Steve Wheen 0:06
Hey there. Welcome back to series three of distillery sessions. The podcast brought to you by distillery. I'm Steve wheen. In the first episode of our three part series, I spoke to Jessica, founder and CEO of radio. In their last episode, I spoke to hash Chief Digital Officer JSR. And today for our third and final episode of our three part series looking at word three, I'm speaking to Jessica Thomas. Jessica co founded mercy advisory and currently serves as the firm's strategy lead. Her focuses on educating and providing strategic consultancy, to clients seeking to understand the possibilities of the metaverse and web three. With a mission to assist businesses in capitalising on current opportunities, and future proofing for the next five to 10 years. Jessica is dedicated to helping clients navigate the ever changing technological landscape. Thanks so much for joining us today. Jessica.

jess thomas 1:04
Thank you very much for having me on

Steve Wheen 1:06
board. Okay, so can you tell me a little bit more about your experience in web three and how you got started?

jess thomas 1:12
Yeah, of course. So a couple of years ago, when the metaverse was on the cusp of becoming popularised my husband, he's actually an artist. And he was looking for new ways to sell his artwork, and so dived into all the research you could possibly do about NF Ts. And it started becoming quite successful for him, he now does that as a full time job selling his artwork through NF T's. It's, it's original art, not AI. And that really is, is what sparked my interest. He was telling me all this information that he'd found, and like the futures and the possibilities of having kind of decentralised art and things like that. So that's when I really got interested. And then I just started researching it. And in my view, it was like, Okay, this is kind of the next step, the next evolution of the web, the next evolution of technology. And that's when I was like, right, I need to get involved in this immediately. So it's been a few years coming now. But yeah, that that was what initially sparked my interest.

Steve Wheen 2:14
So from that initial spark, what gets you really excited about web three today?

jess thomas 2:20
It's funny, because to be honest, I'm a bit of analogous so kind of at the beginning, it was the idea that we could, you know, let go of these big companies give the ownership back to the people. That that was initially what I was like, Okay, this is this is groundbreaking, however, kind of at the moment, sort of popularised decentralisation is quite are far off from becoming an actual reality. But obviously, I was already very invested in in the space itself. So what got me hooked after that was kind of the amazing changes that I could see it having for not just everybody's everyday life. But businesses. I've mean, they're the ones that are leading this. And eventually, it will go to a more consumer technology focus, but it was really kind of reading stories about the efficiencies that people will be able to make in their businesses, the changes of, you know, onboarding people and operations and things like that. And I was like, Okay, this has a real, you know, possibility to make a big change, globally. And I thought, Okay, this is, to me, that's very interesting. And it really sparked my interest from there.

Steve Wheen 3:32
So you mentioned efficiencies in business operations, in onboarding, etc. Do you think web three is, you know, going to transform businesses?

jess thomas 3:44
So this is quite an interesting question. Because at the moment, in my opinion, web three isn't exactly kind of fundamental. It's a nice to have. But I mean, give it two, three years, you know, when businesses realise the possibilities of what they could do with it, I think we're going to start seeing some really amazing use cases outside of the standard ones that we're seeing at the moment, which is like retail businesses, creating virtual stores. And I think, you know, there's really big opportunities for transformation. And those who are leading it at the moment will will be the ones that when it does really, really pick up to be kind of a standard or the norm across business, the ones who are already doing it are going to be miles ahead, because they've understood the technology. They've understood the possibilities, the limitations, the risks. So at the moment is not necessarily a fundamental, but I think it's fundamental to explore.

Steve Wheen 4:38
So in terms of that exploration, how can businesses you know, actually get started?

jess thomas 4:45
So I think there's kind of three kind of core questions that you'd need to ask. You know, for starters, does web three actually align with the business goals? If your strategy is, you know, revenue generation and you're a b2c company. And there's some really good opportunities within your current business setup to get started, then absolutely great. But you need to really think about what their strategic goals are for the next 1224 36 months to see whether or not web three is actually something that you should be exploring both web three and the metaverse. I think the second question would be is, is your target audience actually active on web three? Are they exploring metaverse? is are they using decentralised finance? Are they part of discord communities? You know, if they're already there, then that's an easy win. But you have to consider if they're not there already? Are there barriers to entry? How are you going to get them to invest in this space or get interested in this space? So that's kind of a core question is, you know, what's your strategy saying? And then where is your audience? And lastly, do you have the resources to do it? Because at the moment, you know, it's not as streamlined as we want it to be. There's lots of ifs and buts. There's lots of testing. And you know, your business might not be ready for that right now, you might not have the resource, you might not have the budget to outsource to a consultancy like myself ourselves at Mass. But, you know, it's fundamental to ask, Does this align with my strategy? Where am I? is my target audience actually active there? Are there going to be barriers to entry to get them involved? And do we have the resources to build this?

Steve Wheen 6:38
So turning to marketing and content, because obviously, distillery we're a content company, I'd like to hear about your vision of what marketing and content might look like over the next two to five years as web three really set sail? Yeah,

jess thomas 6:53
I mean, there's some really, really interesting projects that are happening at the moment, I think, in the case of kind of b2c marketing, this is going to, in my opinion, will be entirely dependent on user adoption of web three technology. I mean, I've said it a few times, I'll say it again, I firmly believe that augmented reality is going to be the way forward to get the public on board. And I think that's going to, you know, at the moment, we can use augmented reality on our phones. But, you know, the adoption of things like smart glasses, could very easily replace our phones, not in the next two to five years, but in the next 10 to 20, maybe. And, you know, marketing companies at the moment are doing some amazing things with with AR, I saw a project the other day, it was a campaign for Save the ocean, and they on different locations and on different beaches. If you get your phone out, you can see an augmented reality almost portal in the middle of the beach. And you can walk through that portal and look around, they've built it beautiful, it's like you're walking underwater. And it's like a, you know, a fully immersive experience. But this is this is where adoption comes into play. Because whilst that's great on your phone, and it was a great sort of marketing campaign that happened for you to view through your phone, the reality of it is it would be much better with smart glasses. You'd have a fully immersive experience with this. So I think that the future of kind of marketing campaigns and content as a whole is going to be going down the route of immersive experiences. You know, you take phones, for example, they were developed through the 40s 50s and 60s, but they only became popularised in the late 80s. So I think user adoption these days is a lot quicker, because our technology, you know, advances quicker. But that's kind of as long as the adoption is there from from the users, then I think that we'll see quite a quite a shift in marketing. It's not going to be about engagement rates. It's going to be about immersive experiences. And in

Steve Wheen 9:11
your opinion, what sort of companies are leading the way? Do you have any projects that you think have been really successful?

jess thomas 9:19
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you've got the obvious ones, like the retail and fashion companies, they're setting up virtual stores, you know, providing gaming options to their customers. But to be honest, the real projects that are making an actual difference are the ones that I see that are implementing internal solutions. So they're making a difference to their staff, improving their business units to transforming their operations system. A good example of this is Accenture, and they now do all of their onboarding for new starters in virtual reality. They built an entire virtual reality space for it. And this kind of gives their new starters access to people in the business that they wouldn't normally have access to. such as the C suite, it really helps them learn, I think they had like a success rate of 40% higher retention of learning from from just onboarding them this way. And, you know, it's funny because we assume that it's the b2c companies that are leading the way. But I honestly think it's kind of the the people doing the efficiencies within their business, that are going to be the ones leading it, and then eventually it will be become more popularised for the b2c companies, when they're bringing web through to the consumers. I mean, there's other great examples like manufacturing companies, they're using AR, I don't know if you've seen the recent release of Google Glass. So enterprise. Eight, this, the first Google Glasses was, in my opinion, quite unimpressive. But I'm quite surprised at how well they've done with this enterprise launch. And people like manufacturing companies are adopting them for all their workers that are on the floor. They've got these glasses on, they're able to bring up, you know, guidance and training live while they're viewing the tasks that they're doing, they're able to see augmented reality overlaid on top of the tasks that they're trying to fulfil. And it's a really, you know, they can communicate through the glasses with each other, they can get supervisory support, they can do two way video calls, so other people with glasses can see exactly what they're looking at. And, you know, I really think that these are the guy is actually leading the way we've got some nice to haves in the retail space. But these are the guys normalising it. And then we're going to see more sort of use cases for the consumer, the average consumer.

Steve Wheen 11:43
Yeah, that's a really interesting example. But on the flip side, what are the projects that haven't gone? Quite so? Well?

jess thomas 11:52
Yeah, I mean, there's been a few. But I think kind of the reason that they haven't gone so well is because they've just not really done their research and just launched into web three thinking it's the same as web two. A prime example would be Porsche, I don't know if you saw they did a NFT launch. They've got their 911, Porsche, and they, they mentored a load of LFTs. I think it was 7500 and FTS home. But the price point was nine ether, or naught point nine ether, sorry. And that's the equivalent of $1,400. So it was a lot. And I think, where they went wrong, I mean, this, to me is a pristine example of like a large brand, trying to extract liquidity from a community without actually no onboarding itself to web three in the first place. They did next to no marketing, they were trying to raise NFT sales on kind of prestige alone, the price point was, was pretty high. I know, if you're a Porsche owner, you've got some money anyway. But there's other people who might want to own they can never own a Porsche because they don't have the money. But we'd like to own an NFT. The company has kind of failed really to understand web three as a whole, and what the strategy for web three is. And then the key point for me is that they didn't add any utility to NF T's. So there's a difference between NF T's as one with utility and one without as probably had a number more but NF T's without utility are similar to what my husband does with his artwork, where he is selling one for one or editions of actual artwork, and do this with music and things like that. A utility NFT is something that comes with additional things such as access to a group in a musician space access to an album before it's released, discounts on tickets to their shows and things like that. And Porsche literally just minted these NF T's without any utility. And expected people to just be excited about buying a trading card essentially, is what it was. So they actually pulled it completely from from the market. I think that was probably a good idea because I got quite a lot of backlash. And I seemingly they have spoken to a web three consultancies, such as ourselves, and they've now relaunched this relaunch saw them the floor price of their NFT has jumped 25% in one day. So you know there's relaunches is definitely a lot more successful than the previous one. And what they've done is they've added utilities to their NF Ts. So now when you buy an NF T from them, you get the you know, you have a customization stage, you can change all the differences of you know, the car top, the engine, the look of it. So custom designs, they've got, you know, the ability to kind of shape the future so people who only NF T's have the ability to input to management and meet with people internally at Porsche and give them feedback. And I think the key one here is kind of access to exclusive events and experiences that you can't get as either a normal Porsche owner or the general public, you could only get access to these events and kind of Porsche experience days, if you're an NFT. Owner, and that is giving value. And I think that's kind of what utility means is adding value to your NFT. There's, you know, everyone can buy a Pokemon card. And the value is, I guess, trading them. But if you wanted, like a really cool NFT Pokemon card, essentially, you'd probably have to look at adding some value to that, whether it's membership groups, events, or just exclusive things that you couldn't get outside of, outside of being an owner of one of them. So it's a prime example of kind of weird, we know that NF T's are popular, we're just going to launch because people love Porsche going to stick a high price point on it, because they didn't do any audience analysis. And it just flopped. So I'm not surprised that it failed, but they've clearly gone home, done their research, come back and re launched. And now it seems to be going pretty successfully.

Steve Wheen 16:17
That's really interesting. Because Jessica Lawson, our first guest actually brought up the Porsche example as well. So obviously, it's on everyone's mind,

jess thomas 16:27
I think it was one of the most public failures of a web three project in 2022. So it's probably the one that everyone's like, Okay, this is what we don't do. But, you know, their 2023 strategies is really pulling it back. So I do hope that that continues for them.

Steve Wheen 16:48
I guess, you know, in some ways, hats off to Porsche for getting out there and, and giving it a go and learning about the space because I know from a lot of our discussions with our clients, and more broadly within the industry, they're nervous to do anything in the space, and they're not sure where to start turning to most advisory and what you guys do, you know, you're on a mission to help businesses to you know, capitalise on current opportunities, look at future proofing. So putting yourself in push shoes, if they turn around to you guys, what would the process look like working them as web three advisors.

jess thomas 17:25
So I can actually give you a good sort of example of of a client that we've worked with in the past. So we had a retail company come to us and say they wanted to start selling their retail products in the metaverse and they wanted to sell them as NF T's but they wanted a virtual store for people to go in and buy them. Now, their idea was we want to sell in horizon worlds, we want people to go into the virtual store and have different widgets, and we want to them to be able to pluck those widgets out and buy them as NF T's and then get it shipped to them as a physical product after the fact. So the problem, I mean, the point of us really is to go okay, first of all horizon world was at the time this was doesn't allow you to sell within the business, it's only on a particular creative function. Are your is your audience, even in horizon worlds? Do they even have a headset to put on the headset, so like, well, at the time were like 350 pounds, probably more like $400 And you know, is the average person who's buying a 20 pound t shirt, or 30 pound t shirt in your in your store, actually going to just go and invest in an Oculus headset just to buy stuff from your store. So we talked them through about barriers for entry, Audience Activation, how they can, you know that they need to be some audience analysis in there to actually understand what their audience want, or their potential audience want, where they actually are in the market at the moment. And then we help them go through all the potential risks that might be involved. So, you know, the obviously the barriers to entry, but information sharing GDPR California law or act, you know, we need to take all of these things into consideration. And you know, what we do his work with them to educate them on the possibilities or the art of the possible, and then we move them into, you know, is this a is this an idea that you'd like to explore his, you know, opportunities for you, and then we work with them to build a full strategy. Now, the strategy is obviously the key part. This is you know, what we're going to do, why we're doing it when we're going to do it, how we're going to do it, and then for after we've built the strategy with them, we then work with whoever they're preferred partner is for implementation. So there's a lot of agencies out there or large tech firms at the moment that will help us build whatever it is that the client wants, whether they want to develop an NFT collection, whether or not they want to enter the metaverse, essentially. And we help them project manage that. So we go from strategy to project management there, make sure that everything is delivered on time. I think the most important part of our role is just making sure that mistakes like Porsche don't happen. Because they need to understand the market where it's at at the moment and their audience, which is kind of the key things that they didn't do. And that's kind of where we come in.

Steve Wheen 20:42
So in terms of that forward looking piece, things are shifting, moving forward. You know, who's getting left behind in all of this?

jess thomas 20:52
That's a really interesting question. Because, you know, if we're talking about a business context, then right now, I don't think anyone's being left behind. It's because everyone's just kind of testing the waters at the moment, and just kind of exploring what's possible, what isn't, etc. But if we're talking about this on an individual context, then yeah, there's definitely people that are being left behind. I mean, have we thought about what happens when reality virtual reality and AR glasses are the norm? Like, you know, we've, we've thought about it in the context of the wider public, but how is this thing going to further marginalise people with disabilities, for example, are we putting things in place to ensure that someone with limited sight is going to have the same or similar experiences those with full sight? You know, it's things like that, that we really need to consider. And that's part of the future proofing process that we go through with clients is it's not just future proofing the technology future proofing the strategy, it's elements. So that strategy where we have like a no man left behind scenario where we need to make sure it's accessible. You know, there's a lot of we do this with websites now we make sure that they have accessibility to people with disabilities. And we need to do the same thing with Metaverse and web three technologies. And I think a final factor here is going to be economic. So until the price point of headsets and the glasses are reduced, it's, it's really good to be siloed to those either with a mobile phone, which is fine as a majority of people, but accessing the next level of it in terms of those headsets and glasses, it's going to be siloed to those people with the money to access it. And that is in itself a problem because they're not necessarily your your potential buyer. And you don't want half of your audience to feel left out. So there's two things here that we need to take into consideration is the price point. And the marginalised groups that we need to make sure are not marginalised in this scenario.

Steve Wheen 22:52
And so I'm guessing from your point of view, you think web three is here to stay? Yeah.

jess thomas 22:58
I mean, there's no doubt in my mind in here to stay in one way or another. I mean, even if it only goes so far as to kind of revolutionise operations in a business context, like I previously mentioned. I mean, from the efficiencies that I've seen that they brought to the table, I can't see a reason why people are going to step back from that it's a logical next step. It's like the logical evolution of technology. I think there's going to be, it's going to take a little bit longer than most sort of web three enthusiasts think it is in terms of getting adoption publicly. But I can't see why businesses who were leveraging it in the way they are now would ever want to do it any differently. Because it's created so much time saving revenue saving improvements in learning for their staff operations. I, there's why would you want to backtrack to the old way? I think the new way is here to stay.

Steve Wheen 24:00
So let me ask you about the big trends. What do you think are going to be the big trends that we see over the next 12 to 24 months?

jess thomas 24:08
So this is a tough one, because I think the trends of such of the next 12 to 24 months, there gonna be a lot of hype. There's a lot of, you know, trends making, you know, here's a, as we saw with the NFT drops and things like that, I think there's a lot of hype to be had yet. I think we're not out of the hype stage. But in terms of kind of making changes to things like the workforce, those are the ones that are going to be kind of the big things over the 12 to 24 months and then I think after 24 months is when we'll start to see the the consumers really adopting it. I saw a really good video of FIFA. FIFA have just launched a new app. So when you're at a football match, you can log into the game essentially on your phone. You can view the match in real time through your phone but you can click on each player learn stats about them, you know, look at the VAR system. And you know, really get immersed in the game, even though you're sitting there at the game, about as immersed as we thought we could be at one point. But they're developing these these apps and things like that. And that's where the user adoption. And I think AR really is, if you're talking about trends, AR is the way to go over the next sort of 12 to 24 months. But in terms of like, fully popularising it and having it as part of our everyday lives, I think that's going to take a little bit longer.

Steve Wheen 25:34
Amazing. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

jess thomas 25:37
Um, no, I think I think the one thing to just say to people is don't, don't, you're not being left behind yet. You there's, you know, it's, you're completely right to be wary. You know, you don't want to invest money in a project that is not going to have success. I mean, nobody does that across any business unit. But it's definitely definitely worth exploring, because you will be left behind in the future. If you're not involved in this, especially on the you know, the b2c side, when the consumers start adopting that technology, they they, you know, if you're not already, even just an AR app, you know, that that's the, you know, the starting point, or at least having a basis for a small project, like an NFT project, and things like that. So it's definitely worth exploring, but it's also worth doing your due diligence. Because I mean, that's what we help people with the most is working out what is viable, what is not viable. You know, and in some cases, some of our work results in saying to the client, don't enter it right now. It's not the right time for you, your audience isn't ready. So it's definitely worth doing that research before you actually jump into it. And really understanding if now is the right time, or when the technology is further developed, or we've got some more use cases to kind of have key learnings from that's when you you should enter. So just say don't worry about being left behind. But don't leave it on the backburner.

Steve Wheen 27:04
Amazing. Thanks so much for joining us today,

jess thomas 27:07
Jessica. Thanks so much for having me. And thank

Steve Wheen 27:10
you very much for listening to distillery sessions. You can find out more about Jessica and her work. I'll add links in the description below. And don't forget to join in the conversation using the hashtag distillery sessions and following us on social app. We are Distillerie we'll be back soon for series four.