What Facebook's 'Meta' Rebrand Means For Marketers

All right. So today we are going to talk about what Facebook's rebrand means for marketers. So Facebook has just rebranded to, well, they're going to call themselves Meta. And so what does that mean in the first place? So let's go ahead and take a look at this article from Hypebeast. And we can see that, well, they now have renamed themselves to Meta. Okay. So we can see that over here, right? Which reflects its new focus on building out the metaverse. So first we have to define what the metaverse is. And when you think about the metaverse, the easiest way to think about this is if you've seen the movie Ready Player One, if maybe you've seen or read the book Snow Crash, and if you think about early in the '90s or so, there was a game called Second Life. And if you're into crypto right now, there's Decentraland, right? And so these, the metaverse is really like a digital world where you can interact with people, you can hang out. And Fortnite being— Fortnite might be an example of this. To my gaming days, what really sticks out to me is being able to hang out in World of Warcraft or games like EverQuest, so MMORPGs. But these are digital worlds where people can hang out. And I mean, to me, this is normal, right? Because I've interacted in those worlds in the past. And a lot of people that have played games, they understand kind of what this is all about. And so again, check out the book Ready Player One or watch the movie at least, then you'll get a better sense of what that means. But the fact that a— one of the biggest companies in the world is deciding to change their name to Meta, that's not to be taken lightly, right? And a publicly traded company, they've got WhatsApp, they've got Instagram, they've got Oculus. There's a reason they bought Oculus, right? It's to try to break into this world a little more. So let's go a little deeper into this article over here. And we can see that they have— so Mark Zuckerberg says, from now on, we're going to be metaverse first. And so the company has also announced a $150 million USD investment to train AR developers and said it planned to establish a professional curriculum program to teach creators how to build out the metaverse. So this is big. I mean, if they're going to take all the resources and focus on this, if you think about Facebook in 2010 or so, They knew that they had to focus all of their efforts on mobile, and Mark Zuckerberg said told every single team like we got to be working on mobile, right? And that's how they made the transition from desktop to mobile for Facebook, and then that's even how they ended up with the Instagram acquisition as well, right? WhatsApp is also mobile first, right? So this is the second time that Mark Zuckerberg or maybe the third time desktop first then mobile. Third time is we're going metaverse first, and so this is basically this reinforces the importance of Web Three. So you think about Web One is you know maybe in the nineties or so when the first when the most more people started using the internet. Web Two would be the big kind of companies. You know you have kind of centralized companies like a Facebook right or a Google as an example. These are kind of the big powers that kind of centralized all the attention, and they have For lack of a better word, they're kind of toe boots, right? And you know, they've done a lot of good for the world, but also at the same time, they've kind of stifled. I would say they've kind of stifled creativity a little bit or kind of sucked up all the talent, right? So you you probably don't want to have too much power centralized, you know, on these platforms. So if we come back to this article over here, we're going into Web Three now. Web Three is basically the world of you know we're talking about the metaverse, right? We're talking about NFTs. We're talking about Crypto, right? And when I talk about crypto, I'm not just talking about things from like a financial standpoint, like you know, oh, how are you gonna make a thousand X on your altcoins or like make money on Bitcoin or whatever? It's we're talking about the underlying technology that's going to power this new internet, right? And so in the orange headline over here, Facebook first announced its plan to build out the metaverse, a term used to describe virtual interactive spaces in the digital world last month. As part of its plan, the company pledged a two-year fifty million USD investment called XR Programs and Research Fund aimed at subsidizing global research and programs. So again, the name of the game when you're looking at building a business is you are looking to, A, focus the business, and then B, what you're looking to do is find the best people. So the fact that they're looking to pledge money into XR programs, AR research, and they're investing so much money into this, they understand that the world is going in this direction. The fact that Marvel and Disney have partnered up, have partnered up with, I believe the company's called VeVe. Or VeVe into NFTs, and the fact that Adobe has adjusted Photoshop to include NFT creation in there, we're just going to see this space continue to grow. And when I talk about NFTs, I'm kind of talking to talking about Web3, right? This is Web3 is going back into the decentralized world. And you know Facebook as a very large publicly traded company, even though they're a centralized company, they want to make sure that they're a part of the action, right? They want to be involved. And so if you look in the red highlight over here, it further explained that the metaverse doesn't refer to one single product built by one company, but rather a shared global space. So I think it's actually good for marketers and just business in general that Facebook is saying, hey, there's no one company that can own all of this, but we can help build this space. And they have the power to do this. They have the users to do this. They have the network effects to do this. And so I think they're going to help They're gonna definitely help pioneer the space or prove, or prove out the space and move it further. And, you know, other people are gonna be able to benefit from it. And it might actually end up harming them long-term. But I think they're kind of hedging their bets a little bit too, right? Where if they decide to go completely centralized moving forward, they know they're gonna be left in the dust. So they, maybe they're trying like a hybrid version of this where they can at least get some skin in the game and be involved somehow. And because they're helping build out this metaverse, they can get to invest in some of the coolest new metaverse tools or new metaverse, whatever's new that's being created. They'll be kind of, they'll be able to get kind of first dibs right there. Okay. Now in the yellow highlight over here on Monday, the company disclosed plans to spend about $10 billion USD investing in its branch that is working to develop the metaverse. So $10 billion. Is no small amount. It's no small. It's huge. If you're going to rebrand a huge company, one of the biggest companies in the world, you're going to pledge ten billion dollars towards it, and you're going to invest in all these other initiatives. Then they're basically saying, "Hey, we're all in on this stuff." Okay, and what that means for you as a business person or a marketer, what this especially means for marketing is is thinking about okay, well, if the attention is going to go to the metaverse, how are we going to go about in terms of Fostering this attention, right? Are we going to be advertising in in a digital world, right? How are we going to be getting attention here? So I think it's really we're still in the very early days right now. I don't even think we're in the first inning, or maybe just like a preview to the first inning right now, right? And this means that if all these large companies in the world are putting their their eggs into this and they're really investing heavily, it's time to start doing research on this stuff. It's time to start doing studying. It's time to start hanging out on Twitter more, hanging out in Twitter Spaces. It's time to start hanging out in Discord. It's time to start talking to people that really understand the space and try to make sure that you're not going to be left in the dust, right? And, you know, wherever attention goes, marketers tend to go. And so the main thing that you can be doing right now with this stuff is, again, studying it. And then once this stuff comes out, you jump on top of it. I'll tell you what we're doing right now, at least on the agency side, is We're thinking, okay, you know, how can we get more involved in this space? We're creating our own NFT project right now just to, you know, get some chops, get some experience in that space. How can we get more involved in terms of working with these Web3 type of companies? Right. And metaverse is part of Web3 and NFTs are part of Web3. Crypto is part of Web3. So study this space, right. And then, you know, how can you get involved with trying to understand what's going on? And maybe you can try to log into Decentraland a little bit, see what's going on there. Because people are, they're selling real estate in that digital world right now. And you're able to display your art in that world. How are people interacting? How is the attention being divided in that space right now? How are people, you know, building communities for the metaverse right now? You know, maybe people are hanging out in Discord, right? So the main thing that you can be doing right now is trying to make sure that you're not going to be left in the dust by studying and also just being very open-minded, being very curious. And not trying to push back when it's clear that this type of technology is inevitable, right? That's what this announcement really means in terms of how it's going to affect you, right? And yeah, I mean, there's no, hey, how can, how, how there's no, not a lot of the ad technologies right now have been developed. So it's on you to jump ahead of the curve, right? I was even talking to a dev shop the other day that's really involved in kind of the NFT space. And we were just talking about building analytics for people in this world, building out like an analytics solution for, uh, for Web3 in general, and maybe something for, um, in, in the, in the metaverse, right? So nothing has been built right now. This is all very, um, or not a lot has been built right now. We shouldn't say nothing has been built, but that's a big opportunity for you to step in as a business person or a marketer. And if you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit the like button and hit the subscribe and the bell button. And we will catch you later.