The year was 2007…
The prediction was that websites would be dead by now. After all, who needs a website when we have social media?
Nizan Guanaes, famous brazilian publicist and entrepreneur, at the time in charge of Agência África, started to redirect their website’s URL to the Facebook fan page.
Agencies focused specifically on social media appeared in droves. So called “marketing gurus” came up from nowhere and opened their own Social Media companies aiming for fame and profit, without ever having understood all the science (and people) behind digital marketing.
“Website? Forget about it! Does your business already have an Instagram account?!”
Would this be the dreadful end of websites, which would be swallowed up by social networks?
Flashforward back to 2022!
Fifteen years have passed, and that’s not at all what happened…
All brands that invest in digital marketing – big or small – not only have a website, but also invest a good part of their marketing resources in generating traffic. Websites have become more than a sales page: they are sources of information, transactions, experience and customer relationships.
The so-called social media agencies no longer exist: they were incorporated by marketing agencies. After all, Social Media is just one of many digital marketing tools.
The same would have happened if a specific position were invented to lead the marketing actions focused on Social Media: we would then have a Chief Social Media Officer. The movement would eventually spread to other marketing expertises: Chief SEO Officer, Chief Paid Media Officer, Chief Copywriter Officer… you get the point!
CMOs for the win!
But innovation is not about destroying what’s already been built – it’s about developing on the foundations.
Even if some of the predictions about social networks have come true, the relevance of websites in digital marketing has not diminished, it has just adapted to the new reality. The same happened with advertising and marketing agencies, which had to reinvent themselves, but did not cease to exist.
In this context, the CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) were not replaced by the Chief Social Media Officers. On the contrary, the position of CMO gained even more prestige for having incorporated such an important point of communication as social networks.
Whatever the position, channel or strategy, the goal of digital marketing is always the same: capture the consumer’s attention and convert! Therefore, CMOs must always be aware of the behavior of their targets.
Too many social media, too little attention
Our attention on the internet is anything but linear.
Who, in their right mind, spends their ENTIRE day or more than 8 hours a day on a SINGLE social media, like Instagram, for example?
In times when attention is so dispersed, the most common behavior is to spend a few minutes on Instagram, leave, enter YouTube, stay another 15 minutes, leave, go to LinkedIn, leave, go to a blog dedicated to a subject that we like, leave, and… go back to Instagram and start the cycle all over again.
The same goes for your customers! Like you, they have their web cycles, which can be “surrounded” by your digital marketingstrategies. Or not.
In a perfect world, everything would be put together in one place, right?!
Web3: integration between real and digital world
Other than that, we also have an offline life — at least for now.
During this offline period, we watch television, occasionally read a newspaper or magazine, take a walk on the street, get overwhelmed by advertisement, end up consuming on impulse, have a brief social interaction until, finally, we take our cell phone out of our pocket and go back on the web.
Marketing is not linear because consumer attention is scattered, chaotic, unpredictable and surrounded by brands from all sides – online and offline.
Companies struggle to create as many conversion touchpoints as possible and activate brand recall in this complicated consumer journey, which can move from awareness to conversion in a highly decentralized process.
That’s where the new Web3 space comes in: the Metaverse! With it, the integration between the physical and virtual world is getting closer. The question is: how many hours of our day will we spend on the metaverse?
Millennials, let’s meet in the Metaverse!
It hasn’t been long since millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) passed boomers (people born between 1955 and 1964) and Gen X (people born between 1965 and 1980) as the most economically active part of the population in the world.
It was early in their (our) lives as consumers that millennials discovered the viral power of social media.
With over 4 billion users around the globe, social media has not only democratized small and medium-sized businesses’ access to their consumers (without having to invest millions in television), but has also shaped new consumers and their behaviors, getting them used to buying things in the internet, getting more immediate responses and interactions, and a special attention to communities and consumer reviews.
Growing up in this environment, millennials started to understand the importance of this direct attention to where the consumers are, replacing traditional media – radio, television, magazines — for digital media.
Likewise, for us — a generation that can already be considered “old” (sorry, millennials) – it’s hard to even imagine that anything will be bigger than social media as we know it.
If you think so too, prepare to be surprised very soon! As millennials, we are the new generation of entrepreneurs and managers who, once again, are about to redirect the efforts and resources of companies to the places where their own generation will be reunited. After all, it is inevitable that Generation Z will, at some point, become the most economically active generation.
Therefore, it is necessary to adapt to the new reality to impact consumers of the future – something that TikTok, for example, has been doing masterfully since last year.
Now, in much greater proportions, it’s the metaverse‘s turn.
Metaverse: a new chapter for the internet
New generation, new channels, new phase for the internet. The metaverse is already a reality that will help accelerate the migration to web 3, providing a decentralized digital environment that promises to benefit brands, content producers and consumers.
As happened with the arrival of social media, I can already see the beginning of the movement of companies to adapt to this new reality. Big brands like Nike, Disney, Coca-Cola and Amazon are preparing their teams for the metaverse.
With so much “new” stuff, we assume that there are going to be new job opportunities, right?
I decided to research the subject and was pleasantly surprised! The post already exists: Chief Metaverse Officer.
Chief Metaverse Officer or Super CMO?
You probably heard or read about it somewhere: Chief Metaverse Officer, one of the promising roles that come with Web3.
Although I see good prospects, I am not fully convinced. After all, if the concepts of metaverse, NFT and blockchain will dominate the internet in the near future, then we imagine absolutely ALL current positions need to prepare for the transformation that the internet will undergo in a very short time.
That said, I see an increasingly relevant role for CMOs and their teams, who will have the metaverse as one of the main environments for communication and interaction with their consumers. If this was already an extremely important position in organizations, its role in web 3 should become even greater.
It is up to these professionals to train themselves and remove the blindfold: the metaverse is already among us, and we do not need a Chief Metaverse Officer to make it a reality. Of course, by developing themselves, CMOs will be compensated accordingly.
Metaverse, here we go!
After all, what is marketing if not spreading the right message, at the right time, to the right person and through the right channel?
Marketing is always changing —or at least it should be. Companies must go where the consumer’s attention is.
So, if that attention is increasingly in the Metaverse, well… I believe that’s where brands and their marketers should be too!
Quelle: