Just the Sexy Parts — Blockchain for Today’s Marketers
The title sounds sexy — Head of Marketing and Business Development for a Blockchain company. Certainly “Blockchain” is buzzy and lots of people are trying to figure it out. And while there are plenty of “speculators” out there betting on various crypto-currencies, my company doesn’t focus on cryptocurrency — we are focused on the way the technology of the underlying platform, the Blockchain, is enabling the creation of new, valuable assets, eliminating fraud and creating new revenue streams.
And that’s exactly where it stops being sexy. What we’re doing is taking advantage of a technology platform and making things secure in the digital space in a way that was not previously available. The underlying technology may be somewhat complicated, but the concepts are not. Which is why, for the life of me, I cannot understand why so many marketing executives are trying so hard to understand exactly how the technology actually works.
A hundred years ago, when I loaded my AOL disk onto my computer, itself the size of a home generator, I was thrilled to hear, “You’ve Got Mail.” I never once thought about how, exactly, this was all possible. It didn’t matter to me if Martians riding bicycles were the underlying power-source. I just knew it was a game-changer and that email was now available to the masses. My first thoughts were about how I could use AOL Mail to reach my customers — I never once wondered how the system could keep track of millions of email addresses.
To be clear, in my role, I need to understand a fair amount of the tech — so I know what we can and can’t do and, really, so I can clarify what the platform does when asked at events and cocktail parties. But as soon as my tech team starts talking about coding, or what makes up a “hash” — I get sleepy. It’s too much information that doesn’t further my goal.
I don’t need people to understand exactly how the Blockchain works — but I desperately want them to focus on what it enables. This technology is the biggest thing to happen to the internet since, well, the internet happened.
But just as I never needed to know exactly how the internet worked to be thrilled by its possibilities, trying to drill into the core of how and why Blockchain works, particularly if you are not technically inclined, is wasted brain space.
Yes, you need to know that this new platform is decentralized, which is why it is, at present, impossible to hack. You might want to understand a little about smart contracts — to the extent that you can build in rules that suit your business. And, absolutely, in today’s environment, make sure you understand what data is going to be collected if any, how it will be used, how it is secured, and who owns it.
But, what you really need to know is that because of the Blockchain as a platform, we can mint digital assets that have intrinsic value because they are uniquely identifiable, eliminate billions of dollars in fraud in the coupon and rebate space, and track and trace assets while allowing the consumer to determine how much data they want to share.
If people/businesses could focus more on what this transformative platform can offer, and less on the deep technology that enables it (unless you are specifically in charge of technology at your company), there are incredible revenue and cost-saving benefits that can be mobilized in a very short window — meaning that your 2019 performance review could include how you generated millions in incremental revenue and saved additional millions by eliminating fraud. I don’t know exactly whose job those two things might fall under — but if it were me, I’d step up. No one gets fired for making and saving gobs of money. Let your tech guys talk to our tech guys to vet the system. Use your brain space to imagine all the ways this new tech platform can help your business.
Making money for the company, eliminating fraud, setting trends, and, dare I say, being on the “cutting edge of technology,” now that’s sexy.
By Mimi Slavin, Head of Marketing, Greenfence Consumer
