transmission 033 - can we use the matrix for marketing
The 33rd transmission from Starship Commander Miquiel Banks.
Quote
Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans DO NOT.
Agent Smith
Introduction
Today's lecture takes us to the business world.
It's a nasty word for creators.
Marketing.
The word has two meanings:
connotative
denotative
The denotative meaning is literal.
So, Marketing (on the surface) means to generate revenue for a brand using strategic digital activities.
The connotative meaning is either suggested, associated, or implied.
As Creators, we have always HATED these people, these business and money-centered professionals.
For us, Marketers are blood leeches, sucking the life, genius, and compassion from all products.
And their ploy?
They hide in boardrooms and behind virtual meetings.
But today, we're going to peer over into their world and ask a big question.
Can we use The Matrix for Marketing?
The New Currency
Now that we live in the Creator Economy, sometimes called the Passion Economy, we can finally relax.
The currency has changed from the Old World and we're thrilled.
As Creators, we tired of people endlessly chasing money and more money and more money.
In the New World, the currency has evolved into a duality:
Focus
Attention
Focus
On our side, it is OUR JOB to maintain FOCUS.
Attention
On the audience's side, it is THEIR JOB to maintain ATTENTION.
The Pyramid Model
In order to submit our Marketing Proposal, we're going to model the Pyramid Model used in The Matrix.
What is it?
The Pyramid model used by The Matrix is a three-tier system:
Core Idea - Spiritual
Social Idea - Emotional
Personal Idea - Psychological
Core Idea
In The Matrix, the core idea is simple:
How do we overcome The Matrix?
We join the resistance, keep fighting, and crack the codes.
Social Idea
In The Matrix, the social idea is simple:
How do we defeat the Agents?
We must leave the old world (Belief) and enter the new world (Gnosis = Knowing).
Personal Idea
In The Matrix, the personal idea is simple:
How do I achieve freedom?
I fight the machines in the Real World and in The Matrix.
The Core Idea
The Core Idea symbolizes the SPIRIT of our Marketing Proposal.
This question, asked in the Old World, was always met with Financial Quotes, The Industry, What's Hot Now, and Trends.
In the New World, we meet this question with Creative Responses:
How do we connect with our audience?
What incentives will make our audience excited?
What is personal to our audience?
What will excite our audience?
What stories will get our audience excited?
What personal anecdotes will allow our audience to connect with our campaign?
What steps in the Heroic Journey will get the audience involved?
How do we allow the audience to collaborate in our proposal?
After we ask these questions and engage with the audience, we discover that the audience values Culture and Connection.
So, now we know our proposal's main idea is dual in nature.
Our proposal will focus on Culture and Connection and it has NOTHING TO DO with Currency.
So, let’s ask the RIGHT Question:
How would The Matrix do it?
To answer this question, we must translate it from the movie:
The Resistance - Old Ideas, Old Ways of doing things, Traditions
The War - Fighting for the attention of our audience
The Codes - The secrets that will allow us to create TRUST with our audience.
So, let’s revisit the Core Idea:
We join the resistance, keep fighting, and crack the codes
Now we have our core idea:
We fight Tradition, listen to our audience INTENTLY, and seek to create TRUST with them.
The Social Idea
The Social Idea is the fun part of our Proposal.
This is where we let ourselves go and enjoy the moment:
we hold virtual meetings with the audience
we meet the audience in themed parties throughout the week
we hold a scattergories event bi-weekly
we have coffee table readings from our upcoming campaigns
we offer the audience to join our podcast
we offer the audience to help shoot our youtube video commercials
we share our branding assets with the audience and let them create new campaigns
we break out our budget for new creators to extend our campaigns
we engage with the audience in discord server and randomly give away NFTs and Cryptos
What appears to be chaos on the surface, it turns out to be an incredible high for our employees and the audience.
As a result, we have 15 new campaigns, 4 new creator campaigns, and 2 projects slated for a Business Show with a Fall Release exclusively on Netflix.
Who knew having fun was the secret of the Passion Economy?
The Personal Idea
Now that we've taken Culture to its limits, we shift our focus down to the personal level.
To begin, we give all our employees 2 days a week to work on their personal projects from home.
While on the Discord Server, several members of our audience have given us dozens of boosts.
With these boosts, our employees are taking our company in new directions, pushing our corporate brand to a high level of TRUST.
The Board's town hall has a surprising twist: the Company has pushed our WFH program to a new level of fun: 40 employees will be randomly chosen to WFT for 3 weeks at a time and then, they will be given 2 weeks of PTO.
And before we end the meeting, they hit us with another surprise:
We will start having another Town Hall for Discord Members, not just Employees.
This is how our Personal Campaign worked out for us.
Conclusion
Before we submit our Marketing Proposal, we'd like to thank you for taking this journey with us.
It's amazing how The Matrix, a movie, has taken our Corporation from 35 members to 597 members in one year.
When we look back, I'm sure we'll give wonderful stories of how we engaged with our audience and made the transition seamless.
But when I look back, I know exactly how we got here.
We got here by following the Pyramid Model in The Matrix.
And here it goes in detail.
The Pyramid Model
Core Idea
We fight Tradition, listen to our audience INTENTLY, and seek to create TRUST with them.
Social Idea
How do we fight tradition?
We listened to our inner child and just had fun.
How do we listen to our audience more INTENTLY?
We empowered our audience to participate in our corporate culture, allowed them to join and create campaigns, extended our budget to support non-employee creators, and used the Discord Server to create a COMMUNITY with employees, non-employees, and fans.
Personal Idea
How do we create TRUST with our audience?
This last step was implemented with the corporate culture of allowing employees to WFH on their passion projects.
So Dear Reader, that’s how we used The Matrix for our Marketing Proposal.
We had no idea that studying The Matrix would yield such wonderful fruit for our Culture, Community, and Branding.
And what we learned from this experience is that a masterpiece like The Matrix offers many secrets that have nothing to do with the Film Industry.
We must start realizing that our answers DO NOT ALWAYS EXIST in our Paradigm (Industry, Mindset, Status Quo, Tradition, etc.) and we must start looking at the Harmonics of Art.
By looking at the Pyramid Structure of The Matrix, we were able to create an Award-winning Marketing Proposal that worked wonders for our Organization.