PPPPlane and Simple (Four P's #188)
This edition of the Four P's is translated from the original French
Bonjour and hello. I won't say "good morning" because my sense of time is already out of whack as I write this post during the overnight trans-Atlantic flight from NY to the south of France. I’m exhausted and will likely have many typos, so my apologies in advance.
But no need to feel sorry for me as there is also plenty of optimism in the air. The marketing and advertising community is converging for the first in-person Cannes Lions creative and marketing festival in three years, and this also happens to be my first European trip since the LAST Cannes Lions of 2019. What a difference three years make!
If you're going to be here, as well, it's not too late to find time to connect, though the calendar looks like a Jenga stack at the moment. Shoot me an email, text, whatsapp, or just wait for me somewhere on the Croisette and I'm bound to bump into you. Meanwhile, back in NYC, the more tech-focused and "NFT 1.0" side of the web3 community is gathering for a less-upbeat NFT.NYC conference. Yes, the crypto market has struggled in the past few weeks, and while much of this correction was inevitable, separating defi and cryptocurrency use cases from the non-fungible tokenization opportunities for marketers, brands, and community-building remains an important drum that I will continue to beat.
Something Personal: Pride, In the Name of Love
One of the downsides of going overseas this week is that I not only missed Father's Day, but also my son's Fifth Grade Graduation from elementary school. And I'm really bummed about it. Jake doesn't seem to be too plussed, but I know he's aware just how proud I am of it.
No, it's not college or high school, or even pre-school, but I have very distinct and cherished memories from my 6th grade graduation (we shifted to 6-7-8 middle school format while I was in 7th grade). Not only did I get to make a speech and read names of my fellow graduates, but we also learned and performed the Bette Midler classic "Wind Beneath My Wings" in sign language. And I still remember all of it.
Going through elementary school as a parent was challenging, because not only have the methods and curriculum changed, but the expectation of parental involvement also changed. Teachers were very clear that they did NOT want us helping with homework so they could evaluate true performance and progress. That is the exact opposite of my own experience, where my mother would not allow an assignment to be returned that had one comma out of place. Yes, even in elementary school.
We all know that our children take different paths to success than we did, and while he does not love classroom learning as much as I did, his knowledge and expertise in so many areas far exceeds what mine was at that age. We are also similar in the ways we tackle challenges or adversity (anger, than acceptance, than attack the problem).
Jake gets these newsletters, and occasionally reads them. With his new phone as a 5th grade graduation, I hope he will read this at some point to know how much I love him and how proud I am of him. Jakey Boy: While I won't be there when you get your diploma (Pssst: it's a blank piece of paper - the real one comes in the mail), know that I will always be with you on your shoulder, in your heart, just like we talk about.
Something Practical: New Schools of Thought
It is not lost on me that the official title of this week's event is Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity." This is a creative celebration, an awards show, an advertising conference, and a creative networking marathon all rolled up into one. I've occasionally used this space to talk about creativity, as it is one of my favorite subjects. I pride myself on my creativity but often lament that I am not more disciplined or focused on its cultivation and development.
For me, and many others, relying on raw creativity will never be enough. This is where understanding the differences between vertical and lateral thinking comes into play. Originally developed in a book that's probably now 50 years old by Edward de Bono that I probably read 20 years ago, Lateral Thinking was transformational for professional creatives as well as students, teachers, and artists of all kinds. There is no formula for creativity, but the key to "lateral thinking" is the understanding that there’s more than one way to look at something. Think of the word “lateral” as moving to the side instead of looking at something in a conventional manner... to look at old ideas in new ways – turn them upside-down, inside-out, and poke holes in them.
Lateral thinking is about looking for alternatives, with the express intent of shaking up established patterns. Either new patterns will emerge, or old ones will be updated. One "rule" with lateral thinking is that there are no bad ideas. They can be the very things that lead to innovation. All ideas are welcome because you never know which one will lead to a big breakthrough. So how does it work? When brainstorming ideas, lateral thinking includes both a generative stage and a selective stage. It’s during the generative stage that judgment must be withheld. One person’s "bad idea" may inspire another person to come up with the idea that causes everyone to rethink their way of doing things. Sometimes, testing an idea that may seem foolish will lead to a brilliant new idea entirely. But perhaps even more important is that people feel uninhibited in their thinking and free to speak their minds. This exercise leads to identifying dominant ideas. People must be free to make suggestions without fear of judgment, and by breaking the problem down into parts, you can look at it from many more different angles.
I have a love/hate relationship with group brainstorms, and they are just one technique that can get people into a lateral-thinking frame of mind. One is the reversal method, which is reversing the conditions of the problem you’re facing. Another is to spark random stimulation with some sort of provocation. To find a good idea or achieve an inspirational breakthrough, sometimes you need to step into a new environment. One way is through a technique known as random exposure. This could involve reading a book that has nothing to do with your area of expertise or even going to a convention associated with a completely different field from yours.
The other method, known as formal generation, is equally random. Yet another method is to look for random objects, like the nearest red object, and see how that interacts with the problem or challenge you’re facing. As always, it’s important to suspend judgment in these techniques and give even the seemingly absurd ideas their day in court. By paying attention to the unexpected, you could get an equally unexpected result that changes everything.
Variety of thinking is the key here. Lateral thinking is not opposed to vertical thinking. Rather, it’s a way of testing and updating the conventional patterns and ideas that get established through vertical thinking. Given our natural tendencies to stick with long-held beliefs and assumptions, lateral thinking forces us to look at things from new angles and reconsider any stubborn, long-standing ideas.
Something Professional: What's in Your Wallet?
Let's face it. Crypto is tanking. Does that mean the long-term viability of crypto is dead? Of course not. But the speculative rise in market value of many cryptocurrencies was disproportionately high compared to the small number of holders and investors over these past 24 months. What we cannot allow to happen, however, is let the crypto issues slow down the overall progress of blockchain technology and applications. Continuing to educate anyone and everyone about the terms, the use cases, the tools, and the opportunities must be a priority.
For me, that focus remain on tokenization within the context of marketing and consumerism. But first, a reminder of just how easy it is to access a digital token: This is an actual NFT you can claim, for free, set up via a Shopify ecommerce page landing page we created at Mint. No crypto needed. No pre-existing wallet necessary. No transfer fees or confusing processes to grapple with. We'll create your first wallet for you. But I do envision a world where digital wallets become the next iteration of our public (and private?) identity, the shift to "NFT 2.0" makes these wallets both more and less important. And lowering barriers to entry requires improved accessibility and UI/UX of mainstream tools and a clear articulation of the possible value exchange for engaging.
The NFT Viewer becomes the next layer of digital community experiences, laying on top of, as a connection to, our current notion of decentralized wallets. The digital wallet is for more than just cryptocurrency, but different branded community experiences are unlocked by different digital tokens. The next generation of digital wallets won't be crypto wallets. They'll be holders of various keys and tokens that connect to different branded ecosystems built for identity, navigation, personalization, and media. To date, all wallets have been built and designed around transactions. Many wallets are more than three years old and were created solely for buying, trading, and holding tokens.
Since then, as the ecosystem has continued to expand, the purpose of the wallet has evolved. As we move into web3 — a more social, open, and interoperable internet — we're seeing more demand for wallets as a place to hold NFTs (see Rainbow or Coinbase Wallet) and multimedia experiences (see Glass, Sound, and Altered State Machine). Put simply, wallets are becoming a place where people want to spend time. Existing wallets will not (and, candidly, cannot) adapt to this new preference in behavior.
When we think about how this ecosystem-wide shift might occur, we can look to the factors that drove user adoption for previous wallets that reached mass scale. As a case study, MetaMask had 545,000 monthly active users (MAUs) in July 2020. This number shot up to over 10 million by August 2021, driven by a surge of interest in "DeFi Summer," where yield farming acted as a hook for consumers. At that time, it was an obvious choice for consumers to use MetaMask to take advantage of DeFi yields, as MetaMask was far more accessible (widely supported) than competitors. Yet the MetaMask experience remains full of complex barriers that don't make it easy for new people to create and join. But as the variety of applications, use cases, and behaviors expands, users (and developers) will need integrated wallets more supportive of leveraging on-chain provenance and transporting your digital identity across apps and chains.
Something Political: We Can Be Stronger Together
Sitting next to a British citizen on my flight over to Europe, we struck up a brief, but informative conversation before we both dozed off early into the flight. While our two nations have seen similar schisms and extremist movements come to the forefront over the past 5-6 years, the one issue that cannot be compared is that of gun safety and violence.
Tom, my new friend from Surrey, could not understand why we, as Americans, continue to let so many innocent people die or get injured from guns. Outside of the United States, no one understands this country's overzealousness with respect to weapons and firearms. Sure, they love to hunt, too, but the assault rifles and (semi-)automatic weapons just don't compute. I obviously couldn’t even begin to rationalize it, instead just mentioning their lame use of the 2nd Amendment to defend these weapons of mass destruction. So what can we do about it?
On Tuesday, I'll be joining up with other industry leaders from around the world to re-convene the Gun Safety Alliance. Corporate, media, marketing, and other professionals who care deeply about this issue have been collaborating to plan and promote key initiatives that leverage our skills, expertise, and connections we can leverage. For example, this Sunday, my birthday (thanks for the good wishes!) is Gun-Lock Safety Sunday. Spread the word. And if you'd like to join or support the GSA, send an email to support@gunsafetyalliance.com.
Thanks for reading. For those of you in Cannes, can’t want to see you. For everyone else, have a great week, be safe, and have a great start to your summer!