Preparing For The Next Digital Marketing Revolution

I just want to thank you all for coming. I'm a huge fan of the SQUARED course and everything it represents. I think, and I'll touch on this as we go through, everything we know is changing in marketing at the moment. The world is growing up, the discipline is maturing, And nobody except you guys are thinking about things like the zero moment of truth and the complexity of consumer behavior and moments. And these are things which are absolutely fundamentally at the heart of the way that people make decisions, the way they browse the internet, the way they think, and nobody is there yet. So you guys are very much at the forefront of that. I think it's hugely important. So I wanna take you through some of what I think is next. And this is more a series of questions than necessarily answers. It's things that I'm thinking about and things that are keeping me awake. as the result of the things that I've seen when I've been working with clients and brands on strategies and bits of SEO and digital stuff. Here's where I think it's all going. But first, I wanna take you backwards a little bit. I think we are in the midst of a technical revolution, and I know that it's a bit uncouth to talk about script and tech and servers and architecture, but I think it's important to ground where we are and where we're going in terms of the environment we're in. As digital practitioners and marketers, it's important to understand the foundations of the landscape that we're working in. Otherwise, we'd wake up and find that maybe we're just marketeers and we get left behind as things change. It's always a bit scary. I think as a result of some of the things that are happening technically and elsewhere, the way in which consumers behave is changing radically, and we need to be ready to understand what we do about that. Shifting forwards a bit, I think there's some really radical change where the way in which people research and make decisions and purchase things ceases to involve them. And I'll come on to some examples of that shortly. And essentially, as a result of that, we need to think about what marketing is, what advertising is, what brand is, and what the next evolution of concepts like the zero moment of truth look like. So, there's a technical revolution. I'm going to bore you with some tech stuff. Once upon a time, circa 2003, at the height of the era of the webmaster, I could write HTML code in a Notepad file, upload it to a server via FTP, and send somebody a link to that file. And I am a webmaster, I have a website, I can edit and access that through raw code, it's all very straightforward. This doesn't really serve the needs of businesses particularly well. Businesses are complex, they're maturing around this kind of time, customers are starting to become much more familiar with shopping online and researching online and generally spending time online and it becoming part of their lives. So businesses start to encounter needs like distributed ownership and access and content marketing systems and all sorts of complex bits which mean that it's not feasible for one person just to edit files and upload them to a server. It becomes much more complex as websites evolve into marketing tools. The thing is, all of that happens too slowly and too late, because simultaneously, kind of kicking off maybe 2008-ish, the app revolution really took off. Apologies for this being an Apple-centric slide, but I couldn't find a Google equivalent. The thing, at least a large contributor to why the app revolution happened so quickly, and I will get on to some relevant marketing stuff, I promise, but this is an important grounding. is that they were just better. The web was still a bit crap in 2008. It was still very much static files and clunky experiences, and things didn't work across different browsers, and it was slow. Apps had things that websites didn't. They were personalized, they were stateless, they remembered who you are and what you want and your preferences. You didn't have to log in every time. They looked the same consistently. They were designed for the device you consumed them on. None of these things websites particularly did well at the time. They were a bit naff when it came to that fluidity and the grace that the app revolution really provided. They bypassed all of the technical challenges that managing a website had because they were separate things that could be run by separate teams much more easily. As a result, the next revolution that happened was the release of things like jQuery. If you're familiar with it, it's a JavaScript library that makes all of this sort of stuff easier. You plug it onto your website and it means things like cross-browser things where it looks different in Safari versus Chrome versus Firefox, all of that goes away. You can add fun and funky and fluid interactions and state-type things, which makes it feel more like an app. jQuery really allowed people who had previously had clunky websites, which were poorer experience than apps, to start to catch up again and to do things that looked shiny and exciting. The thing is, that came with an inordinate performance cost. Again, a non-Google set of data. I'm really, really sorry. What this is showing is essentially if you bolt on something like jQuery onto your crappy website to make it less crappy and to be more app-like, like and fluid and graceful, you add an extra second of load time. And an extra second of load time is an extra minus whatever percent of conversion rate, which is an extra minus percent of whatever revenue. Like, a second is a long time on a mobile device to be waiting for a better experience by delivering a worse experience. So in many cases, this kind of patch job made the internet worse. So the app revolution continued, and apps got sexier and more fluid and more engaging, more interactive, while the internet and websites in general struggled to keep up. This prompted a bit of a revolution, like so many revolutions, the internet moves fast. If you're not familiar with these, these are the logos for Angular and React, which are JavaScript frameworks or libraries, I forget which is which. If you say the wrong one, they all get very angry and shout at you. These are back-to-the-drawing-board technologies. Angular is Google's baby, React's Facebook's baby. Facebook is built on React. This is serious grown-up web tech, and the idea is throw away everything we think we knew about how to build websites and how to manage them, and start again with a framework that's fast and fluid and designed to be more app-like. Using this kit starts with the assumption that the experience should feel like an app. Facebook's website isn't maintained by people uploading code via FTP and text files. It's maintained by complicated, sprawling React frameworks. This is from 2006, and it's a screenshot from the most popular repositories on GitHub. These are which sets of public and open source code are most commented on, most engaged with, most downloaded, most liked. This is what developers are interested in and where they're playing. The people who build and run the internet are all playing with JavaScript. This is Angular, it's React, and it's tools and frameworks that support them and relate to them. The people who run the internet are only playing here. They're not playing in other technologies, they're not playing in HTML. This is what's powering the web. last year. Why is that significant? And why is this more than just a thing about geeks playing with the latest toys? Because these sites are powered by AngularJS, which is why they feel like apps, why they feel fluid and reactive, why clicking them doesn't feel clunky, why you don't have to wait 3 seconds between pages launching, why it remembers who you are, and you can dynamically browse, and things change, and you can resize stuff. These are powered by React. They are, at their heart, apps. They're platforms. They feel less like websites and more like app experiences. You see where I'm going. WordPress, which powers nearly 30% of the internet, is increasingly migrating to a React core, though there's politics around that, and moving beyond React into other technologies. This is old news. So what? The thing is that this, at least in part, is a significant driver to changing consumer behavior because websites are a little bit naff and they're hard to build and maintain, because apps are really good and platforms are where consumers inherently want to B, this limitation and division has influenced how we behave as consumers and will continue to divide us. So brands build websites. They don't build apps. They build apps. They don't build experiences that feel like apps on the web. They build websites where you go to do the thing. They serve the need. They allow you to transact. They have web pages which list things that I can read or I can click on. I can add it to my basket and I can check out. None of that is fluid. None of it's immersive. None of it's personalized. Consumers live on platforms— Facebook, YouTube, Netflix. Yes, that's in large because of what they are and how they work, but a not insignificant chunk is because of the way they're built and because of the technologies and platforms they're built on that enables them to have become the brands they are, because they are not websites built by brands trying to take your money or get you to read their articles. It's particularly interesting. That's why I will never of my own volition choose to spend time browsing Argos' catalog pages and why I will probably choose to spend time looking at Dawn Anderson's fluffy dog photos. And again, a large part of this is because of what's on Facebook's platform, but a significant part of it is because of what Facebook is and how it's built and what underpins that. There's a really solid distinction between websites and websites built by brands to attempt to get consumers to do a thing and to service that, and platforms which are where the things are that I want to be consuming and where I want to go. This kind of middle ground is where everybody wants to go to. Facebook wants to be more commercial and more commodified, etc. Brands want to own communities and have social networks. Neither of them can quite work out how to meet in the middle because ultimately brands are trying to sell things, which makes it quite hard to give consumers platforms where they want to be and not just be harassed. And there's no incentive for users to visit brand websites unless they already have a need. So, I will never choose to go to Argos' websites unless I think, hey, I need a new washing machine. There's nothing— there's no pull there. There is only the servicing of the need in the moment. So, we live in a world where nobody really actively wants to visit brand websites, but that's where the things I need are. So, at the point where I go through a moment or micro-moment or I exhibit a need, they employ tools like Google's AdWords platform or Facebook advertising to put messages on the platform that I'm on to attract me over. There's no inherent value in their website itself compared to the apps and the experiences and the platforms I'm already on, so they have to use pull mechanics to do that. That's the way the web works at the moment. It's not ideal, but it functions. What's interesting is you start to look at what's happening next. And increasingly, things like Google's AMP project, which allows you to serve ultra-fast versions of your pages in Google's ecosystem, or Facebook Instant Articles, which allows you to put your editorial articles in Facebook and Apple News, which is similar. These are brand and website content served in the platforms where the consumers are. That's an interesting shift. That means that I can read the article, I can be shown the advert, I can assess the product, I can make my decisions without leaving the platform I'm on. In that scenario, why would I ever go to Argos's website? There's a bigger question. What is the role of the website? Is the website as we conventionally know it, is the destination, it's the castle you build, it's where you put all of your value and all of your content and drive all of your consumers? Actually, the web is moving the other way. People are moving outwards to content that's in the ecosystems they're already in. There's a huge question there about what that means for our paradigm when we've been told that making my websites bigger and better and faster and stronger is the way to win. This isn't an isolated example. There's a guy called Pierre Farr who's an ex-Google engineer who talks about this very eloquently. He calls it the nascent distributed content ecosystem, and the short version is essentially Yesterday, there were 10 apps. Today, there are 1,000 apps. Tomorrow, there will be 1 million apps. And the apps that people choose to use and where and how and when they consume content is distributed across all of these. And as a business, it's impractical to say, let's build a business case for every single one of these and spend 6 months trying to develop an integration. You've got to be fast, you've got to be fluid, and you've got to start playing where the consumers are. Now, that's not new knowledge. That's always been a component of marketing and advertising— go where the people are. But you've really got to go to the people. You can no longer bring them to you. You've got to be active in these environments. That's incredibly challenging. We'll come on to some of the implications. This happens now. Is anyone familiar with this brand? This is Flipper. The website is flipper.community. I signed up about a year ago. They automatically analyze the gas and electricity market, find you the cheapest deal, and automatically switch you for free. What's interesting about that is I will never again shop for gas or electricity. I will never perform a Google search. I will never click an advert. I will never react to a billboard. I will never be convinced. I will never care if you have a special offer on, because I will trust my decision-making to this brand. Now, it doesn't matter if that's a person or a machine or an AI system. I have outsourced my decision-making. I am no longer in that market as a consumer. Everything we know about purchase funnels and decision-making goes out the window. You can't influence me because I'm not there. It's not just like— this is Habito. These were really niche, but I saw an advert for them on the Tube coming over this evening. They do the same for my mortgage. I am no longer in the mortgage environment. This isn't just commodity cheap stuff. This is serious things. I, as a consumer, am being removed from my own purchase decisions voluntarily. I am no longer in 2 not insignificant markets. We'll come on to why that's significant. And it's primarily because there's the next revolution that's happening. is one of personal assistants and devices and AI systems starting to take on more of that responsibility, starting to allow me to say, I am not interested in being advertised to or marketed to in this scenario, or here are my preferences in advance so that when I say, get me a pizza, I don't have to think about where or what's open or price comparison or which one has 4 stars or 4.1, all of that gets solved for me. Now, I'm going to explore, and this is the really interesting stuff we'll get into, I'm going to explore some of the implications to us and what that means in terms of marketing and brand and how we cope in an environment where people just aren't there. So, summary then. Essentially, all of this has happened. All of this is happening now and it's real. The platforms that power the internet have changed, have improved, and in some ways have failed us and failed businesses. And we're left in a world where people don't really like or actively engage with websites because they're clunky, and apps and platforms are where we want to be. People's behavior is changing and Brute-force marketing, to a degree, is how brands have coped with that. They have spent money on adverts and on being prominent in the environments where people are in order to capture their eyeballs to bring them to their platforms. Now, people are no longer there to be advertised to. So, I think, and interesting to debate how true this is, but I think that to a degree, all marketing and advertising assumes that you can interrupt and purchase my attention, either directly at the point of intent or somewhat before it. So, in Google's model of moments and micro-moments, There is a point where I say, I want a thing, or, I'm interested in going to a place, or getting a thing, or wanting a thing, or needing a thing, or information. At that moment, you say, I'm going to bid on a keyword, or, I'm going to show a display ad, or, I'm going to drop a cookie, or, in advance, I will have decided how much I'm willing to click or spend, or, I'll have done some SEO so I rank highly. All of these are reactive measures to somebody putting their hand up and saying, I have a requirement. All advertising and marketing assumes that I can somehow interrupt at the point where somebody says, I want a thing. Let's demonstrate. Consumers have a need, a moment, I need a new washing machine. Brands then— so, I then have an expression of intent where I type that into a search box, or I say it out loud, or ask my friend, or I put it on Facebook, and then brands compete to capture that intent. They go, I am willing to bid this, I'm willing to spend this, or I have already spent this and anticipated a way of closing that. When you look at that from the consumer's perspective, it's a little more complicated. This is Probably not an unreasonable approximation of how consumers behave and make decisions in purchase funnels. So, I have that moment where I go, you know what, I need a new washing machine. It's not the best example, is it? I then go through a process of building or adjusting a consideration set. So, I don't know very much about washing machines. I know that I'm reasonably price-centric. I know that I've got a weirdly shaped room where it needs to go, but that's about the extent of my awareness. I probably know there are a couple of different types and yada, yada, yada. I go, okay, here are some brands I've heard of, here's some ads I've seen, I'm going to Google a bit and I'm going to open 20 tabs and I want to start thinking yes, no, maybe. I want to construct that consideration. So, that's basic kind of how people do research. I'm then going to start to actively reduce it. I'm going to say this one's too big, this one's too expensive, this one's the wrong color. I'm going to do a quick cut to get that down to a more manageable size to the point where I can hold them in my head and I can compare them. I'm then going to eradicate them much more aggressively. I'm going to go, okay, this one has bad reviews. I'm going to spend time looking at each one. I'm going to go, this one looks all right, but yada yada. Again, I will go through a process where I whittle it down to just 2 or 3, and then I'll choose, and then I'll act. Now, okay Google, find me a new washing machine. All of that bit goes away. All of the process of identifying all the possible matches, Remove the ones that are blatantly not applicable, and then based on what you know about me, leave me with the cheapest one, the closest one, and the fastest one, and let me pick from those 3. What's interesting about that is those are the stages that marketing happens in. Those are the bits where I bid on a keyword. They're the bits where I show an advert or display retargeting, or I pay money, or I try and rank highly in organic search, or I put a billboard out somebody's outside somebody's house, or I send somebody with a pamphlet through the door. Those are the points where I spend money to capture eyeballs. The consumer is no longer there. How do you influence that consideration set when the consumer is not there? All marketing and advertising assumes that I can interrupt, create influence, and try and drive action. They're not there. My mortgage, my gas and electricity, I am not there. No brand has the ability to influence that. to spend money to change my decision-making on who I get my gas and electricity with. If you're trying to sell gas and electricity, how do you influence my decision-making, or my Google Assistant's decision-making, or my Alexa, or my Siri, or my Bixby, or any of the players in the space? I think there are 3 concepts, and bear with me because this is all straight out of my head, it's all speculative, it may prove to be demonstrably false in the coming years, none of this is codified, but This is where I think things are going. I think there are 3 concepts that are worth considering. It will look at availability. So, my Google Home, or my Amazon Alexa, or my Siri, or my Bixby, or my Xbox, whatever it is, will go, okay, go and look at all of the possible washing machine vendors and see which ones exist, which ones are open, which ones are within a 200-mile radius, which ones can deliver on a weekend. It'll then look at suitability. Which ones of these are within sensible price ranges? Which one of these have more than a 2-star review? What are the basic filtering criteria we can apply? Now, we get interesting. It will start to make decisions on implied preference, which I'll dig into a lot. Based on what you think you know about me, which one should I rule in, which one should I rule out, and which one should I recommend to you at the end of that process? In order to deal with implied preference and what that means, we need to challenge the very heart of what marketing and advertising and brand is. Because when the consumer's not there, everything about interruption and buying eyeballs ceases to work. So, implied preference is the complex bit. So, these systems are going to use some kind of formula or algorithm or process or AI to decide what it should show me. Once it's got through the basic filtering and it's left with 10, how does it know which 3? It will look at my past behavior and data that's connected to me as a proxy for preference. It will look at things that I've done in the past, and things it has access to. So, okay Google, find me a replacement washing machine. What's interesting is past behavior happened in the past. That's information and data about me from yesterday or last week or 6 months ago. It doesn't have access to my preferences now because if it asks me, it's a rubbish process. Hey Google, pick me a washing machine. Which washing machine would you like? That's not great. So, it's got to make— it's going to interpret my preferences based on things that happened in the past. That means that Bosch or Beko, name me some other washing machine vendors, Bosch or Beko, have to have, 6 months ago, created some kind of signal or positive marketing that created some kind of data that my Google Home or Amazon Alexa, yada yada, can use to say, you know what, Jono, 6 months ago, had a positive interaction with this brand, therefore, we should nudge them up the list a little bit. 6 months ago, a year ago, 2 years ago, 5 years ago. It's also connected to my Facebook account because Google's connected to everything and Alexa's connected to everything. It knows what I've bought, it knows where I've been, it knows who my friends are. Those are all factors that it can use to influence that kind of decision-making. It starts to sound a little bit scary because you essentially need to positively influence the consideration set process way in advance of the point where somebody says, I want a new washing machine. No marketing or advertising is designed to do this at the moment. And if you wait until the point where the moment happens, you've already missed the point where you needed to influence the process. You need to brand and engage and create loyal fans way before the person wants the thing. This starts to sound much more like branding and PR and just doing good stuff than it does selling and marketing. Challenging. There are 3 types of things that these systems will measure to make these decisions. There are explicit actions, and this sort of stuff is really, really easy to measure. It's a degree of scale and complexity. Have you read an article? Have I ever read an article on Bosch's website? Maybe, doubtful. Have I liked or shared their social posts? Have I installed their app? Have I interacted with that? Have I— and increasingly, actually, installed an app is a bit of a misnomer as we move into a world of progressive web apps and AMP pages. Actually, have I just engaged with their platform and their content? Have I reviewed their services or products and related things? Maybe if it's Bosch and they do other things like TVs, I don't know if that's true, the fridges, maybe I've got connections to that that they can read. So that's really easy. I don't think it's enough. I think those kinds of interactions are probably quite rare and quite hard to quantify. It's hard to tell if they're good or bad. Networked actions are really interesting. So, what happens if you add the same kinds of actions from everyone I'm connected to and you do some kind of weighting based on proximity, etc., of all of my friends and everybody I respect and everyone who follows me, etc., etc., which brand looks like it's doing good things and should be in the consideration set? But for washing machines, that's probably still quite rare and it's still a bit cut and dry. The really powerful bit which changes the world is when you start using lookalike actions. So, rather than say, well, so on top of all of this, you say, okay, we don't have a huge amount of data about your preference on washing machines. But we do have a huge amount of data on people who behave and look like you, people who browse the same kind of websites and go to the same kinds of places and have overlapping social circles and the same kinds of interests. This kind of information is exactly the kind of stuff that Google and Amazon and the other players have access to and can quantify. And if you start looking at the behaviors of that entire audience, then you can start to say, okay, maybe Biko, because people who look like you have a better relationship with this brand. That makes marketing extremely hard because the remit is now market positively to, 6 months in advance, anybody who looks like somebody who might want your thing. And you laugh, but I'm terrified because I can't see another option. And that's great, that's a world I want to live in. That's a world where I— that's the kind of marketing that I think marketing should be, whereas at the moment it's how do I use money to put my thing in front of people. people. That's an incredible utopia, but I think it's very hard to get buy-in and to get budget sign-off for it. So, there are some challenges to get that. The question when you try and— so, this feels intuitively right, I think, internally. I think it's a nice thing. I think in principle it works. Phenomenally hard to get buy-in. I cannot have this conversation with my clients and my stakeholders because they say, what will the ROI be tomorrow? I'm like, mm. I think in order to You can't deploy this kind of marketing. It's got to be the product and the outcome of a business culture and an identity and ideology, which all the best kinds of marketing are. I think then you've got to bake it right in from the heart, and you've got to start doing things and behaving in a way that generates these kind of outcomes and data points. The kinds of things that your company is and does should create those signals, so that when I say, I want a new washing machine, you don't have to have proactively marketed to people who look like me. You've just done your thing and done your stuff. So you need to break it in culturally. Let's look at what that looks like. Brands have to deliver a valuable experience, quote unquote, which I appreciate is a phenomenally woolly, unhelpful definition. And this is definitely the woolliest bit of this deck. I think I've made up a brand paradigm that might answer to this. I would love you all to challenge this. It may be nonsense. Let's see. I think, The closer you are to delivering what I'm calling an experience, the stickier your proposition is, and the more of the kind of data points that we're looking to create, you create. If you are closer to an experience than you are to just fulfilling things, then more people use your app, more people browse your website, more people who look like the kind of people you might want to sell to do things which are measurable and manageable and you can encourage, and then you win the product when people find finally want to buy. Let's explore. I think at the top, the most basic kind of business does the thing it says it does. This is the Ron Seal element. Essentially, the thing that you do is available and exists, and it's not bad. Not not bad, but not bad. You then start to layer storytelling and proposition on top of that, where you get to the point where elements of the product or the experience feel bigger than the sum of the parts. There is a value proposition there that makes me feel or think differently, that answers to my emotions and my needs more than just I've got the thing in my hand. And then at the very pinnacle of this, kind of the kind of place you need to get to to be creating these signals, my interactions with the brand, not just sales, but all of my interactions, when I phone customer support, when I tweet back at you because you do something interesting on Twitter, all of my brand interactions answer to a facet of my Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You make me feel warm or safe or wanted or fulfilled, all those lovely things, that's where you really start winning. Let's give some examples. Whiskas, I don't even know who makes Whiskas, but Whiskas make the food that my cat eats. That is the extent of my relationship with Whiskas the company. Nothing Whiskas does positively disposes me towards them, either in my mind or in any kind of measurable way. They are not currently doing anything to secure their position when I say, Hey Alexa, buy me some cat food. None of their marketing or activity or nothing about their brand puts them in that consideration set. If there's a cheaper one, or a faster one, or a closer one, they will not be there. They will not get a chance to deploy a special offer, or pay more for my clicks, or to get in front of me with a banner ad, because they will not be there. They've not earned that presence. Similarly, P&G, who do all of the cleaning products, put things I need sometimes on shelves. I do not care who makes my washing-up liquid. Right, and they are so reliable, and it's cheap, and it's available everywhere, but if there's one that's marginally cheaper and not offensively worse, I will switch to that one. They've not earned any stickiness, and they've got to be sticky, otherwise they don't show up in the lists. Fitbit, next level up, makes me feel like I'm in control of my health. Whether or not that's marketing fluff or intangible value, or— it doesn't really matter. They have something more than just the product. which makes them slightly stickier. And as a result, the kinds of things that happen around their brand, around their social interactions, around their customer experience, around the things they do that aren't just selling products, start to create value signals. They start to create brand. Amazon, not notably Amazon Prime, but Amazon retail, has everything I will ever need frictionlessly. I know that it will be in stock. I know that it will be at a reasonable price. I know that I won't get ripped off. I know it will get delivered reasonably quickly. Like, there will not be any pain if I shop with Amazon. That's quite a strong proposition. And again, as a result of doing more than just fulfilling— though it's interestingly a blurred line on that one— they create the right kind of signals. Uber, incredibly contentious, incredibly contentious, potentially horrifically evil and awful, but they make my travel frictionless, which is really interesting. But more importantly, they answer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They remove fear. They remove uncertainty. They mean that when I step off a plane in a new country, or I don't know where my client meeting is, I don't have to worry. They've removed worry. That's their product. The taxis are incidental. The app is incidental. All of their horrific behavior is not. But despite that, they are sticky because they solve for a very human need. And through doing that, they create a lot of data points and a lot of brand. that allows them to remain sticky. Because they are so good at removing fear, they almost get away with being vehemently evil. It's an interesting exploration. Amazon Prime means I already have everything I need. I just have to click a button. I already own everything I need. I just have to click a button and wait an hour. That's an incredible proposition. And, yes, it's in part because of who they are, and where they are, and how they got there. But that's what they sell. The stuff and the pricing is all part of that, but the brand experience they deliver, and the stickiness that that produces, and the signals that that produces, is because I already have everything I need. You can break that down. In a world where the consumer isn't present, that simplifies greatly. The relationship between the consumer and the brand is you give me a promise and then deliver an experience. And it doesn't matter whether that's you fulfilling the thing you commit to or delivering the storytelling and the messaging. Essentially, you commit to a thing and you deliver that thing as part of an experience. That's a sticky thing that generates that data. That's what brand looks like in 2018 and 2020 and 2030, I think, when you strip away all the noise. So essentially, all brand interactions by everybody ever generate some kind of social currency, either positively or negatively, because there are people who look like other people who might be kinds of people who are— that's so complicated. People buy things, systems are influenced by the behavior of people who look like those people, and those people have opinions about products. They review, they interact, they engage. Every touchpoint that every brand has with every potential consumer or lookalike audience influences how likely they are to show up in some kind of consideration set. This goes beyond where do I rank on Google and how much am I paying for clicks, and we go into how do you make your brand deserve to be chosen by systems which aren't biased by humans? I think this is the only answer. Like, you have to do good stuff to everybody, and that's incredibly twee and cliché, and the technologist in me rails at it because it's so soft. But I think it's the answer. So, I think the logical extension of that when we start looking at brands and branding and marketing is that you can't continue to try and build the biggest castle. The core of our paradigm, the 2 cores of our paradigm at the moment are, can I purchase intent and awareness at the point where somebody exhibits a need? And can I build the biggest castle? Can I have the brand with the most clicks and the biggest website And the cheapest and the— yeah, like, until now it's been, how do I grow? How do I pour more oil on the fire? You can't do that and create a positive relationship with everybody. You can't be an insurance company that has a positive relationship with every type of niche. In this world, there should be tall ginger insurance for people who burn very quickly when they go outside, because they will generate more positive reviews and interactions. and lookalike audiences than a generic insurance company ever could. Maybe the future of brands is actually starting to break things out and have many smaller brands which do much better, because the risk of bad interactions is tenfold the opportunity of good interactions. Because it only takes 1 or 2 2-star reviews on a washing machine for that one to be excluded for everybody. Now, there are challenges with how you manage that, but, like, bad reviews become nuclear. So, this paradigm of build the biggest thing and be everything to everybody becomes increasingly risky because you only need to mess up with a few people to damage everything. So let's summarize and wrap all of that into something cohesive. I think immediately the challenge is familiarize yourselves with the technologies that are changing the web. Like, this is happening now. We are already quite far into the JavaScript revolution, the Angular versus React mess that's still going on, and there are new things beyond that like Vue. The web has changed, and that means that marketing on the web and digital marketing and brands have to change as well, and they are changing. The ones who are struggling will fail. The ones who are embracing it are doing very, very well. Consider how that changes consumer behavior and also changes consumer expectations. Like, as the web gets faster and sleeker and more platform-like, people will demand that of you. Google, for example, is very, very hot on performance at the moment and how fast websites are. Not because necessarily it benefits them in any particularly massive way, but because consumers like faster websites. And as the web gets faster, they grow used to it and then they want it. Like, this is not rocket science. Think about how the changing web influences consumer behavior. And next, start thinking about how the introduction of intelligent personal assistants, your Google Homes, Alexas, Siris, all of these devices which are becoming more and more prevalent, start to take consumers out of the buying cycle. People are offloading their decision-making processes onto systems, devices, companies, people. It doesn't have to be smart AI, like the Flipper gas and electricity thing. Is a bunch of people researching, but the principles still stand. I have offloaded my decision-making preferences, and they will do that for me, which means I cannot be advertised to. Start to optimize for delivering experiences which fulfill brand promises. Try and be stickier than just fulfilling the thing. And then somehow, something comes out of the bottom of all of this which looks like grand success and a better world where we're all happy and fulfilled and doing good stuff and making brands that do good things in turn and make everybody happy and make the world a better place. I'm not sure what that looks like, but I think we're the people to do it because this is happening now. The stuff that's out there isn't very good and is driven by shareholders who want growth over quality. It's driven by marketeers who still think about conversion rates and ROI rather than zero moments of truth. Nobody is thinking about this, but the tech is there. This isn't next year. This is increasingly now, and it only happens if we embrace it and make the world a better place. So good luck, everybody, and thank you very much. Thank you.