facebook account managers and they told us, it’s Facebook or sorry, it’s Meta they even confused themselves with the name. Anyway, Meta, Zuckerberg told Meta employees to zero in on video because they are against an unprecedented level of competition from TikTok. For the time Zuckerberg actually pronounce the name TikTok, the six little letters

Martin Henley  4:12  

This is the first time he said it? Okay, 

Ionut Danifeld  4:17  

Anywhere. 

Martin Henley  4:18  

Alright, so this is your second story. Yeah. Okay.  

Ionut Danifeld  4:24  

The third one is from my adoptive country right now, which is Malaysia, but I think that is basically kind of like big news here in Southeast Asia. Air Asia changes, changes the names to Capital A to reflect new core business strategy. This one is interesting.

Martin Henley  4:47  

Okay, cool. So my three stories are the fall of Facebook as I’m calling it, the fall of Facebook, I’ve got three or four stories, different things that people are saying I’ve got LinkedIn data talking about digital marketing skills, top digital marketing skills in 2022. And I’ve got how Google Search understands human language because we spoke about voice search, didn’t we? A few weeks ago. Google have come out and explained how they understand and it’s absolutely hilarious I think so. Also there’s a dead donkey, do you know the dead donkey news item? Do you know that phrase? So there used to be a programme in the UK called Drop The Dead Donkey. So the dead donkey news item is essentially the last news item, supposed to be like a feel good thing at the end of the news. Blah, blah, blah. If something important happens then that story gets dropped. I know you won’t enjoy talking about this but M&M’s have gone woke and I’m just interested to have a conversation with somebody about that. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. 

Martin Henley  6:02  

Eminem got what?

Facebook Falls

Martin Henley  6:04  

M&M’s have gone woke. So yeah, I mean, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. It really is. It’s hilarious, also. So if we’ve got time for the dead donkey thing, maybe we can talk about that as well at the end. But let’s talk shall we about the fall of Facebook because I think this has been coming for a little while and now it’s it’s clearly happening. I mean, the numbers are just obscene on aren’t they?

Ionut Danifeld  6:39  

$251 billion.

Martin Henley  6:45  

Yes.

Ionut Danifeld  6:47  

If you’re invested in Forex its probably stock on discount price, if you still believe in Facebook, or Meta or whatever the hell it’s called.

Martin Henley  6:57  

Yes. Okay, so let me show you because I’ve got like this thing unfolding and I think it’s kind of interesting.

Ionut Danifeld  7:11  

You made this work? Okay.

Martin Henley  7:12  

I told you I’d make it work and I did make it work. Yeah. So here we are still looking.

Ionut Danifeld  7:17  

We’re getting professional here. Okay. Yeah, we can

Martin Henley  7:19  

Professional. Okay, so 230 billion Facebook, Facebook stock plunged brings big losses for Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, and maybe you anyone who has stock that’s Devon has obviously got something to shout about downstairs, I’m afraid. Shares down more than 26% the first day of trading, blah, blah, to fail fell 230 billion to a market capitalization of about 661 billion. Blah, blah, blah. So this was the first thing that happened. Facebook is the big loser of the fourth quarters advertising wars. So this is what prompted it, revenue came in at 31 billion less and actually, they didn’t make a profit on the month. So first time, that their expenses had exceeded exceeded their income, which is what they’re saying here. This also coincided with 200 million less people per day, logging into the service they’re saying, and then what looks to me to be just like a completely stupid knee jerk reaction is Mark Zuckerberg comes out and says, Yeah, we’re shifting to short form video. 

Ionut Danifeld  8:33  

So yeah, so that’s basically what, that’s my that was my second one. Regarding the TikTok and using the TikTok defence.

Martin Henley  8:50  

This is one of the largest corporations on the planet showing absolutely zero strategic direction, I think, because this is just completely a knee jerk reaction. This just is completely, it’s because these other people are doing this cooler thing we’re gonna have to do that cooler thing. Do you think? What do you think?

Ionut Danifeld  9:18  

So what I think that let’s dissect a little bit the story. First of all, Facebook is making money based on ads. Your question was, right, yeah. We discussed a couple of weeks ago and I think that we’ve been discussing this thing since the moment that I know you and there is nothing social in social media. At the moment you’re getting bombed with so many ads and is missing a little bit the social interaction. The age group, the teenagers were basically moving away because the moms and dads, and uncles and aunties, were part of the old generation social media, which is Facebook, which is basically me and you. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m cooler. I’m on TikTok. I’m not posting but I’m actually, my favourite social media actually. The problem with  Facebook at the moment, Facebook and Instagram it’s so much, I would say, so much ads and the ads are so targeted,  they used to be targeted, because now you basically have what we discussed before the zero party data and iOS update, and Google updates, and yada yada, yada. You’re you’re seeing actually companies that are pulling out their money from Facebook, there were a couple of successful stories, right. So we are basically these big companies, that one you have from on one side companies that are taking the money out from Facebook, and you have someone on the other side, people that are getting frustrated on the fact that the feed is basically full of ads. So that’s one part of the story. 

Ionut Danifeld  11:13  

The second part of the story is the strategy of Facebook, Facebook was basically acquiring companies, right, or they were copying it. So they copied stories from Snapchat. They copied reels from TikTok. When you’re copying something from my point of view, and that’s something that I’m saying all the time to my team or to my to the founders of the company, a copycat is always, always, in my opinion, going to be behind you because it’s just going to be a copycat, right? 

Martin Henley  11:51  

Yeah. 

Ionut Danifeld  11:52  

The difference between me and you, as a company who are going to open a company is that with Facebook or Google, even if they are copying, they have data and they have users that are actually testing it, actually using it. That’s still going to be copycat. Now they are fifth, the the reason why they dropped is because the ads, the platform itself, and the fact that people are trendy and they tend to forget to think about MySpace. MySpace was basically the most popular social media channel and one day user decided to basically say, you know, fuck off. I don’t want to use it anymore. 

Martin Henley  12:37  

Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld  12:39  

Is that going to happen for Facebook? I don’t know. Is that going to someone to call already SEC at the first place? Yeah, it happened. And nobody was actually thinking about it.

Martin Henley  12:52  

Yeah. Well, I think this started going wrong. No, it’s not 200 million, it’s half a million a day have stopped logging in every day, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. So I would argue that people are, like half a million every day is what’s that? That’s 5 million every 10 days, it’s 1.5 million a month. Less. logins are less people. So they’re saying less people. This went wrong whenever it was in 2014 2015, when Facebook decided they know better than people what they’re interested in. The beauty of Facebook was like Facebook was I think, like the 20th century publishing swindle, because they had 2 billion contributors writing about what everyone was interested in, which was themselves and their communities, etc, etc. Not paying anyone. When they decided, so this is the start of this stupid commercialization, which I think has gone wrong. So when they decided that they knew better than people what they were interested in, that’s when it went wrong. When they introduced these algorithms that decided they’re going to promote this story and not that story and you’re only going to see stuff from 5% of your friends. Businesses aren’t going to be seen essentially unless they pay. This is where it started to go wrong for Facebook. I think this is going on. I don’t use Facebook for anything other than knowing when people’s birthdays are. So I get a little notification in the morning I go in I wish everyone a happy birthday and then I’m done with Facebook for the day. I’ve got no interest in it whatsoever. I think this is the problem. I think they’ve commercialised it in completely the wrong way. That’s what I think.

Ionut Danifeld  14:38  

I you think that they’re …. listen at the end of the day a company is open for the sake of making money right? Let’s not forget that. Once again. Facebook main revenue stream is basically ads. Probably 99.9% is Facebook ads, ads in general, the fact that you’re showing so many ads to the users or consumers, they feel fed up. Most probably the same thing is going to happen to TikTok. The same thing is happening also with YouTube, for example, me, I’m not opening YouTube because I hate it. If I’m opening it on my mobile, I’m having three ads now, not only one. I have three ones that are running, and I’m watching two minutes and after this bomb another ad. Besides ads, another problem that Facebook is having and one thing, why I think that they lost so much capital and people are actually disconnecting and moving to other platforms is based on the fact that privacy, Facebook doesn’t have the best reputation when it’s coming to privacy and we all know the scandals here and there, right?

Martin Henley  15:56  

I think you’re right, I think you’re right, businesses exist to make money but what we’re seeing is that businesses will only continue to exist if they offer value to their customers. Facebook’s customers are the advertisers but their product is essentially the audiences. Now they’re not offering value to the audiences because they’re seeing too many ads, and they’re not seeing enough of the information that they’re interested in. This is at the very core, the proposition has gone away. So all this huge insight, or this huge data that they’ve managed to gather is worth absolutely nothing, because essentially, they’ve missold it. So if there is no audience, there is no advertisers, the business fails, you know?

Ionut Danifeld  16:40  

Exactly right. But I think because your channel is name effective marketing, the questions, the question that is coming back is what you as a advertiser or a company or a marketer, you’re actually going to do when you’re actually seeing this news. Because you have to stay agile, right? Wherever is COVID. Wherever it’s first party data, wherever it’s an update from iOS, wherever it’s an update from Android, wherever it’s an update on the platform, you still need to be agile, I can tell you what, for example, is happening in our company, right. Still, the main platform of advertising and revenue stream is Meta, the entire company, whether it’s Facebook, or Instagram. 

Martin Henley  17:29  

Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld  17:30  

I’m getting a little bit back to the roots. Something that we discussed previously, going back to the roots, which is organic search, affiliation, TikTok, trying new, different things.

Martin Henley  17:49  

Cinema.

Ionut Danifeld  17:51  

Cinema, right we used to do cinema, email marketing is starting to play a really big role, even if you have the updates from iOS. Right? So I think that what I would do and my advice to anyone that is in this space, or is a business owner, or is a marketer, don’t put your eggs in only one basket. Don’t think that, okay, Facebook is the only revenue stream for me or the only platform that I need to advertise. You need to be agile, you need to be versatile. You need to go on Google ads, you need to do affiliation, you need to influencers, you need to do SEO, you need to do whatever other channels, marketplaces and so on.

Martin Henley  18:35  

Yeah, I think 100% Because I think Facebook essentially had the keys to the kingdom for whatever it has been 10 years, you know, and they, they were providing a really valuable service to advertisers. Now you have to think that maybe there is, with all of these privacy suits going down all the time, maybe and all of this censorship going on, maybe there is a reputational risk to to advertising on Facebook, because Facebook is developing such a bad reputation. 

Ionut Danifeld  19:09  

Yeah, I cannot deny. It’s I think that is a really smart thing that you’re actually saying. For a smaller company, there is no threat whatsoever. Of course if you’re working for another company, which is like a really big company, I don’t know I cannot name one for example, Adidas, that is something that you need to take in consideration. The channel that you’re actually putting your message is really important for your brand. 

Ionut Danifeld  19:35  

Yeah.

Martin Henley  19:36  

You need to be quite …

Ionut Danifeld  19:41  

You need to be careful. 

Martin Henley  19:42  

Yeah, for sure. The thing is, I think they over egged the product, as well. It was only ever display advertising. It was only ever advertising that appears alongside the column that yeah, so it was never what they purported it to be I mean, it was super, super targeted. But it wasn’t an amazing platform for delivering your message. It wasn’t an amazing platform for identifying people who actually had an interest in your product or service. You know, it was for me it was only ever display advertising and I suppose some of the video advertising on Instagram was maybe a little bit more kind of intrusive, a little bit more disruptive. It was only ever really display advertising for me. So I think they also protect it. And I think 100% they’ve mismanaged it. I think that’s now why they’re in trouble and if they have half a million less people per day, logging in, I don’t know how many people they had logging in, in their claim.

Ionut Danifeld  20:46  

Can I share my screen? I don’t know if it’s working or not,

Martin Henley  20:49  

You can share your screen. Yeah. I don’t know if it will be able to see us.

Ionut Danifeld  20:52  

Can you see my screen?

Martin Henley  20:59  

I can’t see, I can see it in place of you. So if we go to you full? No, we’re not seeing it.

Ionut Danifeld  21:08  

Okay, well, so like this. I was reading also a really interesting news …

Martin Henley  21:13  

What’s the domain I can put it up here?

Ionut Danifeld  21:16  

Search for Meta warns that it may shut down in Europe, Facebook may shut down. So that was something that was really scary also. In came kind of like the entire week for me when I was reading about news, it was like kind of like unfold of news regarding Facebook, this guy’s probably cannot sleep at night. So it was the stock, and after this, it was the the parts that we discussed regarding the … exactly. It was the part that we discussed regarding TikTok, and the first time that he used the name of TikTok. After this, there was the GDPR issue. So basically with GDPR, for the people that don’t know, is basically the data privacy policy in Europe. That means that the data of European Union members or countries which should stay in Europe servers. Facebook cannot comply with that and I’m sure that there are other companies. The idea behind this is that, I don’t think, it’s close to impossible to happen, but the fact that people are now saying that actually the biggest title is saying that Meta wants to shut down in Facebook and Instagram in Europe over a data transfer dispute is quite scary for an investor of Facebook at the end of the day and for an advertiser, right?

Martin Henley  22:51  

Well, Europe has to be a big chunk of their market. I mean, there’s 300 million people in Europe, it’s got to be.

Ionut Danifeld  22:59  

It’s the second biggest market. 

Martin Henley  23:00  

Yeah. Yeah. So look at this, this is hilarious. He says after I was hacked, I have lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic, Germany’s New Economy Minister Robert, told reporters during a meeting in Paris on Monday. You know, this is this is the truth. This was my issue with the Social Dilemma thing is that they were over egging the importance of these things. They’re not as intrusive, they’re not as necessary, they’re not as influential as, as they were having us believe. They’re certainly not addictive, because if you’ve got a good reason not to use these things, you will stop using them and you won’t, you won’t miss them. Now, I’m not saying they’re not sticky. I’m not saying that there’s not and TikTok, for me, and Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, I think, take up too much of my time at the moment. Essentially, these things go away, it’s not going to make a material difference to anyone’s life, you know, so. Yeah. So I think, you know, I spoke, I think it was a month ago, we did the triple threat. So one of them was the first one was government regulation, which is what we’re seeing here. The second one was doing a poor job for advertisers, which is what we’re seeing with the crash and the third one was people not wanting to work there anymore. So I think it’s coming, it’s coming around is what I think. I think maybe we are seeing the demise of Facebook. These are the people who are supposed to be leading us into the  brave new world of the Metaverse. Clearly they’re not able to do that, like, clearly, they’re not able to make money out of having reams and reams of data on virtually every single person on the planet. They can’t make money out of that, you know, so how are they going to Money on the metaverse, I don’t know. I’m not unhappy to see them go, I’ll be honest with you. 

Ionut Danifeld  25:05  

The other thing is, you know, I didn’t want to put this in as a story but what we’re also seeing here is TikTok doubles share of ad spend. And there’s been an ad tech consolidation and Hollywood agencies are betting big on TikTok talent as they seek to woo Gen Z audiences or Gen Zed audiences. So actually, you know, it’s happening. It’s happening bad for Facebook at the moment, you know, and I’m not sad to see it go, I’ll be honest with you, because I don’t think it’s bringing adding value to the world.

Ionut Danifeld  25:47  

is going to be really curious what’s going to happen. Also, if you’re saying that is going to, is going to go away? What’s going to happen with all of these people, all of the marketers that are actually Facebook experts?

Martin Henley  26:05  

They’ll segue to TikTok in a second. What is being a Facebook advertising expert? You know, the expertise that they had was how to mine and manipulate the data, that’s already gone, their specialisation is gone. What are they specialists in now?

Ionut Danifeld  26:26  

But there is a problem, you need to be aware about something. In Tiktok, for example, it’s actually more on the top funnel, more on the part of the awareness and landing page views not revenue and actual conversion for an E commerce company. They didn’t. They didn’t manage to, or at least I couldn’t find it. I mean, like, I’m trying this for a year now to to understand how the hell can I connect my business manager TikTok business manager, I mean, with my TikTok account. I message them on, they have help, chat support, whatever and they told me that we’re going to put me in contact with an account manager. They said, yes, and I’m going to receive a call. I didn’t receive jack shit and that’s a reality also for TikTok. 

Martin Henley  27:20  

Yeah. 

Ionut Danifeld  27:24  

What is still amazing about Facebook compared with TikTok, and I’m really hoping that TikTok is going to fix that, is the part of, at least for me, as an advertiser, for the mid and bottom funnel, which is means mid funnel means add to cart and Top, Bottom funnel means conversion, right? Yeah. You see what I’m doing?

Martin Henley  27:51  

Yeah, well, I do. But this is what I’m saying. Unless you’re doing messenger advertising, are you, on Facebook?

Ionut Danifeld  27:58  

I’m doing messenger advertising, but is really freaking expensive. Yeah, for the past year.

Martin Henley  28:04  

This is what I’m saying about Facebook only ever really being display advertising. For me it’s it’s only really about awareness, the click through rates have never been incredible. You know, and essentially, what you’re doing is you’re dropping in a display ad. That’s all so for me, I think also, I mean, you might say it’s different from that. It’s been a while since I’ve done it but you know, it’s not a huge response led thing.

Ionut Danifeld  28:32  

I tend to contradict you for because it depends on the industry and the product that you’re doing, right? If you’re an E commerce company, you’re always, always, always focusing on ROS, you put in $1, how many dollars I’m getting back? tThe return on ad spend. 

Martin Henley  28:51  

Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld  28:51  

Right? Of course, you need to build that top funnel from top to bottom bottom like awarness, leads, add to cart, conversion, and maybe you want to go one step further retargeting or remarketing. 

Martin Henley  29:04  

Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld  29:04  

Whatever you want to call it. Right? If you’re a company that is doing for example, Mercedes, for Mercedes, they’re always going to be brand awareness. They don’t care about investing in display advertising, the one that you said, right? 

Martin Henley  29:17  

Yeah. 

Ionut Danifeld  29:19  

You and me, when I say like a smaller ecommerce company its really important that return to ad spend. I’m always always going to look I mean, something that I’m saying to my team, is that okay, I give you a budget of I don’t know $100,000 how much money did you bring back? 

Martin Henley  29:38  

Yeah. 

Ionut Danifeld  29:39  

Because I need to track conversions. 

Martin Henley  29:42  

Yeah, so okay, so it is converting so is adding value. So what I would say is I think they need to be very, very careful going forward and just saying, Okay, we’re going to become a short video company isn’t being very Careful, do you know I mean? It’s just like, that seems to me to be a neat knee jerk reaction, like this platform that’s just offering short videos is doing better for us so we’re going to become that thing. That isn’t the issue for Facebook it’s the audience, so they’re losing audience and its value for advertisers. You know, that’s their core business. That’s what they need to get to and they need to find a way to work that out. I would say.

Ionut Danifeld  30:25  

Yeah. That’s the that’s the problem. I mean, like, I’m really curious. I mean, like, for example, me, I’m not a huge fan of Reels. I don’t know, it didn’t stick to me. I mean, like, it’s,

Martin Henley  30:39  

What’s the difference? What’s the difference between a Reel and TikTok?

Ionut Danifeld  30:45  

Specifically, no difference whatsoever. Where there is a difference, it’s the content, or the content creators.

Martin Henley  30:53  

 Yes. 

Ionut Danifeld  30:54  

And the algorithm.

Martin Henley  30:57  

Yes. 

Ionut Danifeld  30:57  

And, you know, ads? 

Martin Henley  30:59  

Yeah

Ionut Danifeld  30:59  

It has been, but I think in reality you don’t have ads, maybe I’m mistaken, but you don’t have ads. You do, you do because you can advertise from Business Manager. So technically there is no difference whatsoever. Where the power is, is in the content creators, because it’s a social media. It’s 2.0. Web 2.0. Right? The content is generated by the users, user generated content, not by the platform itself.

Martin Henley  31:32  

I see. Okay. Okay, so the thing is, it’s not really pertinent, but I think these big platforms are going to struggle and I’ve been saying this for a while. So you’ve seen that they’re trying to cancel Joe Rogan. Apparently, Joe Rogan has now been offered $100 million to go to Rumble and not be censored. I think these are things we’re going to see, which we haven’t seen for a long time, I think we’re gonna see some movement at the level of of these huge corporate platforms. I think YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, I think they are gonna see some challenges now and I think it’s going to be much more interesting and exciting. Even like, you say that the proposition isn’t as good but the pure value sometimes overtakes it, where you know, you are just getting many, many more views on TikTok. Like you say, You’re diversifying away from Facebook already, even though it’s a huge part of what goes on, because you’re anticipating. It doesn’t take too much of that. If you take 20% of your budget away, and everyone takes 20% of their budget away that’s billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars in turnover, and, and market valuation for Facebook. I think the bigger you are, the harder you fall, you know, and I think that’s what I think, I think these platforms are going to kind of see some challenges. 

Ionut Danifeld  33:06  

Yeah. 

2022’s most sought after Digital marketing skills.

Martin Henley  33:07  

Good. Okay, good. Shall we go, I’ll have to go to another story, because you’ve only got one left. So my second story is, let’s go LinkedIn. So LinkedIn have, I don’t trust LinkedIn with much, but they clearly know what what jobs are being advertised. They are saying …. new LinkedIn data shows the top digital marketing skills currently in high demand. The reason I’ve picked this story up is because I was really thinking like what’s going to be useful for anyone who might be watching this, and their careers obviously are of interest to them. 

Martin Henley  33:44  

They’re saying as the pandemic accelerated our industry shift to virtual everything, it also accelerated the demand for marketers in digital roles, digital marketing specialists most in demand was the media coordinator role, experiencing the fastest growth. So maybe this ties in they quite often do. I don’t know what this look at marketing occupations represented in Namer. I don’t know what Namer is. Here they are saying, basically, it’s becoming more segmented. While many marketers list themselves as digital marketing specialist recruiters are currently having trouble finding marketers with skills in digital strategy, Omniture, link building, search advertising, and off page SEO. So it looks like the role is becoming more diversified, more specialist?

Ionut Danifeld  34:36  

Yeah, more specialist and more focus on organic?

Martin Henley  34:39  

Yes. What do we think about this? I did a webinar yesterday for a company in the UK who are offering digital marketing courses. I think, how do we feel about the state of our industry man, I think there’s a real opportunity for people in digital marketing right now. That’s how I kind of feel.

Ionut Danifeld  34:59  

I think there is opportunity to basically to learn everything now online and the pandemic accelerated work from home and freelancing, and now you can make a buck from staying in Botswana and work for a company in France.  Right?

Martin Henley  35:20  

Yeah, right. I don’t know why Botswana and France,

Ionut Danifeld  35:23  

The first thing that came to my mind, right, but maybe behind this you’re seeing a little bit more niche marketers. I always appreciate the people, you and me, probably we’re coming from a generation, where it’s even there are some years  taking us apart but we’re coming I think, from a generation, but we, our careers shifted a little bit more on the marketing generalist, you know, a little bit of SEO, you know, a little bit of Facebook, you know, a bit of Google, you need to know a little bit of YouTube, you know, also how to do a little bit I don’t know what right? Now, the shifts in what I’m seeing in this new generation, I missed it last time when we were talking, I said, generation Z that and you contradict me? Oh, no, it’s I said Millennials are what I heard. I don’t remember. I

Martin Henley  36:16  

Think you said Generation Y. I’m generation y and they the new one is generation Z, inbetween is the millennials.

Ionut Danifeld  36:26  

Yeah. So the, okay, the new generation, which is coming now, like the ones that are graduating, and even a little bit before that, they’re a little bit more focused. I can tell you what, also what is happening in the marketing, when you’re hiring, you’re actually paying more for someone that is specific, how you call it like an expert in a specific niche, vertical? 

Martin Henley  36:55  

Yes.

Ionut Danifeld  36:56  

Niche, right? 

Martin Henley  36:57  

Yes. 

Ionut Danifeld  36:58  

If you’re a Facebook ads expert, or Google Ads expert, or you’re, for example, an affiliate marketer, you’re paying more money than someone that is a generalist right? It’s quite interesting. And I feel that that should be the direction to be honest with you.

Martin Henley  37:21  

Okay, well, I think the jobs that they’ve got listed here are …. while many marketers list themselves as digital marketing specialists, recruiters are currently having trouble finding marketers with skills in digital strategy, Omniture, link building, search advertising and off page SEO. So for me, you’re right, we are much more generalists and we are suited much more to a role in digital marketing management or marketing management, which is why you’re a CMO. Our skills refer to knowing a little bit about everything, this digital strategy thing. Omniture is I think, I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’ an analytics tool, link building and off page SEO, I don’t really understand what the difference is between those two things and search advertising is clearly PPC on the search engines.

Ionut Danifeld  38:26  

Omniture is the web analytics acquired by Adobe.

Martin Henley  38:32  

Okay, right. So yeah, no, so yeah, so it is becoming more specific, but also more general. So they need overseers, and then they need people specifically in these areas. So interestingly, not social media. Interestingly, not email marketing. Interestingly, not display advertising. So I think, is the market not seeing value in those things? Or is there or is it already overpopulated with people with those skills? I don’t know.

Ionut Danifeld  39:09  

It’s the people that are basically delivering results from a perspective of data, right? I mean, like every single position that you have there has a connection with the data. I think that the power is going to be in the data. Once again, we discussed this a while ago. You need to understand the data. You’re not a marketer, if you’re not going to understand the data, and social media nowadays, you have all of these tools, which are called Copy AI, or Jarvis AI. I don’t know if you know about them? They are basically AI tools that generate social media content. Is it on that level, with social media person like a human touch? Probably no. The idea if you’re a company you can pass away, paying $200 per month and having your AI doing your job as a social media expert.

Martin Henley  40:11  

Yeah.

Ionut Danifeld  40:14  

And you just polish it a bit. I believe that media, social media roles are going to be … I’m a huge nerd about tools in general and  automation of your processes, right? If I have a tool that is writing my social media content, and I don’t need to do it from A to Z, but I’m basically generating enough interaction, and I’m just polishing it a little bit here and there, why should I have in my company, social media expert, when I basically put some keywords and is generating automatically? So check that out. One is called Copy AI, can do also blogging, can do also landing page content can do anything that you think related to content. And the other one that is probably the number one in the industry? Is Javis AI.

Martin Henley  41:17  

Jarvis Ai?

Ionut Danifeld  41:20  

Yeah, like the robot from like, artificial intelligence.

Martin Henley  41:24  

Jarvis AI. Okay, so the reason is, because these tools produce absolute junk, I’m sorry. You can’t replace a human writer, you can’t. I mean, you might be able to fool the search engines like that, but really, honestly, I don’t believe AI can produce. I mean, I’m going to have a look at these things. I don’t believe AI, I don’t want to believe that AI can produce interesting, compelling, entertaining copy. I don’t want to believe it

Ionut Danifeld  42:01  

Listen, I’m not saying that they are on that level. And I denied from the first second, I said from the first second, but we are not on that level. What I’m seeing is that it’s a really long way, but I’m saying that they’re good enough for a startup or a media company that doesn’t have a budget to hire a social media expert, to use one of these tools. This is what I’m saying?

Martin Henley  42:29  

Yeah, but I don’t think you’re replacing the, I’m signing up for this thing as we speak. I don’t think you’re replacing the human skill, I think you might be replacing, I mean, this is where content for content sake, has gone to, it’s frightening. I actually interviewed someone on the Talk Marketing thing, he’s providing AI type services, and it’s not where it needs to be. For example, we spoke about, there were AI, you could say to your assistant on your phone, if it’s Alexa, or whatever it might be on Apple Siri, you can say  book me an appointment at the hairdresser’s and it will phone and actually have the conversation with them. 

Martin Henley  43:17  

I thought immediately this has application for cold calling, but immediately they produce an AI for cold calling, let’s say an automated cold calling service, they will produce an automated call answering service and it will just be bots talking to bots which is what goes on. If you have bots creating your content, they’ll produce bots, which are already there, bots which consume your content. The whole thing is just a nonsense, I think, I think something different I think I don’t know. I’m just I’m guessing, if I look at this list, it feels to me like businesses aren’t investing so much in social media anymore, because maybe they’ve seen it’s top of funnel type stuff. The way you get your results is in these areas, search engine optimisation, paid clicks and having a strong strategy.

Ionut Danifeld  44:12  

That’s another reason I mean, like that each on all of his social media platform, I gather we are coming back on Meta and Facebook, all of these platforms the organic reach has gone, zero point, gone. 

Martin Henley  44:27  

Yeah. 

Ionut Danifeld  44:27  

Zero something right? So I’m putting so much effort into basically to creating the content, like a piece of right, I’m having a designer, I’m having a social media person. So I basically have two people that are producing one piece of content, and probably I have a page of 100,000 and I have only 200 People that are viewing it and probably like five people that are clicking it so why the fuck should I invest so much money in a social media person? Why should I invest so much much money in having paid on someone on my payroll, and all of these numbers like likes, like Facebook likes, Instagram followers, they’re starting to be a little bit of a vanity number. What I mean by a vanity number, I mean, like people don’t care so much about it.

Martin Henley  45:21  

They’ve messed with the proposition. The proposition was here was a platform for you to talk to people, and actually, you’re talking to far fewer people. So this swindle I’m saying they had 2 billion contributors, all contributing for free, people are getting much less return for contributing, individuals and businesses, and so they don’t. So there is less audience, so there is less advertisers, and so there is, and so on, and so on. So, I don’t know, it looks, it looks to me a little bit like that. Like, actually, it doesn’t matter how poor your content is, if you’re prepared to put money on it, it will get the views, you know, so maybe you don’t have to invest so much creativity and quality to have that, you know, you just fire out your adverts and you pay for it. So that was interesting for me. So digital marketing, either specialise in being knowing something about everything, or specialise in the really response, direct type stuff, SEO, ads, and analytics if you want a career in digital marketing, that’s the way it looks to me right now.

Ionut Danifeld  46:27  

Good.

Martin Henley  46:28  

Cool. Where are we …. story number three Is your story about something’s happening in Malaysia, somebody changed an A, is this really news Ionut?

Air Asia becomes Capital A

Ionut Danifeld  46:38  

It is news because it’s a trend that is happening Air Asia, you know, come on.

Martin Henley  46:46  

Can I find this and put it on the screen?

Ionut Danifeld  46:49  

Air Asia changed their name to Capital A.

Martin Henley  46:54  

Tell us about it, then Ionut.

Ionut Danifeld  46:57  

Air Asia, basically the number one local airline company in Malaysia, in Asia, is changing their name to Capital A, for the new core business, which is a little bit more …. AirAsia group finalised, the name chang on this list holding company to Capital A to reflect the growing portfolio of travel and lifestyle business. What basically is happening AirAsia is no longer an airline company because they basically are not flying for the last two years. The strategy for AirAsia or Capital A now they are basically going a little bit more on the Super App side. They are launching foods that’s valid also for all of the countries. Why are you laughing?

Martin Henley  47:55  

Because when you when you said this at the beginning, I thought you you were saying that they put a capital A in the name, so maybe Asia had lowercase A’s originally, and now they’ve changed to capital a’s. Okay, so it’s a completely different story than what I was expecting. I was expecting a very small rebrand story.

Ionut Danifeld  48:15  

It’s not, it’s not an excuse a little bit firm the trend of how you’re seeing all of this, please do so how I’m seeing it from the how big it is from a perspective of like, how they are transforming into a super app and the competition from Grab and the competition from GoJek in Indonesia, the competition from Alibaba and all of these companies. The idea behind the how we are acquiring listed companies and creating new verticals of the business. This is what I was saying that in the pandemic, they launched the food service, they launched the ride service to compete with grab. Now you have a possibility to actually to advertise on the platform on the cards, as a advertiser, because they’re creating synergies with other companies in order to do offline marketing. Big Pay is a huge underdog when it’s coming about advertising, what basically Big Pay is, it’s their paying system is like Grab Pay, or GoJek pay, it’s their online paying system where you’re paying for all of the services. As an advertiser you can actually use their loyalty points in on your website. So you have AirAsia from one side with their customers that they can use Big Pay in your website to actually make a purchase. So you’re flooding a new load of audience to your website. You see where I’m going, everything is fucking interconnected?

Martin Henley  49:53  

Everything is interconnected. So this is a diversification and a conglomeration and Yeah, I mean, it feels this is also quite frightening. I had this conversation on the Talk Marketing thing recently as well, where it really is becoming small businesses versus the corporations. So there are an ever smaller number of corporations producing everything. You know, it’s frightening. Do you think it’s frightening? And you think there’s opportunity in this, what do you what do you think then? What is the actual effect of this?

Ionut Danifeld  50:33  

I think that there is opportunity depends for whom there is an opportunity for we are working, for example, in Trappo, we are working with AirAsia. 

Martin Henley  50:42  

Okay.

Ionut Danifeld  50:44  

So we are working with them for AirAsia right? We are working with them with Big Pay. What I really like about for example, Tony Fernandez is the CEO and co-founder of AirAsia. He is a guy that is really, for example, for me really fascinating. He basically took this company, bought it for $1, I’m talking about AirAsia, no expertise whatsoever in the airline industry, massive branding, everybody knows the red of AirAsia, completely shifted the business during the pandemic, because they launched the AirAsia ride and with food demand, creating companies, their strategy is basically to acquire small companies, this is why I wanted to arrive here. There are not so many small companies, but small companies, they have a possibility to be acquired by bigger companies, if you want to sell right? At the end of the day, I would say, I stick my hand in fire but I will say 90% of the online businesses or businesses, they want to basically to be acquired by other companies. So for example, every single service on AirAsia is it’s on the back of a company that they acquired. It’s quite fascinating how fast they’re managing to actually to launch a company in a corporate environment. It’s coming back to what I said before find synergies and partnerships with other companies.

Martin Henley  52:38  

Yeah, because I suppose the temptation is to think that you can’t you can’t become a corporation anymore. Do you know I mean, like it’s, it’s a closed shop. So I suppose it’s interesting. So this guy, Tony Fernandez, I’m sure he was pretty well resourced even though he might have only bought this for $1. You know, I’m sure it’s

Ionut Danifeld  53:00  

He used to work in, what’s the name, Sony in the music industry 

Martin Henley  53:05  

Oh, okay. 

Ionut Danifeld  53:07  

Yeah, search for him is actually quite fascinating story about him.

Martin Henley  53:11  

Okay, cool. I will definitely look at that. So that’s kind of a good news story, isn’t it about how you can actually compete with these powerhouses. It might not be the close shop that we think it is.

Ionut Danifeld  53:23  

Yes. Cool.

How Google understands human language

Martin Henley  53:26  

Nice story. Which brings us then to my last story, which I think is hilarious. This is the story.  How Google, it’s hilarious. How Google Search understands human language. So Google explains how its AI systems work to understand human language and return relevant search results. Google search is capable of understanding human language for the assistance of multiple AI models that all work together to find the most relevant results. Information about how these AI models work is explained in simple terms by Pandu Nayak, Google’s vice president of search a new article on the company companies official blog nyak demystifies, the following AI models which play a major role in how Google returns search results. So the AI models are RankBrain, Neural matching, BERT and MUM. Neither of these models work alone. 

Martin Henley  54:30  

If there were two it would be neither, should be none of these work alone, they help each other out by performing different tasks to understand queries and match them to content searchers are looking for. Here are the key takeaways from Google’s behind the scenes look at what it’s AI models do and how it translates into better results for searches. So RankBrain blah, de blah, de blah, de blah, blah, blah. Here’s a quote from Pandu Nayak. For example, if you search for what’s the title of the consumer at the highest level of a food chain, AI systems learn from seeing those words, on various pages, that the concept of a food chain may have to do with animals and not human consumers, by understanding and matching these words to their related concepts RankBrain understands that you’re looking for what’s commonly referred to as an apex predator. The thing that amuses me, astounds me, is that this guy, the VP of search at Google, thinks that people are searching for “what’s the title of the consumer at the highest level of a food chain.”

Ionut Danifeld  55:42  

You’re seeing that the search phrase is really sophisticated? 

Martin Henley  55:48  

I’m saying that nobody ever searched for this. That’s what I’m saying is like this is like, clearly way too complicated a search term, it’s 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 words. So it’s super, super longtail apart from anything else. You’ve spent enough time doing keyword research, I’ve spent enough time doing keyword research to say that 14 word phrases don’t get searched for, specifically this one. What’s the title of the consumer at the highest level … this is the issue, Google is employing these absolute geeks who are so clever that they are completely stupid. This guy is the VP of search at Google. Why is he saying if you search for …. it was a fantasy, will never happen. That’s what this whole article is. They’ve got these four things and I can’t understand the difference between them all but they are using all of them to understand how people speak. Clearly, they’re not understanding how people speak because this guy Pandu Nayak doesn’t know how people speak, he doesn’t even know how people search and he is the VP of search at … he’s the VP of search at Google. Here’s a second example, take the search “insights how to manage a green.” Now, that’s an interesting phrase, because I imagined that they might be referring to managing golf greens on a golf course. 

Ionut Danifeld  57:40  

I honestly don’t understand what the hell it means.

Martin Henley  57:43  

No, also would never be searched for, I guarantee you this was never searched for once. Actually, what it refers to is how you manage a member of staff who has green politics, I think. It’s just insane. So anyone who thinks that there is any rhyme or reason going on at Google in terms of these algorithms. 

Martin Henley  58:06  

Here’s the third third example “can you get medicine for someone pharmacy.” These aren’t, I just think it’s hilarious. I just think it’s hilarious that Google are lauded as the most insightful, clever, whatever, company on the planet and they’ve sent out their their vice president of search to talk absolute shit about how search engines understand language, when he doesn’t even understand search, clearly doesn’t understand search. Don’t you think it’s hilarious?

Ionut Danifeld  58:46  

Can you scroll down a little bit on the BERT one? 

Ionut Danifeld  58:52  

The BERT one?

Martin Henley  58:51  

The BERT one. BERT was first introduced in 2019 and is now used in all queries. It’s designed to accomplish two things, retrieve relevant content and rank it. Now the thing is, all four of these are designed to do two things, which is retrieve relative relevant content and rank it, because that’s what Google does, retrieve relevant content and rank it. It is idiocy. BERT can understand how words relate to each other when used in a particular sequence, which ensures important words aren’t left out of a query. This complex understanding of language allows BERT to rank web content for relevance faster than other AI methods. For example, if you search for “can you get medicine for someone pharmacy” BERT understands that you’re trying to figure out if you can pick up medicine for someone else. Before BERT we took that short proposition for granted, mostly sharing results about how to fill a prescription. Thanks to BERT we understand that even small words can have big meanings. What on earth are they talking about?

Ionut Danifeld  1:00:05  

For me is quite curious that the example of …. I don’t know how you’re doing a search on Google but for example, when I’m doing a search on Google, I’m not using, you, for …. If – I will do the same search medicine, someone else, you know, it’s basically three words. It’s nothing speaking.

Martin Henley  1:00:28  

Yeah, I think if I was doing this search, and it is what they’re what they’re saying is, it’s about getting it for someone else. It would be collect someone else’s prescription and it’s not can, it’s never can I, like, am I allowed to, am I capable of it would be, if it was a search for, I don’t know how to learn search engine optimisation, you know, I mean, it would. So this clearly, and he is the VP for search at Google and they’re talking about the difference between these four things, but what they’re all supposed to do is collect and rank search results. I just thought this was hilarious. I just think this is absolutely hilarious. It’s like, this guy clearly knows nothing about search.

Ionut Danifeld  1:01:23  

He probably doesn’t know how humans are speaking but that’s another thing.

Martin Henley  1:01:28  

Especially when he is addressing how his systems understand how people speak, how Google Search understands human language, that guy doesn’t understand human language. Don’t you think this is hilarious.

Ionut Danifeld  1:01:45  

It’s it’s, it’s hilarious on the way that I think that you as a marketer, you basically need to kind of like move with the trend and the ranking. SEO, is about changing things according to the algorithm and you’re going to find out later. So you’re going to find out after the algorithm is basically published, I think that you need to take some learnings, I think that you can do some A B testing on that one, I fucking don’t know. I mean, like, it’s hilarious, but the language is not human enough.

Martin Henley  1:02:23  

It’s nothing like human enough, he has access to every search that has ever been made why didn’t he just go and do some keyword research? And say like here’s a search that people do and then people are like, well, that’s the least relevant to what’s going on in the world. Insights how to manage a green. What on earth?

Ionut Danifeld  1:02:42  

I don’t know what that means to be honest.

Martin Henley  1:02:45  

Okay, let’s take that search because we can and do that search and see what how Earth green can show up in your management style. The Earth green manager, a guide to the four colours that changed my life with insights, insights discovery colour energy and energies. There are 898 million results for the search insights how to manage a green. Sorry, no I’m sorry, I don’t, I give up, this is insane. Like the very, very fundamental principle of search is be the thing that people are looking for, you know, see the thing that people are looking for, and be the thing that people are looking for. This guy doesn’t seem to even know that, you know, it’s insane. Yeah, it’s insane. Okay, it’s insane. I mean, the other insanity can we do this very quickly, is about M&Ms going woke?

Ionut Danifeld  1:03:51  

Really quickly regarding Eminem, I want to know what about Eminem and we can wrap it up.

M&M’s go woke.

Martin Henley  1:03:56  

Okay, so M&Ms have come out and they’ve put less sexy shoes on the female M&Ms you know they’re dress them uop as characters.

Ionut Danifeld  1:04:06  

I was thinking you were saying Eminem,

Martin Henley  1:04:08  

Eminem, no. M&M’s the chocolate.

Martin Henley  1:04:17  

So they’ve these characters. Now M&M’s go woke, there you go. M&M candy are now woke apparently, so they’ve got an anxious one. Like, here’s the characters, they’ve got less sexy boots. They’ve got more characters, they are leaving us all, redesigned, leaving us all completely baffled. There’s an anxious one. So now the whatever colour is the green one, I think, has anxiety. They’re hoping to create a world where everyone feels they belong and society is inclusive. Yeah, so I mean, the question I have for you is really does politics play such a huge part in in our lives that we now needs to be included. Look, so here’s the before and after. Oh yeah so this one before was a little bit quirky now he’s anxious. This one before was clearly quite assertive and now is, I don’t know. What is that? 

Ionut Danifeld  1:05:17  

He’s the one from the right but one

Martin Henley  1:05:20  

Oh, this one is the one from the right. Okay, so here assertive here a little bit passive aggressive maybe I should say man. Oh, and the part of the thing here about the is this green. I’m colorblind but she now has Oh, she now has flat shoes, rather than sexy boots. Sure brother. This is where we are in the world. I feel like we did a good job covering the marketing news.

Ionut Danifeld  1:05:52  

Yeah, the world is a beautiful place, the market places a more beautiful place after we read all of this news.

Martin Henley  1:06:00  

Yes. Good. All right, brother. Anything else you want to say?

Ionut Danifeld  1:06:06  

Long live and prosper.

Martin Henley  1:06:08  

Live long and prosper. Okay, he live long and prosper. I will see you in two weeks but is it not clashing now with your …..

Ionut Danifeld  1:06:18  

We should wait and see.

Martin Henley  1:06:20  

Okay, so maybe we need to do our thing a little bit earlier if it does clash that would be good rather than later. 

Ionut Danifeld  1:06:28  

I’m going to let you know on Messenger, Facebook Messenger.

Martin Henley  1:06:32  

Okay, good. Oh, because that’s the only other thing I use Meta for is to speak to you. Why don’t I have your whatsapp number? Why am I why are we speaking on Messenger still?

Ionut Danifeld  1:06:43  

Whatsapp is still Meta.

Martin Henley  1:06:45  

Oh, it is? Yeah. Oh, yes. WhatsApp, I use that extensively. Ah, so I am.

Ionut Danifeld  1:06:53  

Or you can be like a real marketer, and you can buy this Apple phone. You know, it’s called the iPhone. 

Ionut Danifeld  1:06:59  

What is it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. My mum’s got one of those.

Ionut Danifeld  1:07:04  

It’s beautiful the ecosystem is amazing.

Martin Henley  1:07:07  

No, thank you, brother. I’m good. I’ve had my Google Pixel 3a for three years nearly. In April, it will be three years and apart from the fact I play too much chess on it, it’s got squares burnt onto the screen it’s still serving me beautifully. 

Martin Henley  1:07:23  

Okay, brother, I love you, man. I will speak to you in a couple of weeks time but remember earlier is better than later. So you have to change it. If we can change it earlier. That would be work best for me. Send me the links for where you are, I’ll put them in description because people might want to come and see you speaking. 

Martin Henley  1:07:41  

Absolutely will do. 

Martin Henley  1:07:42  

How long is the talk, what is the subject of the talk?

Ionut Danifeld  1:07:45  

One is about influencer marketing, and the one on the Martech Summit, and the other one on Lazada is about how a Malaysian brand became number one in Southeast Asia.

Martin Henley  1:08:00  

Fantastic. Excellent. All right. Good luck with those. Maybe I will also come and watch but send the link so I can include them in the description. 

Martin Henley  1:08:08  

Will do. Okay, brother. Thank you, man. Thanks for your time. Peace out. Bye

WHAT DO YOU THINK?