Adapting To The Pace Of Change

A conversation with Christian Ward at Stylus

I sat down with Christian last week, to talk about adapting to the pace of change as a brand. When technology, media and culture move so fast, how do you actually grab the opportunities out there and make tangible use of them?

You can listen to the full episode here

Key Quotes

"The amount of money that especially younger people are spending on digital items – skins for their avatars, weapons, different ways to upskill themselves in different capacities. And also, the imagery and the videos that they share on TikTok or Instagram, and all the effort they put into building those personas. That is all digital content, which to them has a huge amount of value. So then if you just extrapolate that out into where NFTs can go, suddenly it becomes a scarce digital ownership certificate for digital items, which we are going to need." [4:46]

"The NFT will become your certificate of ownership. And it's going to become something that more and more people want as we spend more and more of our time and energy and money within the digital world." [5:51]

"We need to reframe and redefine what we mean by community. I think for so long, we have called 'social followings' community, and they're not – it's still a very passive, one-way communication system. When you put something out on Instagram, you are essentially still using it as a broadcast channel. And you're not necessarily looking at ways to encourage peer-to-peer interaction – that's what a true community is." [19:08]

"We need to realise that fandom, or being a part of a brand community, or being a very interested consumer – soon, that emotional, intangible feeling is not going to be enough. [Brands will] need to actually recognise [consumers] with tangible rewards and tangible feedback. So it's going to have to be a mix of social clout, but also actual value creation as well, that they can use." [26:39]