The Muniverse: A Brand New World (Part 1)

Marketing Transformations

Four transformations will shape marketing in the coming years:

  • the shift from continuous new customer acquisition to focusing on existing customers (Martech 2.0),
  • the creation of differentiated experiences for Best Customers (Velvet Rope Marketing),
  • the building of hotlines via email for two-way engagement (Email 2.0), and
  • the use of Atomic Rewards to solve the twin problems of attention recession and data poverty (Loyalty 2.0).

Taken together, these trends will lead to better brand-customer relationships and less “AdWaste” to drive “profit-centric marketing” via exponential, forever, profitable growth. Half of marketing spends (about $200 billion annually) are drained by reacquisition of churned or inactive customers, and wrong acquisition. The key to controlling rising CAC (customer acquisition cost) is by deepening the emphasis on existing customers with the 5 Rs: retention, repetition, referrals, reactivation, replenishment. Otherwise, marketers run the risk of constantly pouring money into a leaky bucket which can have a negative impact on profitability and can threaten the brand’s existence against a backdrop of a slowdown in consumer spending.

All of these are themes I have explored in my writings over the past two-and-a-half years on the blog.

Martech 2.0: Focus on Existing Customers

Velvet Rope Marketing: Focus on Best Customers

Email 2.0: Build Hotlines to Customers

Loyalty 2.0: Tokenise Attention and Data

In this series, I will explore the new world that these coming changes will create, centred around the use of Atomic Rewards to tokenise attention and data. Attention is upstream of transactions, and data is the oxygen for personalisation. Tomorrow’s world is about omnichannel personalisation and the Muniverse (what I have also termed as the µniverse) is at its core.

Thinks 617

Francis Fukuyama: “There have been three essential justifications for liberal societies that have been put forward over the centuries. The first is a pragmatic rationale: liberalism is a way of regulating violence and allowing diverse populations to live peacefully with one another.  The second is moral: liberalism protects basic human dignity, and in particular human autonomy—the ability of each individual to make choices. The final justification is economic: liberalism promotes economic growth and all the good things that come from growth, by protecting property rights and the freedom to transact.”

Adrian Wooldridge: “Leaders and would-be leaders can make sure that they carve out time for serious reading or calm reflection: Even when he was running Microsoft Corp. from day-to-day, Bill Gates would retreat to an isolated cottage for a week and meditate on a big subject. Parents can prepare their children for the world by encouraging them to read great literature or, better still, commit some of it to memory. But individual action is unlikely ever to be enough given the size of the forces eroding the store of leadership qualities. We need to do more to protect society from the digital deluge — perhaps following Finland and requiring schools to teach children about fake news. We also need to add a little more old-fashioned conservatism to our educational systems — emphasizing the importance of duty and high culture as well as the claims of meritocracy, on the one hand, and social justice, on the other.”

Ninos Malek: “We often hear how wonderful certain countries are because they provide “free healthcare” or “free education.” Many will also say “I got it for free” because they didn’t pay with money. The error lies in not understanding the difference between price and cost. For example, people usually say, “The Starbucks latte cost me five dollars” or, “The movie ticket cost me fifteen dollars.” Cost in economics means what you give up or sacrifice. In these examples, the prices were $5 and $15. But the cost of the latte was perhaps the sandwich one could have purchased instead with that same $5, and the cost of the movie was perhaps the three lattes one could have purchased instead with that same $15…There’s a difference between zero price and zero cost. There could be a zero price ($0), but there’s never a zero cost. Therefore, don’t swear anymore by using the “F” word!”

MuApp: The Brand-Customer Hotline (Part 7)

Mu Wallet and Exchange

The MuApp will also need support for a wallet and interfacing to an exchange. The wallet section would track the inflow and outflow of Mu tokens. Tokens would be earned not just via actions in the email but also in SMS, push notifications and WhatsApp. Later, the earning could be extended to actions done on the website and in the app. (For example, a brand could incentivise opening an app for three days in a row to create habits. Customers could also earn Mu for referrals and reviews.)

An exchange is where the trading of Mu can take place. MuCo itself could auction Mu on a regular basis, and consumers could sell Mu to each other or brands. As demand rises, there could be an appreciation in the value of Mu. A marketplace may also be needed for brands to sell “priceless experiences” to customers, thus increasing their haul of Mu for rewarding customers.

Here are more details from my earlier essay on “The Mu Future”:

Think of MuCo as a Mu factory. It takes fiat currency as input and produces Mu. The Mu can then be distributed by the buyers (brands) to their customers – MuCo has no control over that process. MuCo maintains a centralised database which tracks the flow of Mu (from source to destination). End consumers have to come to MuCo to use the Mu – they begin by activating it by identifying themselves (email address, mobile number) to claim the Mu that has been given to them by brands. Thus, brands and consumers have “wallets” and transactions are stored in a database. This is almost identical to how current loyalty programs work.

Consumers will then want to redeem Mu. For this, MuCo will need to run a market of offerings from brands. This can work in two ways: either MuCo ‘buys’ the products from brands and ‘sells’ it to customers (like a Mu Shop) or brands can themselves sell directly to customers (in a Mu Marketplace). In the latter scenario, brands get Mu in return for their ‘experience’ offerings.

This is quite straightforward. MuCo derives its revenues selling Mu. With enough Mu out there, brands will find it to their benefit to create offerings for consumers. Mu works across brands – that is its true utility.

MuApp’s wallet can also hold XRTs. As I wrote earlier: “The XRT (eXtreme Retention Token), which opens a gateway to differentiated experiences for the Best Customers … The XRT can be thought of as an NFT which opens a world of privileged experiences for the Best Customers – so they can keep coming back for more and bring their friends, thus maximising their category spend with the brand.”

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So, that’s the MuApp: an inbox for brand messages linked to a customer’s email address and mobile number, a wallet to store Mu tokens and XRTs, and an interface to the Mu marketplace and exchange. The MuApp enables the easy flow of Mu between brands and customers, thus enabling the monetisation of attention and data. It integrates Email 2.0 and Loyalty 2.0. It is the hotline that creates a win-win by enabling brands to cut their Adwaste by building better relationships with their existing customers, who can in turn become promoters to assist with better new customer acquisition, providing a Big Tech bypass and an entry point to the µniverse.

Thinks 616

FT: “Some memory lapses are actually attention problems, not memory problems. For instance, if you’ve forgotten the name of someone you met at a cocktail party, it could be because you were talking with several people at the time and you didn’t properly pay attention when you heard it. “Inattention is the biggest cause for memory difficulties, ” Dr. Restak said. “It means you didn’t properly encode the memory.” One way to pay attention when you learn new information, like a name, is to visualize the word. Having a picture associated with the word, Restak said, can improve recall. For instance, he recently had to memorize the name of a doctor, Dr. King, (an easy example, he acknowledged). So he pictured a male doctor “in a white coat with a crown on his head and a scepter instead of a stethoscope in his hand.””

NYTimes: “For decades, the fans who powered the comic book industry made weekly pilgrimages to their local comic shops to buy the latest issues about their favorite caped-and-cowled adventurers. These Wednesday Warriors, named for the day new installments typically land on shelves, still do. Voracious readers of printed comics, they skew older — and are mostly male. But now all it takes is a smartphone, as the world of comics is reshaped by the kind of digital disruption that has transformed journalism, music, movies and television. Web comics have exploded in popularity in recent years, in part by tapping into an audience the industry had long overlooked: Gen Z and Millennial women. The stories they offer — of a young woman battling sexism in the world of e-sports or a romance-focused retelling of Greek myth — are mostly free and scroll vertically on smartphones, where readers under 25 live. And they have minted stars from a new generation of creators.”

Read: Upgrade by Blake Crouch. Gene editing sci-fi thriller.

MuApp: The Brand-Customer Hotline (Part 6)

Email Reimagined

By making the MuApp double as an email client, it enables continuity. Most websites use email addresses as their handle, while apps use the mobile number. MuApp should be able to use the IMAP protocol to access existing email boxes on Gmail and Yahoo with a user’s credentials and pick out the “microns” (emails with Mu). This way, there is no change in user behaviour except using a new app for earning and burning Mu. Brand marketing emails don’t need a reply; with AMP, all interactivity could be done inside the email itself. A similar approach could be taken with incoming messages in the SMS inbox. Thus, the MuApp becomes a unified inbox of all brand emails and SMSes. Consumers can continue to use their existing email IDs and mobile numbers on websites and apps, and not have to worry about creating new credentials. (Over time, a MuCo ID or wallet address could become the unifying identity, enabling changes in email addresses and mobile numbers.)

Emails have a lot of scope for innovation. The only change that has happened in the past 10-15 years has been the shift from text to HTML. While AMP can enable the creation of interactive emails, the opportunity for transformation is in the email footer. Most footers just have an “unsubscribe” option. Since it is at the bottom of an email, any changes made to the footer do not interfere with the brand message. What if we could rethink the email footer the way newspapers do comics pages? For many, the comics are the only reason to open the newspaper! But in navigating to the comics pages, they also browse through the rest of the newspaper and the ads.

The email footer can be reconstructed as having three parts: a brand section, a MuCo section, and AMP ads. Each section can have one or more AMPlets. All actions in the AMPlets are done in-place; there are no clickthroughs out from the emails.

Brand footer: This can be used by the brand to engage with customers. Examples of AMPlets: rating (feedback on the brand or email content), chat, cart, search, preference collection, and so on. By combining with pan-brand Atomic Rewards, customers can earn Mu tokens for their actions. A “µ.[MuCount]” in the subject of the email can signal that this is an email with rewards (a micron).

MuCo footer: This can give opportunities to burn Mu. A Mu Shop can provide options for how to use the Mu. AMPlets with content subscriptions for news, stock quotes, weather, health tips, quotes, casual games, puzzles and even comics and cartoons can make the MuCo footer very attractive and a “must-see”.

AMP ads: Most ads we see on websites and apps are banner ads entailing a click. How can these be reimagined if we eliminate the click and instead bring in interactivity and engagement within the ad? Since the identity of the email recipient is unique, ads can be targeted and serve as lead generation vehicles. Additional form-fill data can be captured right in the email itself. Brands would benefit financially from ad actions which could also help defray the Mu costs.

Thus, the plan vanilla email with marketing offers can come alive: interesting, interactive and incentivised; a sort of “Living Email.”

Thinks 615

FT: “Instead of trying to convince people they were wrong, they listened to why they thought they were right and gently prodded them to explain their thinking, looking for opportunities to get them to reflect and to empathise with same-sex couples. After a study on the efficacy of deep canvassing was withdrawn in 2015 because of a researcher’s use of false data, a subsequent study, published in the journal Science the following year, validated the technique. [David] McRaney spent time with others doing the equivalent of deep canvassing. Some called it “street epistemology”, but they were essentially doing the same thing: slowly persuading people to reflect on their long-held beliefs in the hope that they might change them.”

WSJ: “The rise of what might be called “narrative universes,” like “Star Wars,” Marvel and “Harry Potter,” is usually explained in business terms, as a way for media companies to wring extra profits out of valuable pieces of intellectual property…The interesting question, however, isn’t why media companies are so eager to keep supplying the market with new content from the same franchises. It’s why the demand is so insatiable. Why do audiences continue to flock to the 10th Star Wars movie or the 20th Marvel movie? What imaginative appetite or cultural need keeps us coming back for more? The answer may be that while narrative universes seem like a new development, having taken over the world in the 21st century, they actually represent a much older and more primal mode of storytelling. Like ancient myths and folk tales, they offer not a single story but a set of materials that can be used and reused by different storytellers for different purposes. Such tales combine the appeal of novelty and familiarity: We come to them knowing the basics of what we are going to hear but ready to be surprised by new details and techniques.”

Shane Parish: “Most information is irrelevant. Knowing what to ignore saves you time, reduces stress, and improves your decision making.”

MuApp: The Brand-Customer Hotline (Part 5)

Crypto Exchanges

Intuit.com writes: “Cryptocurrency exchanges are online platforms used to buy and sell cryptocurrency. These platforms are intermediaries between the buyer and seller, allowing users to trade cryptocurrencies using fiat money or altcoins … A centralized crypto exchange is the most common type of exchange platform and uses a third party to help conduct transactions. Users trust this third party to offer them security, monitoring, and help them find trading partners. Some investors find this concept misleading since cryptocurrencies are considered decentralized with no need for a central authority … Unlike centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, there isn’t a middleman for decentralized exchanges — instead, they use blockchain technology or distributed ledgers. In this less common type of exchange, the currency isn’t held by a third party, and transactions are done peer-to-peer using smart contracts.”

Binance, FTX, Coinbase, Gemini and Crypto.com are examples of crypto exchanges.

Wikipedia has more: “A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees … The exchanges can send cryptocurrency to a user’s personal cryptocurrency wallet. Some can convert digital currency balances into anonymous prepaid cards which can be used to withdraw funds from ATMs worldwide while other digital currencies are backed by real-world commodities such as gold. The creators of digital currencies are often independent of the digital currency exchange that facilitate trading in the currency. In one type of system, digital currency providers (DCP) are businesses that keep and administer accounts for their customers, but generally do not issue digital currency to those customers directly. Customers buy or sell digital currency from digital currency exchanges, who transfer the digital currency into or out of the customer’s DCP account.”

Corporate Finance Institute adds: “Cryptocurrency exchanges are platforms that facilitate the trading of cryptocurrencies for other assets, including digital and fiat currencies. In effect, cryptocurrency exchanges act as an intermediary between a buyer and a seller and make money through commissions and transaction fees. On common cryptocurrency exchanges, $100 can be exchanged for bitcoin of equivalent value, and vice-versa. Similarly, bitcoin worth $100 can be exchanged for Ethereum of equivalent value. The same concept can be applied to different assets based on what is offered by the exchange.”

Taken together, the wallet, an exchange and a “currency” make for a trading system. This is very similar to the stock market. One sets up an account (“wallet”) with a brokerage, which interfaces with an exchange, enabling users to trade stocks.

These are the ideas that we can build on to create the Mu ecosystem, with the MuApp serving as the gateway.

Thinks 614

Pia Lauritzen: “Asking questions and listening to the questions of others helps leaders make better decisions…Having worked as an advisor to executives for 18 years, I have never come across another theory, method, or tool that in two minutes helps leaders make up their mind about what’s important, take other people’s situations into account, and think of their input in light of their company’s or team’s common goal. So, what is it about asking questions that makes leaders spontaneously do so quickly what no carefully designed manual or process manages to do? Let’s take a look at the ideas that make up the magical question triangle.”

FT on positive feedback: “Feedback is part of our everyday existence. It is widely viewed as crucial to improving our performance at work, in education and the quality of our relationships. Most white-collar professionals partake in some form of annual appraisal, performance development review or 360-degree feedback, in which peers, subordinates and managers submit praise and criticism…It really is possible to get better at giving — and receiving — constructive criticism.”

Matthew Ball on the metaverse: “It is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time, rendered, 3D virtual worlds that can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users, each with an individual sense of presence. It has the technologies, capabilities, and standards to support what is essentially a parallel plane of existence that spans all virtual worlds and the physical world. From a human outcome, it means that an ever-growing share of our time, labor, leisure, wealth, happiness, et cetera, will exist in virtual spaces.” More from Matthew Ball.

MuApp: The Brand-Customer Hotline (Part 4)

Crypto Wallets

Coinbase offers an explainer on crypto wallets:

Crypto wallets keep your private keys – the passwords that give you access to your cryptocurrencies – safe and accessible, allowing you to send and receive cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. They come in many forms, from hardware wallets like Ledger (which looks like a USB stick) to mobile apps like Coinbase Wallet, which makes using crypto as easy as shopping with a credit card online.

Unlike a normal wallet, which can hold actual cash, crypto wallets technically don’t store your crypto. Your holdings live on the blockchain, but can only be accessed using a private key. Your keys prove your ownership of your digital money and allow you to make transactions. If you lose your private keys, you lose access to your money. That’s why it’s important to keep your hardware wallet safe, or use a trusted wallet provider like Coinbase.

Coinbase differentiates between its app and wallet: “The main Coinbase app (or Coinbase.com) allows you to buy and sell crypto or exchange it for fiat currency and transfer it to a bank account. If you just want to invest in Bitcoin or another digital currency it’s all you need. The Coinbase app will securely manage the rights to your private keys. Coinbase Wallet is a separate app that allows you to store your private keys and to send, receive, and spend digital money; browse and use DeFi applications, and more.”

Business Insider has more:

A crypto wallet is a software program or physical device that allows you to store your crypto and allow for the sending and receiving of crypto transactions. A crypto wallet consists of two key pairs: private keys and public keys. A public key is derived from the private key and serves as the address used to send crypto to the wallet.

The important part of a wallet — and the part where new users often find themselves getting into trouble — is the private key. A private key is like the key to a safe deposit box. Anyone who has access to the private key of a wallet can take control of the balance held there.

But unlike a safe deposit box, crypto users who hold their own private keys and make transactions using non-custodial wallets (i.e., a wallet not hosted by an exchange or other third-party) become their own bank.

“It is similar to a bank account but the main difference is it is controlled by a key that only you control. You use this [private] key to initiate transactions, which is called ‘signing,'” says Joel Dietz, founder of Art Wallet and contributing developer to MetaMask.

Blockchain is a public ledger that stores data in what’s known as “blocks.” These are records of all transactions, the balances held at any given address, and who holds the key to those balances. Crypto isn’t stored “in” a wallet, per se. The coins exist on a blockchain and the wallet software allows you to interact with the balances held on that blockchain. The wallet itself stores addresses and allows their owners to move coins elsewhere while also letting others see the balance held at any given address.

Crypto.com adds: “The term ‘wallet’ is actually somewhat of a misnomer as crypto wallets don’t really store cryptocurrency in the same way physical wallets hold cash. Instead, they read the public ledger to show you the balances in your addresses and also hold the private keys that enable you to make transactions … A wallet doesn’t actually hold your coins. Instead, it holds the key to your coins which are actually stored on public blockchain networks. In order to perform various transactions, you’ll need to verify your address via a private key that comes in a set of specific codes.”

Thinks 613

Nathan Baschez: ” Good market analysis is fascinating. It uncovers answers to deep questions, such as: why do some companies in an industry play such an indispensable role that they become huge, profitable, long-lasting businesses? And why do other companies in the same industry end up short-lived, thin-margined, and small? These are mysteries that should be fun to unravel! … The question is, what kinds of strategies generate market power? To answer it, I developed a process that fuses together the ideas of the three most important theorists in business strategy: Clayton Christensen, Michael Porter, and Hamilton Helmer.”

Russ Roberts: “Human beings want purpose. We want meaning. We want to belong to something larger than ourselves. The decisions we make in the face of wild problems don’t just lead to good days and bad days. They define us. They determine who we are, who we might aspire to become, who we might come to be. And this, I think, is the key to how we approach our own wild problems…My advice?…Spend less time trying to figure out the best path to get to where we want to go and spend more time thinking about where we want to go in the first place.”

Donald J. Boudreaux writes on the negative consequences of price floors: “Price floors are less common in reality than are price ceilings, but they do exist. By far, the most commonplace price floor is government-imposed minimum wages. Unsurprisingly, price floors, like price ceilings, have negative effects.”