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[00:00:00] Donny: Many of the most memorable brand campaigns have been driven by cutting edge marketers who are driving innovation in massive growth for some of the most beloved brands. This season, we’re getting a fresh perspective and highlighting women marketers who are making an impact in both crypto and mainstream brands.

[00:00:20] As always, we’ll discuss the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing our industry. While uncovering the brave marketing moments that have led these marketers to where they are today, hosted by Brave Software and me, Donny Dvorin,

[00:00:38] Patrick: you’re listening to a new episode of the Brave Marketer Podcast. I’m Patrick, Senior Global Director of Advertising at Brave Back Guest hosting this week. And this one features Stacy Wakefield, the VP of Marketing at delphia, an investment platform that lets you invest your money and your data. Stacy has spent her whole career in digital marketing, primarily in FinTech at brands like Credit Karma, [00:01:00] Credit Sesame, and SoFi.

[00:01:01] Stacy’s biggest new marketing challenge is building a Web three brand at Del and learning about the exciting and mysterious world of crypto. You’ll love this episode because we discussed the shift away from big tech monopolizing your data and how people can take back control. The importance of marketing, partnering with product when increasing mainstream.

[00:01:21] And the complexities of Web three, Marketing, managing risk and compliance. Before we hop into today’s episode, we wanted to highlight our brave pick of the week. Every episode we choose a brand that has run an ad campaign with Brave as our pick of the week, and this week that’s popcorn. Popcorn is yield that counts and enables you to optimize yield while creating positive global impact.

[00:01:42] At the same time, they chose to advertise with BRAVE because they were able to get their brand in front of millions of consumers around the world and generate positive brand awareness lift. And now for this week’s episode of The Brave Marketer, [00:02:00] Stacy, welcome to the Brave Marketer Podcast. So we always like to start by asking our guests.

[00:02:10] About a moment when they were particularly brave when it came to marketing. So would you like to start by sharing your brave marketer?

[00:02:17] Stacy: Yeah. Thanks for having with Patrick. Absolutely. So for me, I think my, brave marketing moment really feels like it’s happening in the current moment at my current company, Delphia.

[00:02:28] We are kind of in the process of a pivot right now when I originally was hired we’re really focused on, one product and really trying to go to market. A product that was, more investment related and our new product that we’re, we’re kind of trying to get people to know us for and bring people through the door with is a product that’s a very unique and not necessarily something that’s in market anywhere else today.

[00:02:52] And that’s, trying to get people to contribute their data. In return for token and to eventually join it dow. And [00:03:00] so this is a, bit of a shift for us because, you know, it’s a new category and a lot of people are just, you know, new to the idea of crypto in some ways and, especially the idea of Dows.

[00:03:11] And so trying to educate people on that, like, you know, it is not an easy thing to do, but we feel really strongly and, are really convicted that, this is the right strategy and direction to go. It wasn’t an easy decision to make that pivot, but, you know, and, it’s never easy to put your team through a pivot, but you know, it, does feel like we’re going in the right direction.

[00:03:32] And,I think that the other part about this, that really feels courageous, you know, for the marketing team, but also just the company is that. I’ve been at other places before where you’ll go down a path of trying to market a product that maybe doesn’t necessarily have product market fit yet, or it, you know, has a really high cost of acquisition.

[00:03:49] And, leadership just really tries to push, you know, continuing to spend dollars like to make that product bigger and, more visible in the market. And I think that, like, I feel like [00:04:00] we’re doing the right thing by, you know, taking early steps to, you know, pivot and not try to, Too many iterations and, rounds, like trying to make this, our product that’s currently in market be the main product that we are going to market with.

[00:04:12] So it feels to me like it’s the right decision, but, definitely not an easy one.

[00:04:16] Patrick: So it definitely takes guts to pivot like that. I would love to dive a little further into the delphia data token. if you’re willing to share a little bit more. The product and essentially, you know, how people are able to earn for brokering their data with you or kind of sharing their data with.

[00:04:33] Stacy: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I, love the way you put it too, that, we’re giving people the opportunity to sort of broker their own data. We definitely believe that, that people wanna have more control over their data, and we also believe that, people should be able to monetize their data.

[00:04:48] What we’ve seen is that big tech has, you know, been the, primary beneficiary of, all the data that’s out there on the internet. And we believe that it’s time for the consumers to [00:05:00] actually be able to take some of that profit and actually earn from their, data as well. and that’s what our token aims to do so people can contribute data.

[00:05:09] To, And there’s two ways that they can do that. They can either play our, new game, which is called Consensus, which is it’s like a survey game. Or they can contribute their data, like their bank accounts or Twitter, for example, and then we will give them token for contributing their data.

[00:05:27] Patrick: That’s really interesting.

[00:05:28] Yeah, and I think to kind of like focus in on that, shift right from big tech monopolizing consumer data for mostly their benefit to this new internet, this web three, where consumers can actually own their information and decide you know, who gets to see it and. In your case get, get actual value from it.

[00:05:48] I’d love to build on that and just ask you a bit more about Web three marketing and how that’s different from Web two Marketing. I’m assume you’re doing probably both. What do you think the benefits are for web three marketing [00:06:00] that you, can’t get in web two or you know, what’s your strategy for this?

[00:06:02] I’d love to hear about it.

[00:06:03] Stacy: And I think that it’s definitely, you know, a really engaged community when it comes to the Web three community, the crypto enthusiasts, are excited try new things and they’re excited when you have to launch, excited for DOS and those sorts of things.

[00:06:19] And I think that we see a lot of opportunity, you know, in referral based marketing and community driven marketing on discord. some other channels and you know, and I think that like that’s the area that we’re kind of most excited to leverage as we continue to build more products

[00:06:34] Patrick: in web three for sure.

[00:06:35] Yeah. Thank you for that. So I wanna ask you, maybe this is going back in time, or maybe this is more recent, but if you could provide an example of one of your favorite marketing campaigns throughout your career and why That’d be super interest. Yeah.

[00:06:48] Stacy: I, I think for me, when I look back on my career, you know, there’s definitely been some marketing campaigns that have been just fun to work on and some that have been wildly successful and others that were, ones that I was really excited to [00:07:00] work on, but they just didn’t pan out.

[00:07:02] Maybe we made some of the wrong assumptions, but, you know, one that, I really love, you know, as a, a campaign that I ran at my time at Credit Se, we worked on. A campaign that we called it a member success campaign and we partnered with well known media brand and we were able to, get the stories out of our members and tell the stories in a way that was really compelling and that really, you know, helped people to see that the value that the brand can deliver for them as individuals and the value that our product would give to them, the utility they would get behind.

[00:07:34] In a way that that was really just meaningful and, resonated with, so many people because they were able to see themselves in these stories that we were telling. It was a, great opportunity where we were able to show people how the product could really work for them and not just. Tell them, you know, whereas a lot of times marketing just feels like you’re telling people what you can do for them.

[00:07:55] But when they actually saw themselves in the people that we were telling the stories [00:08:00] about, it just made it really successful and really, you know, we were able to build off of that for a number of years. And, you know, and it, it’s something that I look back on and think. there was a lot of kind of magic behind that.

[00:08:12] And I think that just that, human element and being, you know, really, on the ground and like having a voice, to what our customers were saying, I think was super valuable at that time and was amazing that we were able to really leverage that in our marketing as well. Awesome.

[00:08:27] Patrick: So over the last.

[00:08:29] year and a half, from my perspective. I’ve seen a lot more kind of mainstream advertisers jumping into web three, whether that’s Walmart’s Roblox Metaverse that was just announced this month, or a Starbucks Odyssey rewards program or loyalty program that’s gonna be running on Polygon blockchain.

[00:08:47] It’s great to see this mainstream advertiser adoption and really what they’re doing, they’re coming into Web three. In a big, meaningful way because they see a valuable audience here. But beyond the existing core [00:09:00] web three audience, how do you think about getting Delphia in front of more of a broad audience, Like more of a mainstream audience that not maybe isn’t, you know, super fluent with crypto yet?

[00:09:11] How do you educate them? How do you bring them into your. Yeah, it’s a great

[00:09:14] Stacy: question. I feel like any Web three product is gonna find a lot of their early adopters, like within other web three communities, and leveraging that as much as possible is always one of the things you should try. But I’ve, you know, spent most of my career in consumer marketing and, really believe that that going after.

[00:09:31] More of a, a mainstream audience is really the key to rapid growth for me. I feel like you have to figure out like what are the different parts of the funnel that you can start to extract and understand, like, okay, like at the highest level, Where are we gonna get the most people interested in this product?

[00:09:49] Where’s our largest audience going to sit? And it takes a lot of partnership, I think, with product. I’m currently in the process of doing this right now, where we’re trying to figure out, okay, like there’s gonna be a certain part of the funnel that is, [00:10:00] gonna resonate with web three, but how do we take it even a step above that and get even more people interested in this idea and this concept.

[00:10:07] And so, you know, I think that marketing has to work really closely with product to make sure that like, you know, that whatever we’re going to market with, and it’s not just something that a crypto community would be interested in, that there’s features and components of it that, you know, are something that, the web two community or, you know, maybe that’s not really necessarily the community, but at least like your average everyday consumer.

[00:10:27] Would also be interested in as well. you know, and then being able to like,say that that’s kind of the top of the funnel and then bringing people down, and potentially like cross-selling them into more web three products. I think it is definitely like one way to

[00:10:39] Patrick: get there. Yeah.

[00:10:41] That’s super important, that insight of that communication. Are you getting direct feedback from customers on product through channels like Discord or Twitter or Reddit, or like, how are you getting that feedback and then funneling to the right people at Del?

[00:10:54] Stacy: Yeah, we’re, we’re getting it from all of those places really.

[00:10:56] you know, Discord continues to be a really good source [00:11:00] for just talking to our members, you know, on a one on one level and, just understanding like how they’re using our products and, kind of the features that they like and don’t like, and all of those questions that they have. But, but yeah, definitely.

[00:11:13] Spending a lot of time, engaging with the community on Discord is like really our, best place to, get that kind of feedback. and then, our design team also, does user interviews several times a week. And so being able to just have those one-on-one conversations, like with people over Zoom calls has also been really valuable to.

[00:11:31] Patrick: That’s really interesting. Yeah. At Brave, Like we have a extremely engaged core audience of people and we see a lot of engagement and just products feedback through Reddit, through Twitter, other platforms as well. and we definitely use that, like there are channels in our Slack internally that discuss user feedback.

[00:11:50] And I think the cool thing about Web three, it feels like old school internet where like it’s really, a lot of these projects are community driven and certainly products. At this stage of the [00:12:00] game, it sounds like across both of our organizations, and I think that’s kind of how you build for success in web three.

[00:12:05] Stacy: Yeah, for sure. And another thing that we’re doing is we’re also serving our members on a regular basis as well. And, we have a Slack channel where we have those, the server responses that come through daily. and there’s a lot of stakeholders who see that and, you know, we often get a, some really good one liners from, customers that we can use in marketing or, just, you know, in product, et cetera.

[00:12:26] But yeah, I think like constantly having, you know, an ear to what your, your users are saying is really important across like both marketing and product.

[00:12:34] Patrick: Cool. So what’s working for you from a medium mix standpoint or from a strategy standpoint? Like if you could, call out channels or tactics that have really moved the needle in terms of user adoption and in particular like sticky user adoption where you’re getting quality customers coming through.

[00:12:50] Anything come to mind?

[00:12:51] Stacy: Yeah, when it comes to, quality customers, we’re still doing a lot of testing in terms of, channels and trying to figure out like where the highest quality [00:13:00] of customers are gonna come from. But we see today that like referrals, you know, are really our source of the highest quality customers.

[00:13:07] You know, that, that peer to peer referral. Is still super, super valuable to us. And so, you know, we’re, spending a lot more time trying to iterate and develop new referral programs, um, because we see that that, you know, just building in more viral loops going to, really help us accelerate growth and not just the top of the funnel growth, that those engage users is gonna be really critical.

[00:13:27] The other one that, we’ve been spending a lot of time on is brand awareness, and. For us brand awareness, has mostly been around, PR and trying to, you know, really create a, a nice rhythm when it comes to our PR efforts and, and trying to make sure that we’re out in front of the right reporters often enough.

[00:13:44] The new thing that we’re spending time on, Is the crypto conferences. So, you know, we’re launching some of our new crypto products at the crypto conferences and really trying to just get our ourselves out there in the crypto space and become a brand that, at least within the crypto community, people kind of know who we are [00:14:00] and wanna try us and maybe someday advocate for us

[00:14:02] Patrick: as well.

[00:14:03] Yeah, events are definitely back. I’ve been on the road a lot, Yeah. This year, as I’m sure you have. Yeah, it’s been fun. It has been. It’s been great to see people in person again. It’s awesome to be back out there. How has marketing changed or has it stayed the same? Like if you compare today to five years ago, are the biggest changes you think about as a marketing leader, You know, whether that’s with your customers or even leading internally, however you wanna answer.

[00:14:27] Yeah, I

[00:14:27] Stacy: think that there’s been just so many changes. A lot of it, I think coming since the pandemic and, you know, and then just the, evolution of technology that we we’re seeing right now, especially going into web three. Yeah, I’ve spent a lot of my career in FinTech and, you know, I’m, seeing a lot of fintechs, starting to.

[00:14:45] Come up with web three strategies and they’re not easy to, implement for companies, right? Like, there’s so much that goes into it and there’s, you know, in terms of like, you know, just all the engineering work and all of the, legal work and, you know, [00:15:00] architecture and all of that, And so the, teams just have to be, you know, a lot more flexible in terms of like learning new things and, you know, and trying to.

[00:15:08] understand new spaces. Like all the marketers that I’ve talked to in the last like year or so, like who are learning web three are just, you know, saying like, Oh, well, we’re learning as we go. And, you know, and, it’s been fun, but it’s, a challenge, you know, And I think, like what I was mentioning earlier about community, You know, really being kind of like at the, forefront for marketing and web three, you know, versus the product market fit.

[00:15:30] I think it has been something that, marketers are adjusting to. Most of the marketers I know are, are trying to, to get adjusted to that as well there, you know, so I think that those have been some of the, major ones and then just, You know, in terms of, working, as marketers there’s just a lot more stakeholders involved.

[00:15:48] in marketing now I think than ever. You know, and a lot of attention on marketing for the last, like two or three companies I’ve been at. You know, marketing has been responsible for [00:16:00] driving just so much of the company strategy and you know, obviously the growth. You know, really, really vital and important.

[00:16:07] And I think that, it’s taking a, bigger role at a lot of companies than it used to.

[00:16:12] Patrick: Yeah, I would certainly agree with that. We’re coming up on the end here, but I, wanna ask a couple more questions you know, maybe about something that you think that is a pressing issue for marketers currently.

[00:16:23] Is there anything you’re kind of worried about in that, the marketing field, and how are you responding to these, pressure? Yeah.

[00:16:30] Stacy: I think there’s just a lot more pressure on marketing now. when it comes to compliance. I mean, just last week, this, you know, case with Kim Kardashian, I think kind of put all of that in front of us and said like, Oh yeah, like you really need to know what you’re doing before you go out, spend hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on these campaigns because like, there’s a lot of risk involved.

[00:16:51] Mm-hmm. , you know, and, compliance is something, has always been something that, market. Has had to work with, but you know, especially for FinTech brands, it’s [00:17:00] just become, you know, so much more important. And managing that risk has really like, you know, added to the complexity of the marketing job, you know, in a way that I think it is just getting more and more challenging.

[00:17:12] And, you know, I think from my perspective, I. Really valuable to, you know, to stay in close partnership with the, compliance team and make sure that you know that there’s always great systems in place with your compliance team and that you’re, you know, really having close lines of communication and, that there’s, you know, just always a good working relationship

[00:17:33] Patrick: there.

[00:17:33] Yeah, that’s such a good example and, a really good thing to keep in mind as you know, marketing professionals who are listening to this. So I have a bonus question for you. You can take a minute to answer this or you can tell me to take a hike. If you could put a word or a phrase on a billboard in front of millions of people, just assume that, you know, you have that reach instantly.

[00:17:53] To summarize, delphia, one word or phrase what your brand represents, [00:18:00] what would that. Yeah.

[00:18:01] Stacy: As a marketer, I always wanna test things and so it’s, hard to commit to this, but, I think for, for Delphia, I would say monetize your data.

[00:18:08] Patrick: Cool. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. I mean it’s succinct to value proposition.

[00:18:12] Yeah. That works for sure. Thank you. Thanks for walking that plank with me on that, test question. So final question for you. We always love to ask this of our guests. If you could nominate another brave marketer to be on the show, who would you nominate and.

[00:18:27] Stacy: Yeah, I, think I would probably nominate former colleague of mine, her name is Shazia.

[00:18:33] Uh,she worked with me at Credit Sesame, and she isn’t, you know, solely a marketer. She, she also, works in business development, but, you know, just, really knowledgeable in the FinTech community. And I, I think that she has, a great perspective on how that, space has evolved and where it’s going in the

[00:18:50] Patrick: future.

[00:18:51] Awesome. Thanks so much, Stacy. I appreciate it. Yeah, of

[00:18:54] Stacy: course. This was fun. Thank you.

[00:18:58] Donny: Thanks so much for listening to [00:19:00] another episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast. Four quick things before you go. Number one, if you like what you’ve heard, it’d be really awesome if you’d rate us or write us a review on your podcast player.

[00:19:12] And if you didn’t like what you’ve heard, then don’t worry about it. Number two, if you would like to advertise to Braves 60 million users and have a budget of $10,000 or more, simply email us at. sales@brave.com. That’s ad, S A L E s@brave.com. And let us know you’re our podcast listener for a 25% discount.

[00:19:34] Number three musical credits. Go to my brother Ari Devorne. And finally number four, go use brave@brave.com and we will see you next time on The Brave Marketer.