For Immediate Release #212: When Worlds Collide

Gaming. Blockchain. NFTs. The Metaverse. They are all colliding, creating something bigger than any single one of these platforms. In the October episode of For Immediate Release, Neville and Shel talk about this phenomenon and some of the companies making it happen. Also in this month's Hobson & Holtz Report, Neville and Shel discuss the rise of robo-voices, how some companies are taking a more authentic and organic approach to influence, the widening gap between employees and leaders when it comes to policies for returning to the office, ways to encourage employees to engage and share on an intranet, and whether now is the time to hire a chief metaverse officer. Dan York's Tech Report looks at the recent Facebook outage, Facebook Reels, TikTok's billion-user milestone, Slack Clips, Twitch's code base, and Global Encryption Day.
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The post FIR #212: When Worlds Collide appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Gaming. Blockchain. NFTs. The Metaverse. They are all colliding, creating something bigger than any single one of these platforms. In the October episode of For Immediate Release, Neville and Shel talk about this phenomenon and some of the companies making it happen. Also in this month’s Hobson & Holtz Report, Neville and Shel discuss the rise of robo-voices, how some companies are taking a more authentic and organic approach to influence, the widening gap between employees and leaders when it comes to policies for returning to the office, ways to encourage employees to engage and share on an intranet, and whether now is the time to hire a chief metaverse officer. Dan York’s Tech Report looks at the recent Facebook outage, Facebook Reels, TikTok’s billion-user milestone, Slack Clips, Twitch’s code base, and Global Encryption Day.

Our FIR recording sessions are now being streamed live, because why not? We already stream it in order to capture a backup recording on YouTube; we’ve just been making these restricted streams. We have decided to make them public so you can watch and comment. Our next recording is scheduled for Saturday, November 20, at noon ET. You’ll see our pre-recording conversation as well as seeing how the sausage gets made. Watch live here.

(You can watch the video of the making of this episode, though it’s clearly too late to share comments we can read right into the show.)

We are hosting an FIR Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday during the stay-at-home period at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our Facebook group or send an email to [email protected]. Note, there will be no FIR Zoom Chat on Thursday, October 28, as neither Neville nor Shel will be available.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Neville’s link blog, Outbox, is available, as well.

Links from This Month’s Episode

PoliteMail blog post on using empirical data to demonstrate the value of internal communications
The rise of the robo-voices
How brands are using TikTok to find super-fan content creators
How influencers are helping cities attract remote workers
How to Create an Epic Clubhouse Room and Attract Celebrity Guests Organically
Remote-working jobs: Disaster looms as managers refuse to listen
Is it time to hire a chief metaverse officer?
NFT trading volume explodes 704% in 3rd quarter as blockchain games catch fire
7 projects at forefront of gaming metaverse movement
Ertha NFT metaverse arrives on Binance Smart Chain
Mark Cuban-backed Alethea AI is building a metaverse of NFT avatars
Stage 11 raises $5.7 million to reimagine music for the metaverse
SpongeBob, Star Trek, and South Park digital tokens may soon be available as ViacomCBS enters the NFT market
Hypnos Virtual Looks to Infuse VR Experience with Personalized Aromas for Gaming and More
Art house Sotheby’s launches curated NFT platform called Sotheby’s Metaverse

Links from Dan York’s Report

Facebook Reels exits beta in the U.S. with offers to pay creators for well-performing videos
Launching Reels on Facebook U.S.
Thanks a billion!
TikTok’s tweet on its 1 billion MAU milestone
Slack Is Trying to Replace Meetings With an Instagram Stories-Style Feature
Record Audio and Video Clips in Slack
Slack releases Clips video tool, announced 16 Salesforce integrations
Slack adds audio chat and video clips to take the pain out of hybrid working
A catastrophe at Twitch
Global Encryption Day

Raw, Unedited Descript Transcript of This Episode

Coming up in the October episode of, for immediate release the podcast for communicators, a new twist to the audio craze with robo voices, finding a niche in the world of entertainment. That’s right. You’ve may not be hearing the actual actor, but an amazing simulation. Some companies are figuring out how to use influencers or wield influence in a more authentic and organic way.

We’ll share some examples. Managers just aren’t listening to employees when it comes to company returned to workplace plans. That could be a recipe for disaster. We’ll look at nine ways. One company is getting employees to engage and share content on their intranet. Is it time to hire a chief metaverse officer?

Who’ve explored that concept and look at how gaming NFTs blockchain and the metaverse are colliding. And Dan York’s tech report covers the Facebook outage, Facebook reels, a tick talk milestone, slack clips, global encryption day and more. And it’s all coming your way right now on episode 212 of four immediate release another podcast from the fir podcast.

This is for immediate release the podcast for communication.

Hi everybody. And welcome to episode number 212 of four immediate release. This is the Hobson and Holtz report for October, 2021. This is Shel Holtz in Concord. Califia. Uh, this is no abstinence Sachem in England, and we are recording on October 16th, planning to drop this show on Monday the 18th. And we have some really interesting content to cover with you today.

We’re going to return to the metaverse later in the show with some really fascinating, uh, topics to, to share with you. Uh, before we get there though, a few housekeeping items, starting with a listener comment, always excited to see a listener comment, uh, this from our friend, Tom Murphy, who thanks us for providing some much needed sanity last month on the Facebook response to their recent challenges.

Tom says, as the saying goes, when you’re in a hole, stop digging, they would have been better served by pausing for a moment and investing some time and resources to address the actual issues being raised rather than this mindless attempt to bluster the way through. PR, this is pure and simple, a failure of leadership.

And as Neville pointed out, they will continue to behave as they have until they have no other alternative. What surprises me though? It shouldn’t is that their response seems so out of touch with the time, but perhaps that just illustrates how far removed they are from the basics of what is right. And what is wrong.

That seems to be central to bad decision making. Yeah, well, I don’t know what to, I can’t add anything to what Tom is interesting. What you said, Tom. That really is, I mean, they seem to be a drift in, in many areas. It seems to me the tone deaf is one that seems to be out of touch with, well, too many things probably, but, uh, I don’t know what the answer is, what the solution of Facebook is.

I see a lot of people talk about now’s the time to leave, but no one’s doing that. So those, those conversations aren’t really helpful. Um, I think, uh, regulation is around the corner. That’s what I think. And, uh, some commentators saying this is, this is actually. Uh, what Zuckerberg is aiming for so that they can take the blame for everything.

Right. Well, also provide some clear guidance, I suppose, although why they can’t come up with some clear guidance internally, you know, there was that book, uh, trust me, PR is dead. And the author of this passed away, I believe a short time ago, but, uh, he made the case that you don’t need PR these days because companies are under a microscope and they are compelled to do the right thing.

And I think Facebook is the case study as to why that’s not the case. Yeah. Yeah. I would agree. I think it’s a, it’s a, it’s the nature of it. Regulation. It may be inevitable, but I think in terms of people passing laws, but implementing them and, and policing them whole different ball game, do you have a stiction?

So there’s no consensus. There’s no single market. This is a global thing. I can’t say ever working truly. Um, so Facebook will be a, um, I think we’ll see the next super scandal coming and nothing will change. So to be cynical, but I don’t believe any change will happen. Probably not sad to say, uh, in any case.

Thanks Tom. For the comment, we are always interested in hearing what listeners think and having a conversation about them here on the show. So, uh, you’ll get directions on how to submit comments. If you stick with us through to the end of the show, which we hope you will also want to let you know, there is an fir interview coming.

These are few and far between these days, uh, based on our schedules, but this one came to me in a pitch, in an email from somebody I had not solicited. I’m a. Five or six of these every day we have so-and-so, who’s available for an interview on thus and such. And most of those go right into the trash folder.

Uh, but this one captured my interest. It’s a couple of researchers who have identified a particular case in which using a narrative-based strategy in order to influence somebody doesn’t work. And this is sort of a staple in the communications industry. Isn’t it? That you have to tell a story in order to drive the point home.

Uh, and here’s a case where a particular stakeholder audience, uh, hearing stories is unmoved, but they are moved by other things. Uh, and I found that to be fascinating. So I’m talking to these two researchers on Tuesday and we’ll get that posted. Also want to let everybody know that circle of fellows is going to be broadcast.

Live this coming Thursday. Uh, I believe that’s the 21st. Of October, it will be at, uh, one, um, noon Eastern time. Uh, and this is on communication, ethics, great panel, Tasha, Tory, Jane Mitchell, out in your neck of the woods, Neville, uh, Barbara puffer, and who served on the IBC ethics committee for, uh, several years.

And Jennifer Wall will be the panelist I’m moderating for a discussion about communication ethics. So if you could join us, uh, details are on the fir podcast network website. And if you can’t, of course it will be available as both a video replay and a circle of fellows podcast here on the fir podcast network.

So that’s the news. And, and, and we’ll get into our stories here in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsor. PoliteMail I just had a meeting this past week with my boss and the consultant that we’re bringing on board to conduct our internal communications audit, which we try to do every other year.

And we spent a lot of time talking about how the data we collect could be used to demonstrate the value of the internal comms function. Now seeing the latest, polite mail blog post resonated with me since it’s all about using empirical data to prove internal comms value. This post notes that one study, uh, found a connection between employee communications and employee engagement.

Another study found a relation between internal comms and supportive employee behaviors like organizational citizenship, behavior, and employee advocate. Uh, uh, yet another study found the communicating transparently with employees can reduce discrimination perception. Enhanced perceived organizational justice and established stronger employee organization relationships.

Uh, based on that research, uh, the post suggests that to the most valuable metrics to measure our employee engagement and employee retention. In my experience, internal communication can influence both of these. And importantly, they’re both things that had her to senior leadership. So being able to connect the dots from your internal communication efforts to retention and engagement will certainly earn you some points.

You know what else will earn you some points, sending internal comms emails that get employees attention and let you prove that they did the job with analytics that you can access directly from within outlook. That’s what polite mail does. So if you’re looking to up your employee communications game, go read this latest post on the PoliteMail blog and take a look at the valuable service they provide.

This is a service used by companies like E-bay Deloitte, PayPal Expedia, even the national basketball association. You’ll find it [email protected] and we thank PoliteMail for their support of, for immediate relief. We do indeed. Um, so our first story is something that I personally find interesting. Uh, I know many listeners do as well, but this is to do with synthetic voices for want of a better way of putting it.

Uh, these are the voices aren’t really people, or they might actually be people that a computer has made in a speech into phrases. So you’ve used Alexa, you use, uh, Google assistant, uh, you’re used to this, most of those voices, aren’t real quote unquote. So this story in the wall street journal called mantra just published about a week ago at the rise of the robo voices.

What’s the title of it. And, uh, it really focuses on, uh, on the entertainment industry as the example, I’m pretty sure that that much of this could be applied in any industry. Uh, they talk about, uh, new technology, letting filmmakers create foreign language versions. Um, film’s using samples of the original actors, voices to build out a narrative.

No more awkward. Voiceovers says the wall street journal. That’s a, that’s how they start the piece. Um, it starts really by a prediction, how sophisticated digital voice manufacturing is coming and entertainment executives say it could bring a revolution in sound as industry changing as computer graphics and visuals, new companies are using artificial intelligence to create human-like voices.

From samples of a living actors, voice models that can not only sound like specific performers, but can speak any language, cry, scream, laugh, even talk with a mouse mouthful. At the same time, companies are refining the visual technology. So actors look like they are really speaking the users of synthetic voices extend well beyond localizing foreign films, AI models can provide useful voices for aging actors.

The technology can resurrect audio from celebrities who’ve died or lost the ability to speak and they can tweak dialogues in post-production without the need facts. All the tinkering raises thorny ethical questions says the journal. Where is the line between creating an engrossing screen experience and fabricating an effect that leaves audiences feeling duped?

A valid question. Although the journal does quote Oz Krakowski of deep dub, an AI voice company based in Tel Aviv who doesn’t think filmmakers necessarily need to inform audiences when using fake voices, I come to theater to have a good time and enjoy. He says, and that’s what we’re supplying and immersive experience.

We may come back to that view shell. When we talk about this, about some other situations. Yeah. One of the situations mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker in the original star wars D aging visuals were used on his face for the Mandalorian series in which he played and reappear. And that shows late 20, 20 season finale.

But the actor’s voice said without fanfare something people didn’t realize is his voice. Isn’t real said, John Farrow, who’s the show’s creator. That’s one example. Another example, London, AI firms semantic worked with actor Val Kilmer to recreate nearly two minutes of his voice Kilmer who lost his voice to throat cancer sounded so real.

It moved his own son to tears. They couldn’t tell the difference between that and his real voice filmmaker. Morgan Neville recently acknowledged creating 45 seconds of an AI voice for late chef Anthony Bordain and the documentary Roadrunner stirring controversy over whether he had consent from the family and whether he should have informed the audience.

So that’s, that’s a thread that you’re going to hear a lot more of if you’re sure the, these ethically related. Points among the technology’s biggest risks as a journalism manipulators video, or do you have deep fakes more than one company attempted to replicate Morgan Freeman’s voice in demos, unavailable for public use a representative for the actor said all of this was done without any permission.

Journeyman actors, meanwhile, worry about getting replaced by computers in the past 18 months, Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, Daniel Black has negotiated for contracts that seek to use synthetic voices in place of performers. When necessary Mr. Black made show his clients had the right to reject the voices.

If they didn’t like the results in the end, produces never needed to use the artificial voices. But the Hollywood clients took note, all four felt it was creepy. Black says there was clearly a recognition. You know, we can create your voice without you. So there’s a landscape picture shell that is now, this is happening now.

And, uh, the, the iterative development and evolution of the technologies that’s happening at startling speed. Uh, and in fact it is accelerating and more improvement creates another. That makes it easier then for the next improvement. And I think the focus ought to be a lot more on these ethical issues. I mean, we, we have, uh, lots of conversations.

We see online people talking about deep fakes, uh, great examples around everywhere that, that isn’t really the actor’s face. Uh, the porn industry has taken that to heart. I think that’s a big one with fakes, but, uh, it’s part of, uh, the, the, the good side of it is how I tend to see the benefit here. And some of these things, if there is no.

Uh, to duple or, or, or show people that, uh, that this is not real, then I think it’s, uh, it can have valuable benefits, uh, in the entertainment industry as a wall street journal, this piece, uh, outlines. But I could see other areas in organizations, for instance, where this, um, uh, rapidly evolving technology could be of great value.

So that’s a landscape and the ethical thing. Yeah. Like I said, I think the example points to something we need to be paying a lot more attention. So what, what is the next step in that area? What, what, what’s your take on it or show? I think there’s a big difference between the world of entertainment and some of the other uses to which this can be put both nefarious and noble.

Uh, it does remind you. Of the story that we reported on couldn’t have been more than two or three years ago, uh, from Adobe, uh, product that they were working on, where you recorded somebody’s voice, it created a transcript of that. And then you could go in and edit it. And the AI would produce audio of that person saying the new thing that you have done, you may have, uh, added a sentence or changed a word.

And it, it very seamlessly sounded like that person. So this is an evolution. Of that kind of technology that was just mind blowing and raising all kinds of ethical concerns when it was first unveiled to at, at a demo. I think you can probably still find that video on YouTube, uh, in entertainment. I’m inclined to agree with the Tel-Aviv based, uh, entrepreneur, uh, talking about the fact that he goes to the movies to be entertained.

Um, am I going to feel duped if, if they w in an AI voice at some point, no, I don’t feel duped when I look at, look at CGI and, and wait a minute, that’s not real. What I just saw, um, as long as dinosaur is not real, how can that be? As long as you’re not screwing over the, the actors somehow? Uh, I think that is a significant issue and, and agents and, uh, contract lawyers are going to have to start taking all of this into consideration, but I’m moving.

Interested in how this is going to be used, uh, beyond entertainment. Uh, and we’ve talked about this before. I think the ability to take, for example, your CEO’s voice, who may have just delivered remarks at, uh, an all company update in the us and wants to get that message out to places where English is not the first language, uh, to have that voice speaking in the native language to those employees could, could be very powerful.

And obviously the CEO would endorse that. Uh, it’s not something being done behind his back. On the other hand, we’ve already had the case where the voice of somebody, uh, was used in order to steal money from an organization. It sounded like, uh, an executive was issuing an order to an employee who complied with that order and it turned out it wasn’t that individual at all.

It was an AI that, that manipulated that voice. So. The case in the UAE? Uh, just a couple of days ago, right? Oh, I’m thinking of one earlier. There’s I, I have not heard about a case in the UAE a couple of days. Huge. A lot of money, 30 plus million. I mean, it was a, you know, and it was based on audio. Uh, it was, it was, uh, a synthetic voice that sounded exactly like the, the CEO.

It was part of, it was like the last step in things that had been put in place to give authenticity to the whole notion of the transaction that was then confirmed by the CEO, his fake voice hearing. Very sophisticated, very sophisticated. No, it’s um, I agree. I mean, th the, the, I could see value in that the CEO, for example, you gave as long as, um, it.

You know, not, uh, put forward as something to, to what it isn’t, it’s like friends and saying, you know, but you never knew the CEO could speak French. Well guess what? Here he is speaking French. No, that’s not true. So it needs to be handled in the right way. I would say absolutely example and disclosure covers a lot of ground, right?

I mean, you tell your employees, no, our CEO does not speak French, but we have the technology for him to speak to you in. Right, exactly. Right. I hope that that’s how this would. Yeah. And I, you know, frankly, in the entertainment industry, you could do the same thing in the credits. Why not? Yeah. I mean movies.

Well, yeah, I mean, there, we know that dubbed, um, but. Yeah, the difference is putting it simply. I think that that the dubbing is now done in the actual, um, voice that synthetic of the original actor. So you’re right. You wouldn’t be, you wouldn’t, I don’t believe, uh, uh, B feel you’ve been, uh, been had with it.

I don’t believe so on the movie certainly represents the continued rise of audio as, as an important. Though, which we’ve been talking about for years now, uh, there have been some other moves in audio recently, Facebook launched an audio hub here in the U S it’s on the mobile app, but it, what it does is it aggregates all of the audio formats they have, uh, which include podcasts and live audio short form audio.

Uh, they’re expanding their live audio rooms, uh, their clubhouse rival. Yeah. They’re starting to decline. That’s not synthetic though. That’s just, that’s just real audio, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. They’re starting to roll out sound bites, uh, which is, uh, a service like Tik talk on Facebook, but just for short audio clips, there’s a lot of movement in audio.

And I think the synthesized voice is just a subset of this, this huge movement we’re seeing in that. Right. So it’s a good story out of Los Angeles. It reminded me a lot of Eric Schwarzman when he was a falling stories to kind of story the entertainment capital of the world. You got it. This is exactly the kind of stuff.

Now, uh, some years later with way things all with tech that Eric would, uh, would really show things. So thanks for the point, Eric, I saw a few stories this week that seemed to show a trend among, well, at least some organizations using social media in particular, some newer social media properties, uh, to build audiences through the use of influencers in a more organic way than what we’ve seen with the rise of influencers over the last couple of years, uh, to be fair, I have not been the biggest advocate of influencer marketing as it has taken shape, but these cases aren’t about the influencers you find in.

You know, those influencer database services and pay big money to get them to showcase your product and an Instagram photo, even though they don’t actually use your product. Uh, for example, there are some cities who are turning to influencers to help them attract remote workers to come live there. This.

An original idea. I did some work for a healthcare organization, uh, based in temple, Texas. This was back in 2009 and one of their challenges was getting doctors to come live in temple, Texas. And what I recommended, I was working with them on social media, primarily. Uh, I recommended that they have some of the doctors who are already working there, produced testimonials about how great it is to live in temple, Texas.

No, it’s not a thriving metropolis with this huge nightlife, but everybody trusts everybody. You can leave your door unlocked at night, and it’s a great place to raise your kids in this community and all of that stuff. Um, but this time around, we’re talking about trying to get people to come work in your town, even though your company is, is somewhere else.

Uh, it’s all about. The company’s telling their employees that they can live wherever they want. You know, you have a job in New York or San Francisco cost of living is outrageous. Uh, but you’d like to go live someplace where the cost of living is lower and the quality of life is, is much higher. So cities like Jacksonville, Florida, Greensboro, North Carolina, Fairfax county in Virginia are turning to influencers and social media marketing to reach the newly remote, to try to attract them to come live here.

Jacksonville, for example, they have an economic development agency that worked with two influencers. Uh, each of whom spent a week in different parts of Jacksonville at different times of the year. One of them, uh, name of Natalie Barbuda, uh, is a 24 year old creator and podcast host from Miami who stayed in Jacksonville beach with her best friend.

You know, she went to coffee shops, she went to the beach, she took yoga classes. She went and listened to live music all while working remotely. Uh, and she wrote detailed posts about her experience. So did Amanda Watkins a blogger and creator from Atlanta? Who stayed with her fiance in Jacksonville’s downtown district, between the two of them.

They posted 68 posts across, uh, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and walk-ins blog and cumulatively. They generated 4.9 million impressions in Fairfax county, 11 influencers that they worked with created 78 posts. And one reason they generate so much interested is because of their kind of what if in nature, right?

What if I could move to a place like this and still work for my Chicago based employer? Uh, I think it’s an interesting approach. How, how has that, how would that fit do you think with, um, some of the talk you hear that I suspect is going to be put in place, uh, that is to do with, um, who you are got a really well-paid job with this big company and you’re working remotely and you move to a place where the cost of living is a lot lower and your employer says you’re going to get a pickup costs.

You’re you’re right. Your costs are less. So how would that fit with, um, the messaging that, uh, is being pitched to come live in this gorgeous place? It’s lovely. It’s safe. Leave your doors unlocked, raise your kids, et cetera, et cetera. And you find that your. Uh, the, the, the net income you’ve got is reducing.

Uh, whereas if you stayed where you were, you could plant it quite well. And there’s the balancing act basically. So is that going to feed your bank, do you think, in the, in the pitching and the sponsors of the, I don’t think it’s going to figure big in the pitching of these organizations. I do think the companies that employ these folks are going to have to.

Uh, be proactive in, in communicating this as part of their remote work policy salaries are determined based on the region you live in. Obviously we pay more in San Francisco than somebody is going to pay in Iowa because it costs less to live in Iowa. So in San Francisco to Iowa, they going to pay, they’re going to get a pay cut.

Absolutely. Uh, and. Pretty routine. Uh, but employees who say I’m remote, I can work anywhere and move maybe surprised by the pay cut. And they shouldn’t be, I think as part of your communication about going remote, you need to say, if you move to someplace where the salary bands are lower, your salary is going to be effected.

The other thing that could affect is your benefits right here in the U S we pro we provide benefits, uh, and I’m, uh, my company is a California based company. So we have California based medical networks. Uh, if you move out of network, we’re not going to contract with a whole network just for cause one employee is decided to go live in Jacksonville.

Right. So suddenly they’re on their own. They give you an allowance to do your own funding. Every company is going to have to figure out how they’re going to deal with that. Right. But it reminds me of that. The thing that was a big day of in the, you know, 15 years ago, when, when all this was kicking off was, you know, something glamorous stories you’d hear about such and such a person who was kind of jetting around the world, working at these great exotic locations, there’s a laptop sitting on the beach and all this stuff is wonderful.

Some of it was real. I don’t believe much of it else, frankly, but I read a story probably a year ago now that, uh, talked about this very topic on remote working. If you think you can just decide, oh, let me take off only go and live in, uh, you know, Ruben and yeah, well, or in the Mediterranean and a Greek island, or I’m going to do a nice place in the Caribbean or, or, you know, Uh, you can’t because it talked precisely on that exact topic, benefits, employee benefits, obligations, and tax was a big access, a big one tax liability from the employer, as well as the employee.

If you’re an employee of a foreign company as seen by the place you’re going to go to, and you want to go there and live, there may be implications for your employer doing that. So this is, this is, I don’t believe this is new, but it’s suddenly becoming part of the discussion of where are you talking about companies that are saying 60,000 employees can now work remotely?

Uh, there needs to be some proactive communication and maybe even a, a policy guide on what it means. If you move out of our region, uh, if you move out of our marketing, I probably, probably not enough of that. Oh, I haven’t heard of anybody who’s I haven’t either. But the idea of traveling to exotic foreign parts now, as I think diminished significantly because of the pandemic.

Yeah. So yeah. You’re going to stay domestic, but yeah. Right. Or if you could even get into a country cause they won’t let you in. So yeah, but there’s plenty of places in a place as big as the U S to, to move where you’d still encounter some of those problems, even state tax issues, particularly tax, uh, moving on to our next, uh, organic social media marketing example.

This one is from clubhouse. Uh, I’ve pretty much shrugged off clubhouse these days, but I read about this attorney, her name, which I’m going to butcher is nitro, uh, who re. I’m sure that’s wrong. Um, but she hosts a room every Thursday night with a colleague, uh, and, and the room is called entertainment, law exposed.

So she wrote a column in the rap, um, and said that one night, this turned into an epic viral event that attracted 35,000 guests and ran for 17 hours. And this was in large part because three unexpected guests showed up. And it wouldn’t have happened. She said if she and her partner had created a valuable forum on a regular schedule.

So I think that’s the first lesson, uh, out of, uh, clubhouses is if you’re going to do it, um, do it right, and just say, we’re going to be here every Tuesday night at six or whatever. Uh, the guests who dropped by, uh, one of them was Tiffany Haddish, the actress and comedian, uh, and, uh, nitro wrote, uh, at first I thought she’d pop in for a minute and leave, but after 10 to 20 minutes, she was still in the audience listening intently and like anyone else interested in speaking on stage, she raised her hand then, uh, one of the real Housewives, uh, joined the conversation.

And so did somebody called, uh, Patty Stanger, the millionaire matchmaker. I don’t know who either of these people are, but you know, I don’t have to, uh, other people. Uh, the audience did. And the point that this lawyer made is that all three came by because they were looking for information, not attention.

Right. Uh, what we came to realize she wrote is that if you just provide a platform where everyone is on the same playing field, people will tune in. So another way that you can start to wield some influence through this newer channel, this social audio channel of clubhouse. Meanwhile brands are scouring tick talk to find their next content creators.

I remember when that was happening on vine, but what’s happening here is first of all, this isn’t about finding an influencer to necessarily Hawk your product. Um, as one creative director, put it, it’s no longer about trying to get that one creator with a giant following to mention your brand once these creator classes.

And that’s a phrase that we’re gonna be hearing a lot. I think creator classes, uh, these creator classes allow brands to integrate the creator into their overall marketing strategy. They want these creators to be an extension of their marketing teams. Brands are finding influencers who genuinely and organically loved the brand.

Uh, major league baseball. For example, has a creator class where each of the creators had demonstrates a different aspect of their love of the game. Uh, this was in an ad age, article one plays baseball as an e-sport. Um, Gatorade chose nine athlete influencers to make contact for may content for its tick talk.

Uh, one’s a former walk-on for the Florida Gators, the college football team that led to the naming of Gatorade. Uh, one is known for basketball trick shots, and one is a professional soccer freestyler. Uh, Chipotle is another brand introducing a creator class. You know, the point of all of these, um, is that going organic with your approach to social media marketing can really pay off?

I like all three stories for that reason. It’s almost like going back to the early days of social media marketing when it was, uh, more about authenticity than anything else. Yeah, uh, that, that, and sentence, it sums it up. Ready for me, I think. Um, but, uh, I would say the examples you gave, particularly the, um, uh, well, not particularly, but, uh, the, the clubhouse and this one, this one tick tock, probably, but more if you want, uh, if your goal is engagement, I think, uh, if your goal isn’t that, um, where it’s simply sharing content or encouraging people to click on something or whatever it might be, then the approach is different than the rationale is different.

But, um, the authenticity is a key thing to, to all of this in a time when everything isn’t authentic, it’s all marketing, nothing wrong with that. I’m just observing. So I’m not criticizing it. I prefer authentic to marketing. I have to say, honestly, I’m crazy about these influencers who get big money to hold up the product that they don’t actually use.

No, absolutely. But that was it ever that shell, I think, come in and say, Hey, we got a new media to do, do these things now. But this is interesting development though. I mean the clubhouse one. Yeah. It’s mind boggling. Was it 17 hours and 30,000 people joining in my goodness. Me. So is that because of the celebs who joined or is that boom?

So what, what’s your take on the reason why, why. Yeah. And the first place he, I think it was, uh, partly the celebs, but partly seeing that, you know, with this person has 300,000 followers and they’re in our market demographics. So let’s pay them to pitch our product. Uh it’s it’s really just the modern equivalent to the celebrity spokesperson who was on TV, uh, talking about your product.

And doesn’t actually, I mean, Tom Selleck, doesn’t buy this, uh, retiree insurance, but he’s up there on TV selling it. Right. So, uh, yeah. Uh, I, I like the micro influencers who really are experts in the area and aren’t going to talk about something that they don’t actually endorse. Um, and that’s kind of where we’re headed here.

These are people who are on the tech talking to. These are people who are already producing content about, you know, baseball. Uh, so for the major league baseball organization to basically co-opt them and say, create it for us. They’re not going to be doing anything different. They’re just going to have a bigger audience.

That’s what vine did. Right? Uh, it created a bunch of these, um, people who, who produce these amazing vine videos. Remember the vine six second videos, uh, that, that brands took advantage of. I remember Lowe’s, for example, had a bunch of vine creators doing handy ways to use simple products to clean your house.

And, uh, they were doing these things anyway. Uh, so that’s what lent that era of authenticity to it. And I like seeing a return. Yeah, I agree. I think he’s a really good example. You you’ve highlighted. So, uh, yeah, authenticity is that’s the name of the game. So, um, the other name of the game we’ll come to in a different segue segue now to story, making the link there with about name of the game, uh, remote working jobs.

And this is a survey reporting services that Dean net, uh, just the other day, um, headline was the grabber showed up in my, uh, in my interest fee disaster looms as managers refuse to listen is what they’re saying about remote working in policies. So it’s really reporting on a survey, uh, from, uh, the future forum, uh, so called the future from pulse survey, uh, that, uh, asked 10 and a half thousand knowledge workers that Dino describes them as in the U S UK, Australia, France, Germany, Japan in August and July, July, and August this year, uh, the results found that many company executives continue to view the office as a nerve center.

Despite a growing preference of flexible working policies by employees. There’s your disconnect between what senior people in organization would like to do? What employees would like to do, uh, with simple evidence that employees are not being consulted at all in these, in these plans. So executives are drawing up post pandemic work policies, without employees input says the survey, uh, who are willing to quit.

If their employers don’t deliver. Now, that’s not necessarily a groundswell, but that’s an opinion, uh, voiced by many in the survey. And of course the, the, the proof of it will be would they do that if it came to it? So, uh, it’s quite a sizable number of people across a significant number of countries. Uh, the survey also found.

That workers were largely being left out of the planning of and demic working policy, suggesting that these plans have been designed around the working preferences of senior leadership, the survey results echo a sentiment that’s been voiced repeatedly over the past 18 months, or so employees have embraced remote working and see it as a pillar of their future working preferences.

Yet executives are more likely than lower level workers to be in favor of a working week based heavily around an office. And that actually reminds me of similar findings in that really big survey done by Microsoft about three or four months ago, maybe a bit longer early this year came up with similar, uh, uh, views from those results.

Uh, some numbers here, uh, the pulse survey, uh, shows 44% of executives said they wanted to work from the office every day compared to just 17% of employees. 75% of executives said they wanted to work from the office three to five days a week versus 34% of employees. To me, there’s a path being traveled there.

They’re heading towards a consensus if they can find the right numbers, but please both. And I think that’s going to be the trick. Uh, the view of the office looks different from the top, said Brian Elliott. Who’s the executive leader, uh, of the future forum, which is backed by slack. While executives are banging down the door to get back to their corner offices, non-executive employees are demanding flexibility in where, and when they work.

The survey found that over the past 12 months to share it a black respondents agreeing with the statement I value the relationship I have with my coworkers rose from 48% to 76%. While the share of respondents had agreed with the statement I’m treated fairly at work rose and 47% to 73%, meanwhile, 87% of Asian respondents and 81% of black respondents cited a preference for flexible or hybrid work compared to 75% of white respondents.

So, um, that’s sort of slicing and dicing by, uh, by race as an inevitability in the, in the diversity focus we have in workplace these days are quite right to, to look at that as part of the overall picture that you need to consider. So that’s reporting it. Um, my simple view shell, frankly, on this is astounding to me that any company.

Would go through any process, uh, to figure out what pat and post pandemic work policies are without consulting the employees. I truly find it jaw-dropping to know that senior executive companies are basically saying, yep, we don’t need to talk to employees. Here’s the policy that’s in sound. It seems to me and therefore I have no sympathy.

If your key people quit and go and work someplace else. So what they need to do, I mean, you know, this is the one I want, hear folks take and listen to this bill compromises. They give everyone something and communication’s paramount. I rest my case, um, at case well rested, uh, what amazes me. Uh, like you is, is not just that the companies that are establishing these policies, aren’t consulting employees, but they’re companies that in many cases have high levels of employee engagement and generally do, uh, give employees a voice.

This just seems to have fit into some category in the minds of the company leadership that doesn’t require that this is one of those things that is a leadership decision, plain and simple. Um, and it shouldn’t be, uh, you’re absolutely right. And I think not giving employees a voice in something like this, uh, during this particular era where employees definitely seem to be in the driver’s seat.

Um, is a big mistake. I was just seeing a report on this last night. The number of companies that are going on strike, uh, were, were employees are going on strike it’s. It’s one of the biggest seasons for strikes in decades and big, I mean, at the top of 60,000 employees at Deere, for example, um, and, and maybe 20,000 deer in 60,000 in the entertainment industry that are going to be going out on Monday and Kaiser Permanente, nurses, uh, employees feel like they have a say now because of the number of jobs that are open and how desperate companies are, and they have this power.

And to ignore that, I think is to put your company in peril. I think that’s a big mistake. Yeah, I agree. It’s similar here, but for different reasons, not because of pandemic, you hearing talk of strikes a lot to do with the chaos that’s happening here in the UK, over the, you missed in the major everywhere in the world.

Supply chain difficulties, not enough truck drivers, uh, you’ve got, uh, you know, uh, nurses going on strike because they they’re being ignored with, uh, requests for reasonable pay highlighting issues that politicians have ignored or simply not done anything about for decades. And now of course, here in the UK, well, here in the UK then got the Brexit angle in all of this as well.

So, and now we’re going to have this too. This will pile into it. Hence, uh, my view that, uh, we’re heading into very dark times, I think generally in society. Uh, with all this stuff piling in and at the time when things are so fragile and precarious, the paradox to me, shell, you know, you can, I have a feeling.

It might be the same at the state’s job vacancies across the board at an over all high. Right. So it was your vacancies. So, so what does it, people don’t want to take the kind of work or what what’s the reason? So that’s a lot of it is people want to take a job that gives them a living wage. And a lot of these jobs don’t have it and people are fed up and they’re not going to take them.

Companies are going to have to start offering a living wage with, with decent benefits. You also have people who say, you know, because of the pandemic and some of the issues that have arisen, uh, childcare is a bigger issue. I can’t count on my kid being in school, set hours every day. Um, also childcare, you know, can cost more than your mortgage.

Uh, so a lot of women are just exiting the workforce to stay home and care for their kids. And that takes a lot of people out of that pool that would otherwise be available to fill some of these jobs. Uh, so that’s a big deal. The other role the pandemic is playing here is that you have workers. Uh, this is.

The case in the entertainment industry where all of the behind the scenes people are, are, are set to go on strike on, on Monday, uh, who, who see that the companies have done very, very well during the pandemic. Uh, and none of that has been shared with them. Uh, and they’re kind of fed up with that. And I, I can’t say I blame them that gets back to that, uh, that, that wealth gap where all of the, you know, all of the wealth is, is shifting over to that 1% and everybody else’s is left begging for scraps.

And when you have employees in this position of power, uh, they’re, they’re able to say, we’re not going to put up with this and they can either just walk away or, or strike or become employee activists or whatever it is. Yeah, similar thing here in the UK as well. In that particular example you gave though here, you’ve got to think, um, agendas, uh, ideologically driven in many cases, what I call the old politics.

I mean, I can still remember the 1970s when, uh, uh, strikes where all the time, and we even had. Power station workers going on strike. So there’s no electricity in the country for days on it. Um, I’m not saying we’re getting back to that, but some of the, some of the talk is very much Laden with some of the political crap from that era.

I think they needed to drop all that. Shit, but just to talk properly and in times with in tune with contemporary desires, uh, cause not, there’s not a lot of disagreement that the, uh, that the, uh, you know, living wage and reasonable work and pay and all those benefits, you name it, that is then to the people.

Putting that views forward by the examples such as you’ve mentioned where this person and that company suddenly gets a pay rise is earning six figures already. And that goes up even more stuff like that. Not good. Some companies sub-companies are getting this right. Amazon announced just a few days ago that a lot of it’s tech and corporate workers can keep working remotely indefinitely.

They just need to be able to commute to the office when they’re needed there, which precludes you’re going to live in some resort area, but they’re going to leave it to the discretion of their directors. And a director at Amazon is an executive who oversees a handful of teams. So it’s not like a board director.

Uh, the policy applies to the 60,000 or so Amazon workers in the Puget sound region. And incidentally that stirring up some worries among business owners in the area who count on Amazon employees in the office pay patronizing their businesses. This is what happened in New York, right? Where the bodega owners were really suffering because, and, and, and big urban cities here when you have to be right.

So there’s. It’s not uniformly positive. The ideas are great, but there are consequences where other sectors Nick, but PWC, the accounting firms and all of its 40,000 us employees can choose to work remote permanently. And just this morning, I saw an article on LinkedIn. This was about a business insider piece about how, uh, companies like Herman Miller that make offices right, are working to design the office of the future as a place that will compete with where remote workers want to be.

In other words, this is such an awesome office. I want to go in there. They’re focusing on community socialization, uh, balanced with space for focused productivity. So we’ll, we’ll see if they can lure people back to the office with awesome. That’s what what’s needed now is a completely different type of thinking to, uh, to engage with, with, uh, employees, persuade them, not like we want your back in the office because we’re, you know why we’re offering X, Y, and Zed.

Uh, this is this, this is part of the new landscape now. So this is a topic we’ve just touched on that. I, I, I can see, we’re going to be talking a lot more about, I’m actually interested to know anyone listening, willing to share an opinion on what’s happening in your organization. Are you seeing some of these things, or do you, are you aware of these things where you are?

I think it’d be really good to know some of that stuff. So let’s put a shout out, let us know another little bullet list of, of the issues we’re interested in hearing about. I can post it to our Facebook group and a few other places where our convene. Greeting shell and Evelyn, if our listeners all around the world at Stan York, coming at you from Shelburne Vermont, and in October, of course, the big news was the global outage of Facebook on October 4th, with Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, all going down for six plus hours.

Now, you know, much has been written about the issues, the configuration change, the MIS you know, misconfiguration change that happened that took their network off. There’s a lot we could talk about on the technical side, but the important point was to me, that so many parts of the world rely on the Facebook ecosystem for communication after the outage, or as it was winding down, we had a Twitter space where a number of us were discussing this and everything else.

And I had a number of people coming on from Uganda, Malawi, other parts of Africa and Latin America as well, who are saying, you know, you all can laugh about, you know, you can say, well, you know, the internet didn’t go down just Facebook. You know, there were still all the other websites. But in our part of the world, like Facebook is the internet.

It’s all, it’s what we use for everything, for our communication, for our commerce, for all of what we do. And it really was a reminder about how critical the Facebook ecosystem is in those parts of the world. So something to think about, I have my own concerns about the centralization and consolidation, but this is a critical point to understand about what was happening in the impact that it had.

That was, you know, different in all parts of the world. Something else Facebook did this week on a different topic was they introduced reels to people in the U S and everywhere else. This is their Tik TOK competitor. I’d be curious to know if communicators are actually using it yet, what they’re doing with it, how they’re working with it.

It’s um, it’s now coming out there. People can use it. And see, now they’re trying of course, to take on Tik TOK, which tic Tauck had its own super huge moment. This time where they announced that over 1 billion, monthly active users were using Tik TOK, a pretty enormous status. I myself have been experimenting a bit with TOK.

You can find me there at Daniel three to four, if you want. Although I don’t have much for videos yet, but I’ve been impressed by the number of, in my space, technical discussions, other, just little commentaries that are going on. It’s it’s interesting. And for my world, there’s tech talk to you. H T okay.

The hashtag and, um, it’s amazing to see what people are doing and the creativity that’s happening there. So I think there’s a lot more we’ll be seeing in there. Interestingly, slack of course, has also noticed people using audio and video more and they’ve rolled out now slack clips to people with business or enterprise subscriptions where you can record audio and video directly inside of slack when you’re in a channel.

Or if you’re in a direct message, you can go and read. It’s interesting because this is internal communications, of course, but looking at ways you can avoid having meetings with status updates. Instead, you can potentially wind up providing that through audio or video or something in some way, I started to play with it.

I’m looking forward to playing a bit more and seeing what all that, what all happens there. You know, we’ll have to see finally, a big piece. There was news out of Twitch that their entire code base, all of their information, everything else had been exposed by an attacker who’d broken in and put it out there again.

This highlights the importance of internal security because somebody was able to go get all of their source code, everything that out there, and then make it available out on the public internet. It’s which is going to be going through a lot of security concerns analysis to figure out what happened, what the exposure is, all of that.

But in the meantime, that’s certainly a hoof, terrible thing to have happened out there. They exposed as well on the earnings of some of the top streamers on there. Uh, I was not with my, I made exactly zero off of Twitch, but, you know, it was just amazing to see some of the results of what’s happening in that space as well.

Anyway, important reminder about internal security. Finally, I will mention that coming up on Thursday, October 21st is global encryption day. It’s a project by the global encryption coalition, which of which my organization, the internet society is part of that, but it’s a global effort to encourage people to realize how much we use encryption in our daily lives.

Just for e-commerce for messaging for just you interacting with websites. Everything we do has encryption in some way. And a lot of the effort in there is focused around how do we make the switch to use better encryption, stronger encryption, to have a stronger internet experience. Overall, I’d encourage you to go check it out.

It’s at global encryption.org. You’ll see the information there about global encryption day and on that day. And certainly before that, you can also look at the hashtag encryption day on most social media services with that. I’m going to turn it back to you shall Neville. I hope you all have a great show and to everybody else out there have a great day.

Bye. Well, thanks, Dan. Yeah, I’ve read a lot over the years about how Facebook is the internet in various parts of the world, especially third world regions. In fact, I’ve done some competition judging for Reagan and, and ICBC and the like, uh, where that fact led an organization to use Facebook, to engage with those audiences, knowing that that’s how those people access online information, uh, and, and slack clips, man, you know, there we go.

Neville more audio. Uh, the rise of audio is just staggering. Uh, like the fact that everybody was thinking that that virtual and augmented reality was going to be the next huge thing. Um, it’s not it’s audio. Well, it’s certainly one of the easiest things to get into compared to old mentored reality and all this other kind of metaverse type stuff that I keep hearing a lot about.

Not that I don’t love my virtual reality. No. I know, but, but yeah, there’s social audio. As we as have been dubbed, we, I use that phrase a lot to this kind of the umbrella term to describe all of this. Um, it is interesting. What’s now possible what people can do and how it ebbs and flows. I mean, some of these things vantage and some will stick.

So, and I think the audio category is just going to continue to rise these. And even as some players fall off and other new ones started. Yeah, well, it’s been a while. Uh, Invoked Yaakov Nielsen’s name here on fir uh, Nielsen. Many of you probably know was the usability guru at sun Microsystems, uh, who then went on to form the Nielsen Norman group, which does research on user experience.

Uh, I saw an article, I get their email newsletter, uh, which I usually just sort of scan to see if there’s anything relevant to the work that I’m doing. Uh, but there was an article on their blog, uh, by Anna Kaley that grabbed my attention. Uh, it does focus on something I’ve been tearing my hair out over on my job.

Uh, the headline of the article is nine ways to encourage employee sharing and engagement on an intranet. I have to admit, I am basically. Intranets, uh, they are not dead as some would have it. Uh, but they basically are the permanent repository of content, right. The single source of truth. But in terms of getting this content to your employees, I don’t know how many are in the habit of going and sitting at a computer and pulling up a page to get information anymore.

I know some are, uh, I was talking to, uh, an internal communications research expert just this past week who said one of the audits that she did for a client showed that, uh, all this mobile stuff you’re doing, we’d rather have it on an intranet. And I’m sure that may be true in some organizations, but yeah, I’m more enthusiastic about a consumer grade mobile solution.

Uh, but I don’t have the budget for that. Um, what I have is an intranet. So I was attracted to this piece, which has some good advice from one of the winners of the Nielsen, Norman 2021 intranet design annual award, a company called Keysight technologies. Uh, their internet pulse used all nine of these approaches.

Uh, first is offering the ability to comment on news articles and videos check. We have that. And sometimes people do, but reading this led me to think that we need to find a better way to spotlight that. And maybe even a report on some of the things that people have said when they, they leave a comment.

Uh, next is employee video sharing, uh, that is certainly enabled, but it doesn’t happen much. Uh, and it’s a little complicated. We use Microsoft streams, which is not the most intuitive place to. Share video. So again, something for us to consider, uh, making simpler and promoting more heavily. Uh, they talk about a monthly photo contest with a global panel of employees, judging submissions, picking a winner, and nine honorable mentions every month.

And, uh, and of course employees can comment on the photos that they see, uh, that have been. Uh, the internet, lets employees share ideas for improving the organization and other employees can weigh in on these. I really liked this, that the section of the internet actually brings teams together to work on common goals and solutions to existing problems, uh, like that a lot.

Uh, they do a sort of an ask me anything like event with executives, uh, that would attract people. They have a feedback bar on the bottom of every page where employees can let the internal comms team know that they had trouble finding something. Or there was out of date information on a page. They do quick polls on all kinds of things.

Uh, the one that the, they had a screenshot of in this post, um, it’s from last year, it, it asked if you will travel via airplane this summer. And the answers that you could choose from were, yes, the deals are great. Yes, because I can’t drive. I’m waiting until it’s proven safe and physical distancing for me until there’s a vaccine.

That’s how I knew it was from last year. Cause we now have the vaccine. Um, there’s a place where employees can submit news stories and you can email the authors of the stories to ask questions or report issues. And they’re all good ideas. And I’m taking a few of them back to my team to work on and implement.

No, they really are good ideas. All of them. And I think this, this to me fits like pages lifted out to the internet 1 0 1 handbook, right. Because none of these things are, oh my God. I know. Yeah. They’re not leveraging a brand new technology or anything. But they’re really reinforcing. These still have validity and many people probably aren’t doing, yeah, we were talking about polls just a week or so ago.

I remember when I was doing work as an independent consultant for the Southern company, and this was some time ago, maybe 10 years ago. And every day they had a poll on the homepage of the intranet. Four days of the week, they were frivolous. You know, which team are you rooting for to win the super bowl type of thing.

Um, and then the fifth one was always business-related and people were so in the habit of responding to the fun polls, because you can immediately see how people have been voting after you have voted, right. Um, that you just naturally, and by habit answered the business questions. So they, you know, once a week they got really good data and the rest of the week, their employees had a good time.

Great. Cool. So question, is it time to hire a chief metaverse officer? Do you want an answer now or should I wait? You should wait. You wait three hours discussion. This is a question, uh, asked and Vogue business, uh, that see the business side of Vogue magazine, the fashion industry, one of the Bibles, if you will.

Uh, it’s quite an interesting piece. Uh, clearly the title of the article, which I just read out was what attracted me to the listing when it appeared in the fi. Um, they introduce it. Uh, this is written by Megan McDowell and I think she’s quite a good writer. She introduced by saying this brands are entering the metaverse through virtual stores, augmented reality gaming and digital fashion shows how our brand appears in the metaverse could help them make a successful splash or risk alienating.

Millions of loyal loyal users says vote business. Now, a new need as emerging, someone who can oversee and integrate these projects. One thing to mention the audience for this article are people in that industry. So to do you and I show much of this, you’ve got to kind of go, okay. Yeah, we have the oldest before they probably have it.

I like the way that you’re seeing stuff like this appear in journals like Vogue, like Vogue magazine. So the first quote comes from Karen Harvey, CEO and founder of fashioned advisor and executive placement from the Karen Havi companies. Uh, who’s in currently in the midst of placing a number of people in these types of metaverse related roles with two year stints to begin with the potential to extend a role akin to chief metaverse office, it could be next.

She says part marketing part business strategy. The role of the chief medical officer would need to understand both creative and technical aspects, uh, says Cathy hackle, chief metaverse officer and CEO of the futures intelligence group, a consultancy with a number of fashion clients. Some brands have started assembled teams dedicated to metaverse collaborations says Rudy Lee, chief strategy officer at zip Beto, the social networking and avatar simulation.

That has recently partnered with Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Dior beauty and NARS cosmetics. The chief metaverse officer would liaise between necessary people for a range of products, uh, projects. These could include virtual goods, avatars NFTs gaming, extended reality, and more hackle says additionally, they would need knowledge of cryptocurrencies, blockchain, cloud computing, gaming engines of digital design.

They will need to be translators between the technical side of the metaverse and the business and creative sites sheets. Samuel Jordan, a digital fashion, pioneer and roadblocks creator who has partnered with brands, such as Stella McCartney to read digital assets says besides acting as a point person, the metaverse officer would ideally be someone who has been in the space and understands the language.

I’ve seen a lot of people talking about the metaverse, but I haven’t seen people creating something in those spaces. He says, according to a number of tech platforms, luxury brands and creatives that the business spoke to there is currently no formal functional role that oversees Methodist projects for brands that use.

Kathleen hackle predicts that brands will begin to consider this type of role in 2023. So you got a lot talk about the metaverse in this upcoming segment show. What’s your take on that? Well, I have, uh, I, I, to, uh, distinct opinions here, the first one is around the word officer. Um, and we’re going officer crazy.

Um, this may be a us thing, but you know, most things, most companies have a few, there’s a president and CEO. Or a president or a CEO, a treasure or chief financial officer, uh, a recording secretary on the board and chief operating officer. And these days we see chief HR officers, chief information officers, CIO, as we’ve been talking about for a long time, chief technology officers.

Now we have chief marketing officers and chief communications officers, but an officer position in a corporation is something that’s baked into the articles of incorporation, uh, and are often, you know, subject to incorporation laws. Uh, and if you look it up, the main responsibility for an officer is managing the day-to-day business for the company.

So does the metaverse rate someone to be responsible for the metaverse related hiring and firing financial management task delegation and so on? Yeah, maybe. Depending on the nature of your business and how metaverse related, uh, metaphors, uh, dependent, you think you’re going to be, but does it need to be an officer position is as opposed to a high level person, who’s just put in charge of that.

Um, you know, officers are responsible for ensuring the business keeps operating by handling routine business functions. And that just doesn’t sound like something that is focused entirely on the metaverse. So someone needs to decide if the metaverse relay actually rates that level of responsibility on a case by case basis.

Uh, do we need to be taking it seriously and have somebody in charge? Yeah. If, if, if your business is going to be heavily engaged, I think just to interject a comment that I don’t disagree at all about the purpose of an officer and organization, then what I, what I see happening is observed outside the U S and I think you’re right, this is primarily U S thing.

Uh, it’s it’s designed to, uh, suggest and Indeed’s put forward quite strongly as senior seniority. Uh, and responsibility possession, but not for executive matters. So the word has been the phrase, whatever C whatever. Oh, has been seriously diluted. Um, does it, would it confuse people? I don’t believe most people would be, uh, a publicly traded company.

Maybe you’re talking legal stuff here. I get that. I’m just thinking about how someone’s meet someone. Hey, I’m the chief medical officer of X, Y, Z company. They’re not going to think. Oh, that person’s obviously running the business. They’re not going to think that. Well, you mentioned that point responsible for metaverse stuff.

You get your ministry running the business. You mentioned the article. Who’s the chief metaverse officer and the CEO now that makes well that’s true too. Yeah, absolutely. But that’s it. I think that’s just because that’s who they talked to. It was not, doesn’t not suggesting anything. So I don’t think this is.

Well, Nate, this to me seems like a kind of a . It probably is. But, uh, yeah, we were talking with chip about this earlier. Uh, yeah. And, uh, he said that we’ve gone, uh, C-suite uh, crazy sea level blow to going on. And, and I couldn’t agree more, uh, I’m not sure. C suite though. It’s the officer thing because everyone suddenly an officer now denoting seniority.

Right. So why can’t we go back to his good old vice presidency? Yeah. A vice president in charge of the metaverse. That sounds a pretty cool. But, um, nevertheless, uh, the key question in this whole thing, uh, is it time to have someone who performs this kind of liaison role? Although I don’t think that’s the right way to describe it.

Doesn’t sound very substantive. I think though, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s worth considering that point and, uh, okay. Vogue business treats. This is pretty high level light article. It doesn’t go into any depth, but it’s raised this subject. That’s the thing. Is it time for someone who can knit together? And some of the examples, uh, some, some of the people quoted have given you need to know about cryptocurrencies about the blockchain.

So you’ve got to understand all this stuff. And isn’t that actually something that we’ve often talked about before, where a key role of the communicator is to, is to, in a sense, act as a translator for the business, to those who need to know what the business is and don’t understand it or who should do, but don’t understand it.

But that person is the person who is the point person. Uh, it doesn’t do the work necessary, but we’ll do some of it. Sure. Um, but can build a team that has the right skills and so forth. That’s how I see that role. So you’re going to call the person, the chief metaverse officer. You have confusion when the acronym CMO cause Hey, that’s taken that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and it also speaks to why we on this show talk about things like blockchain and NFTs and when we’re a communications focused, chose, because communicators need to understand this stuff. Right. We had that with the, with the hype cycles back in the day, when you, you need to pay attention to these things that are trending or not as the case might be because they will come knocking on your door.

And if you’re unprepared, someone else is going to be taken care of it. Now you better find get your CV brush. Yeah, exactly. Right. So let’s, let’s keep talking about the metaverse shallow one. The reason it’s going to be huge is because it’s framework involves a variety of other digital trends, uh, that are also exploding at the same time.

All these things are colliding, uh, which, which means any one of these things that might have faded away on their own. Um, they’re being fused into something bigger. Is a huge part of this, not, not the gaming would ever fade away, but blockchain gaming, I don’t know how long blockchain gaming might have survived without the introduction of NFTs and the metaverse.

Uh, let’s look at one example called Eartha, E R T H a M. It’s described like this ready buy, sell, and rent land to. Aretha is a new dynamic NFT metaverse running on Binance smart chain, hoping to shape up the play to earn gaming landscape, the game aims to encompass an accurate life simulation on a massive scale where players will be able to micromanage their own companies and countries.

The story of Eartha is set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world, where the global warming couldn’t be stopped. Floods cover half the earth and sinking cities and significant land landmarks. Vanishing is normal. Meanwhile, the other side of the world. Is fighting fires that burn everything in their path from homes to people you can choose to be a businessman scholar or fight fighter.

Eartha is divided into 353 NFT hexagons that generate rewards for landowners for every transaction that occurs within that plot. The NFT land sale, according to the article has already started with plots going for $200 to $500 per hex with a minimum buy of a thousand dollars. And that’s one second.

Fast company reports on Aletheia AI. This is a new company that’s being backed by mark Cuban, that wraps avatars in artificial intelligence intelligence that animates them, giving them conversational skills and knowledge, but at their heart, what they are is conversational NFTs or intelligent NFTs.

That’s inf T uh, this gives NFTs something like sentience to allow them to become part of the gaming. Metaverse. Uh, the author of this piece say that, uh, avatars, he saw included faithful recreations of well-known NFTs, like board apes and Crip, crypto punks. Uh, there are historical figures like Edgar Allen Poe and Catherine, the great and media figures like snow.

Uh, Bitcoin just listed seven companies at the forefront of the metaverse gaming movement, like planet sandbox, which recently launched a 3d game that lets players earn digital currency from conquering, other players and customizing worlds for use within the metaverse others have names like pocket arena, good games Guild of the kill box and Roco soft.

According to business, insider NFT trading volume exploded by 704% in the third quarter, that 704% more NFT purchases than in the previous quarter. Attributable mainly to this block game, uh, blockchain game phenomenon, uh, catching fire, $10.7 billion in trading volume in the last quarter, over 2 billion, some of the quarter before, because gamers want to earn money from blockchain based NFTs.

Uh, one in game in these metaverse environments. Uh, one. Characteristic of traditional video games as music. So all this metaverse blockchain, NFT gaming is going to need music too. Right? So a company called stage 11 has raised nearly $6 million in seed funding to re-imagine music for the metaverse combining music games, mixed reality, and the NFTs.

They plan to build a new creative canvas for artists, allowing them to invite fans, to live, play, and create inside their performances and musical worlds. This according to an article in venture beat, uh, quoting from the article, these worlds combine immersive gameplay sequences, life-like performances, cinematic narratives, and exclusive digital collectibles.

This forms the core of a music metaphor. Yeah. As all of this takes shape more and more brands are starting to pay attention. Viacom, CBS, for example, is partnering with an NFT startup to build a platform where fans can buy, collect and resell digital assets from star Trek, south park, SpongeBob square pants, uh, this business, uh, business insider article, uh, where I learned about this, didn’t mention the metaverse, but it’s not hard to see how you could take your star Trek.

Avatar purchased from Viacom, CBS into a gaming metaverse or turn it into a hip hop singer over in stage Eleven’s metaverse only tangentially related to all of the. As the article I saw about a company called Hypnos virtual, which wants to transform the virtual reality experience by introducing what it calls bio media, bringing bio aromatics into the mix as a product called scent scape.

One version of this is the size of a mini fridge and it would be used in a movie theater. So something is on the screen that has an odor. Related to it you’ll smell it. It has a scent track continually changing like a musical score, drawing from a library of aroma chemicals to make things smell like what’s on the screen.

Not exactly original idea. Neville. I think we reported on an effort like this all the way back in 2006 or 2007, that a used a scuzzy card to connect to your computer. More like a printer with sent cartridges. And it didn’t go anywhere. But honestly I can envision sent tokens, sent NFTs that you could use in the metaverse.

How weird and amazing would it be when you’re in a, metaverse playing a blockchain game and you can tell someone, you know, is approaching you because you can smell them. Like I say, this space is absolutely exploding and just like Viacom, CBS companies are going to find all kinds of ways to tap into it.

I was wondering, actually, I’ve listened to when you were talking through all of that, whether we should have had the question, is it time to hire chief metaverse officer after all of this discussion, but we didn’t, we had it before, so it’s okay. But, so it occurred to me actually, it would be a natural to say, so do we need the chief metaverse you’re going into this right.

Some way described, requires someone to know across the board what all this means to an organization and some of it, uh, not necessarily cause it’s very specific. Um, but generally speaking, this adds weight, I think, to, uh, this Vogue business piece on, yes, you do need someone who is versed in this, who, who gets it, who understands it and is able to.

Uh, convincingly, uh, explain to those who will make the decisions or business direction, whether we should be paying attention to this or not. So I can see that’s a big opportunity for someone with, with some of these skills, looking for something that can make a real difference at this stage and not to an organization, but some of those examples are truly extorted.

Yeah. And I think in the entertainment world, in the fashion world, it’s not going to be that hard to sell the idea that somebody needs to be focused on this. Um, I think in a lot of other industries is going to be what we’ve seen in the past. It’s it’s going to be, uh, the same old, uh, wait and see or not take it seriously until it’s a, the, the train is about to barrel through your friend.

Uh, I suspect we’ll be talking about the metaverse and NFTs a lot in, in, in, during the course of the definitely agree. You look at NFTs. And when we first saw them, they were tokens on the blockchain that pointed to a painting, for example, a digital painting that could vantage the next day. Now it’s your avatar in the metaverse it’s the land you own in the metaverse that allows you to play the game and generate actual revenue.

Yeah. I think one of the interesting things I’ve found is that most of the action that is happening and D the, the, the kind of, uh, benefits we see the real world, uh, value that’s being generated in many areas in gaming and in art, uh, particularly art, because some of the numbers are quite mind boggling, you know, in, in the, in the double triple digits.

I think the universe of gamers is bigger than the universe of art. There’s no doubt, but the art world is the one that really got, got traction going, got out. The rest of it is began to follow. I mean, the latest news strong in the art world, Southerby’s, uh, launching a curated LFT platform. They call Sotheby’s metaverse where they’re all the right keywords in their shelf for SEO.

No question, uh, that, um, uh, it’s saying that, uh, it there’s some great, uh, acronyms here. I’ll tell ya. The platform will include curated FTS from the Sotheby’s team and allow individuals to purchase NFTs using ETH BTC, USD, or theater currently. Now to me, fair currency is a pretty common phrase in the financial services industry, but you need someone in your team today?

No. What the hell at all right. And, and the other thing this leads me to think is in the early days of NFTs, right? Three months, Yeah, you bought it. And so what you had the token in the blockchain that pointed to the asset and you to show people, look, that’s the asset that I have the token to. Now I can hang in the place that you build in the metaverse the actual piece of art, because you have the token to put it there.

So, well, It truly intrigues. I mean, Sotheby’s platform is reading the release from Sotheby’s. I love it’s called it is powered by Mohito lovely name. It’s a stock. Yeah. I start up the bills, NFT platforms and ensures compliance. Now that’s interesting. It doesn’t say anything more than that right now, but the first sales are taking place on.

So some of these metaverse, um, it says here, uh, coming from natively digital 1.2, the collectors, a collection of 53 NFTs from 19 collectors, such as proxy, one, Jimmy dot ETH and Paris Hilton. So, uh, you know, it’s, um, it’s a, it says, Hey, if like the, like Sotheby’s rival Christie’s, um, they become increasingly involved in the NFT art market.

And they’re talking about some of the sales they’ve had in the summer 17 million here, you know, more so that’s that gets attention. And indeed, I remember reading, would you believe a piece in the financial times? Not long ago, that was quite a lengthy, um, uh, discourse and narrative. Uh, NFTs. So, uh, it’s got attention because of the big numbers, but you’re right.

Gaming’s a huge mega universe by comparison. And once that gets cracking with all of this, I mean, you’re going to see something interesting. So I’m going to North Dakota next month to give a talk to a group of, uh, rural electric companies, uh, about blockchain. And, you know, every day I wake up and read something, oh, I gotta change that presentation.

It’s fast moving. Well, that’ll draw this episode of, for immediate release to an end, uh, episode number 212 for, uh, Tober 2021. Our next episode, uh, we will record on Saturday, November 20th, uh, and release on Monday the 22nd. I think I got that. Right. Uh, and in the show notes for this episode, uh, you will find the link to the YouTube live, uh, stream where you will be able to watch us record in real time and comment and participate in the episode.

So be sure to check that out. Uh, we hope you will comment on the episode. Oh, before we get to commenting, don’t forget our fir zoom chats on Thursdays at 1:00 PM Eastern. Uh, in fact, got an email from a listener who has never joined us before, who asked for the credential, who will probably be there this coming Thursday.

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