[00:00:00] Donny Dvorin: Brands are navigating the new Web three world, and with it comes an opportunity for experimentation, innovation, and engaging consumers in entirely new ways. But where do you start and when? In this new season of the Brave Marketer Podcast, we’re talking Web three marketing and how to market in the Metaverse.

[00:00:19] You hear from marketers, from top brands and agencies who will help us leverage this exciting moment in. And take our brave marketing moments to the next level. Hosted by Brave Software and me, Donnie Devork. You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast, and this one features two leaders from Cloaked Arjo.

[00:00:39] BATNA is the c e O of Cloaked, a consumer first privacy startup dedicated to bringing humanity to the internet at 26. Argen has successfully started two c. Top coding at m i t, been a partner at a venture firm and founded a nonprofit dedicated to bringing education to underserved communities. He knows 15 coding languages and has been [00:01:00] featured in a range of publications, including TechCrunch, fast Company, Forbes, C N B C, and more.

[00:01:06] His brother Abuja Bat Nagar is the Chief Product Officer at Cloak, where he guides technical innovation and product development as a self-proclaimed techno geek. Before turning 23, Abuja began a prestigious career as the youngest person ever hired at Mark. Co-founded two companies and has played an active role in launching socially responsible initiatives.

[00:01:26] After attending Berkeley, he went on to pursue his passion for consumer privacy when he co-founded Cloaked with his brother raising 25 million in Series A funding. I think you’re gonna really like this episode because we talk about a why a consumer first approach to privacy is so important. We talk about close to surprising decision to.

[00:01:44] Cloak off the chain and why they stand by that decision. And then the role privacy will play in the evolution of the internet and transition to Web three. with no further ado, here’s this week’s episode of The Brave Marketer,[00:02:00]

[00:02:02] a June and Ajay, welcome to the Brave Marketer Podcast. How are you both

[00:02:05] Arjun: doing today? Doing well, thanks for having.

[00:02:07] Abhijay: Yeah, Likewise. It’s great to be here.

[00:02:09] Arjun: Good. Well

[00:02:09] Donny Dvorin: thank you for, taking time out to chat with us. We have two people as guest today, which is a little bit different than normal, but we’re excited to have two.

[00:02:16] It’ll be double the pleasure, double the fun and double the information. So one of you, for those who don’t know cloaked, can you please give us a general overview? Yeah,

[00:02:26] Arjun: so I’ll start us off just to give context. There’s two of us today, and you’ll find that we kind of finished those thoughts quite a bit because we’re brothers, but I’ll give you a little context.

[00:02:34] What we’re doing is that Aji and I, we’re the founders of clo, a consumer privacy company, putting no control of your data and your identity. What we’re really hoping to achieve is that we believe that you should own your information. Everything about you and what we’re creating is a product that gives you full control of sharing your information wherever you.

[00:02:51] You can think of a brand new email address, phone number, username, password, and student even credit card for every website you’re browsing on or even every person you’re talking to, and [00:03:00] it routes back to your actual information. You can think about it as an identity manager, so every single relationship, everywhere you go, a unique identity in that moment that you can choose how it works.

[00:03:09] Donny Dvorin: Got it.

[00:03:10] So if you look back to 2017, kind of before Brave, I was doing a side hustle called Never Stop Marketing. And we were analyzing the crypto and blockchain space specifically for marketing. And we were dividing it out into many different categories and one of the categories like, so it was all advertising and like how to.

[00:03:28] Fraud and how to put the invoices on the blockchain. And one of the categories was actually privacy and identity and they were probably, you know, five to 10 companies in that box. It was like a LUMAscape looking chart and they didn’t really succeed. They’re not really around today. They haven’t really gotten traction.

[00:03:48] I can name them if you’d like, but like what do you think differentiates you from those, from six years?

[00:03:53] Arjun: I think one, there’s two dimensions. We’re definitely in a space that people think about quite a bit. But the biggest challenge is, is how do you [00:04:00] approach it? And I think the challenge we looked at is that the whole industry mixes the word security and privacy everywhere they go.

[00:04:06] So we actually look at it as a three distinct layers. The outermost layer we had defined as security, encryption, fraud, fingerprinting. What does that overall vector attack, what does the startup front take on the security of in. Then you actually talk about privacy startups and some of these things you mentioned six years ago.

[00:04:21] Well, where does your data live? Who has access to it? What does it look like? What are the kind of rules around that information? But what we realized is that privacy’s such a nebulous word, and these companies were trying to take on privacy as a very specific. Well, data deletion or data anonymity, or just let’s apply.

[00:04:37] Thinking about new technologies like blockchain coming out has applied identity. Well, wasn’t the core problem to start off for a user, but we realized to identity the identity privacy space structure with this concept called comfort. And it has to start this idea where it’s a cognitive point, which everybody is a problem, whether you’re a VP of engineering or even my own.

[00:04:55] And we realized it has to start with for even r o V one, that moment where everybody [00:05:00] feels it. And so for cloaked, we started at that moment when you’re asked for your. Name, email, phone number, credit card address. Everybody gets that problem. Whether when you’re in Starbucks, ask information for rewards.

[00:05:10] Whether you’re signing up for a Robinhood account or even getting married, you’re giving information to so much people, but then you’re compromised in every single of those moments. So we decided to say, Hey, let’s make that process comfortable, but make it frictionless and convenient. I think privacy always, and the mantra for the companies six years ago, and a lot of the privacy companies today is, We tried to either choose privacy or choose convenience.

[00:05:33] Our entire P philosophy is you should not have to choose.

[00:05:35] Donny Dvorin: And so what’s the business model? Are you . Paying users to opt in to get access to their data? How does it work from that standpoint?

[00:05:42] Arjun: Yeah, so we’re cloaked, it’s a premium subscription model. We’re right now in beta. I’m going to be going to public release later this year.

[00:05:49] But the whole concept is that you’re paying for the use of cloak and cloak works as a browser extension web app, and mobile. And every touchpoint where you’re sharing information, cloak says, Hey, let me help you out. And we [00:06:00] take care of that for you. So you don’t actually have to give up information in that moment.

[00:06:03] Donny Dvorin: Oh, that’s interesting. So the user has to pay for privacy?

[00:06:08] Arjun: Yes. The idea is that user pays for privacy. We also have standard features like password management, but then the whole idea of being cloaked, so you can give a cloaked email, cloaked phone number, and soon even cloak credit card for these different websites, but tied to your real phone number or real credit.

[00:06:23] Abhijay: I think an important point in a lot

[00:06:25] of this too is that privacy cannot come at the cost of user’s experience. A lot of privacy solutions and just solutions that help people manage themselves online tend to sacrifice friction and user experience in terms of privacy. What we really believe in from the ground up is that everything should make your life easier just by default.

[00:06:45] And then on top of that, you get this added layer of comfort and security.

[00:06:48] Arjun: Got it.

[00:06:49] Donny Dvorin: What’s the most exciting thing that you’re working on? Right.

[00:06:51] Arjun: So right now with cloaked, we’re working on getting out of beta and we’ve found that our customers are really loving what we’ve built so far, what we call cloaked core, the main idea of being a password [00:07:00] manager, taking all information, letting that be easy to access, but then also the idea of keep the information cloaked, cloaked, email, phone number, or user a password.

[00:07:07] That’s been a really nice experience, but one of things that are working behind the scenes that’s been exciting all of our customers have been asking for is cloak card. So we can’t talk too much about it, but the main idea of cloak cards is that we’ve built some really good relationships in the industry.

[00:07:21] We can take the idea where you have your personal credit card, your personal information for card and card spending, but instead of putting a card for information anywhere you go, you can actually have a unique credit card number for every single website, every merchant you’re talking to or working with.

[00:07:37] And that card number will be unique to that merchant that is locked to it. You can set spending limits, you can expire. The idea is you’re never putting your credit card number anywhere ever again, but when the transaction hits that cloak card number, it routes back to your actual credit card. And so the idea is of trying to keep that same level of convenience that you have today with your card.

[00:07:57] So you don’t have to choose whether I have a privacy based credit [00:08:00] card, my regular Chase card I use for this transaction. I can actually keep both. Keep that same idea of the rewards, but really focused on having the privacy and security anywhere I go and start also doing some financial spend and plan management because each merchant has its own card number.

[00:08:15] Is that something we’re working behind the scenes. We’ve got some great partnerships and relationships. We’ve got to enable this to make this happen, but that’s something that we’re really looking forward to.

[00:08:23] Donny Dvorin: That’s great. And so for the average consumer who doesn’t really, you know, I don’t say don’t care about privacy, but they’re not like super into privacy or,or value it as much as others, what would be the benefits for them?

[00:08:34] Arjun: Yeah, so just the talking to cloak carbs, talking about cloak generally, we always see it. It’s two dimensions. There’s an emotion and a practical side of things. I think from becoming that. There’s a practical side to this, that. You may not worry about privacy today, but at the back of your head, there’s something in the feeling about sharing the number, but that’s kinda the emotional side.

[00:08:53] But for practic, If you giving, for example, a unique card number everywhere, one, if it’s compromised, it doesn’t matter. It’s locked to that [00:09:00] merchant. So your actual financial risk, the time you actually spend an hour to cancel that gym membership or going back and forth to the credit card company, you don’t have to do that.

[00:09:07] You can do a single button, cancel the card, never have to worry about that ever again. Now, also, if that merchant or something wants to spend more or they want to upcharge you, Netflix is charging more of the subscription. You can set a monthly spending. So if they increase it, it’ll automatically decline it and you can choose whether, you know what?

[00:09:25] I want to increase it, not increase it. Giving you that flexibility of choosing of when you want to pay something more. And even the fact of if you want to actually give out card numbers, if I wanna give you a card number and say, Hey, go book an Uber ride today, or get lunch today, you could give a CLO card number instead of spending limit bit of a hundred dollars.

[00:09:42] So actually taking that, oh, if I’ve got some privacy, can I actually even do more than I could do? You may not be comfortable, like I would be comfortable giving you my credit card number with a spending limit of $20 like right now, and saying out loud on the air. Because with that, I know that that can only be used for $20.

[00:09:59] So it gives this idea, but how do [00:10:00] I rethink my privacy? How do I rethink my daily actions knowing that there’s a layer of security in what I do? And that’s the whole cloak philosophy we’ve seen, not just with the card as clothed in general, is. You are able to feel a lot more comfortable when you’re doing this awkward exchange with someone.

[00:10:15] Here’s my LinkedIn, here’s my Snapchat. Well, here’s my number, here’s my email address. Now, it just might be cloaked. It might be a unique one for that person or one that you’re sharing for this event, but it changes our daily behavior knowing there’s a layer of comfort and the way I’m operating. And it comes back to that emotional feeling of, well, I don’t choose of opting out or deleting, inform.

[00:10:35] I actually want to do more. We have actually seen from our own customers then an increase in spend on Facebook and Instagram ads because they actually can give up cloaked information. And I think that’s, the mental word too is that I will actually spend more, transact more knowing that I don’t actually have to give up my information in this exchange.

[00:10:52] Donny Dvorin: And we were talking

[00:10:53] about earlier before we started the show, that you guys are very much, you know, web three, but don’t necessarily [00:11:00] use crypto or blockchain.

[00:11:01] Can you explain why it’s web.

[00:11:03] Arjun: Yeah, let, I’ll start off. I want you feel free to add some information there. Yeah. When we think about, the web three space, we know Web three is really taking that mindset. How does the internet do better? We saw the period from 2010 to 2020 or 2010 on the rise of web apps and software apps on the internet, and people coming in and putting, pouring all the information into Facebook, Google, Airbnb, and all these websites coming up.

[00:11:26] The challenge now, everybody’s realized, especially after 2018 in Cambridge and Analytica, is that I am uncomfortable with how these all operate. So blockchain is starting to think about how do we decentralize things and make it so that we don’t have to create trust in companies and decentralize things all over the place Now, however, decentralization completely, especially around user identity and user information creates a challenge.

[00:11:47] I always say that a decentralized, distributed, permanent ledger is inherently anti privacy. I could right now dox you on the blockchain to find your information and then permanently put it on there on the meta, [00:12:00] information, or I could study your behavior. Let’s say you’re shopping at a merchant.

[00:12:03] Maybe it’s encrypted, but I could figure out the merchant you’re shopping with, the frequency, you’re shopping with that and say, well, if you’re shopping at cvs, Here’s the information for what are transactions on cvs, and I can look at the drug prices and say, well, it’s all public. I can figure out, okay, you’re probably either X profile or Y person based on the things that you’re buying.

[00:12:22] And I think come back to is that the blockchain is great as you think about how can we rethink about application infrastructure. But when you think about identity, data and privacy, we believe in an opposite approach that is very important for web three, is that you should actually not think about decentralization of your privacy.

[00:12:38] Think about centralization with the consumer, with the individual. People should own their information, centralize it with them, and they can choose how it works. They can choose how it’s, share it, how it’s communicated, and if they want, get rid of it and people should be coming to you. But if you decentralize it, you have no control over your identity and your data.

[00:12:55] It’s all over the place. And if it’s permanent, well you may not be able to take that. I don’t know if ij, anything

[00:12:59] Abhijay: you wanna [00:13:00] add? Yeah. Another thing I point out is I think Web three is emergent technology from a cultural movement and this sort of Zeit guest around what Argen was talking about with Arise for Privacy and data ownership.

[00:13:12] I think blockchain and web three get conflated as a technology and as a, an idea where blockchain is one hammer looking for nails and there’s obviously some benefits, there’s some drawbacks. you talk with the types of allocations that can be built with it, the scalability of some things, who knows, right?

[00:13:28] But this whole idea, the central movement of a user should be earned their data. This user should be, have some level of agency in their life and control. What is transacting about them? That’s inherently core to our principles, and I think a lot of the web three companies are built the same principles.

[00:13:44] they just use a different technology stack.

[00:13:46] Arjun: Got it.

[00:13:47] Donny Dvorin: Good. So let’s get into the brave marketing moment. So this podcast is all about, you know, finding a time where you exhibited bravery. Why don’t we start with you, Arjun? What’s your brave marketing moment? Yeah, so

[00:13:59] Arjun: I think [00:14:00] about even taking this example of what we just talked about for cloaked, I think the brave moment we have said, and even the face industry.

[00:14:05] Cause our company started end of 2020 at the height of crypto blockchain and the web three movement. I think the brave moment we took as a company, or even myself and when we were thinking about cloaked, was that we said, we’re not a crypto company, we’re not a blockchain company. Even though everything we’re talking about espousing.

[00:14:24] About how do we change web three? How do we actually think about your identity, your privacy? And we stuck by that and we’ve focused on also, I think the other big aspect, we don’t highlight deep technical about encryption or security. And I think the biggest factor on the way we talk about ourselves, we don’t lead with fear.

[00:14:42] It’s a big risk that we’ve taken as a company. Many privacy and security companies think. Fear and as the way to bring, attract customers. And it’s a great tool. However, we took the stance that we wanna leave as empowerment, privacy should be an empowering feeling and the feeling that you actually enjoy.

[00:14:59] And it’s [00:15:00] convenient, it’s easy and simple. And that’s completely shaped our brand, our company that we’re, leading right now. And I think that simple decision of we’re not meeting with fear, we’re not thinking about blockchain, web, crypto as a way of powering a. I mean that privacy should empower and feeling that can work the way you are today.

[00:15:16] You don’t have to switch apps, switch technologies, switch your daily life to have that capability. I think that’s completely shaped how we’ve built our company today.

[00:15:24] Donny Dvorin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I mean, probably you were thinking, oh, if we wanna raise money, we gotta be crypto and blockchain, and that’s what the VCs want.

[00:15:32] But you’re like, no, we don’t need to. But isn’t there an argument that, you know, blockchain allows you to do things faster, better, cheaper, more efficiently. That’s why the technology is, is so unique. Didn’t you think that there were aspects that putting it on chain would allow for that

[00:15:48] Arjun: privacy?

[00:15:49] I

[00:15:49] Abhijay: don’t want to necessarily disrupt the blockchain community too strongly, but I think nobody, Confidently say that blockchains the technology is faster or cheaper. You [00:16:00] can make some arguments on the level of ownership and the insight and the visibility into a public ledger, but the technology has some pretty significant scalability issues when it comes to speed and

[00:16:10] Arjun: cheapness.

[00:16:11] Yeah, no, I think when it came to our decision, we knew it’s an exciting technology to leverage and what if we, and we did think about it, we spent some good time thinking about it, but I think we made the active. to not, I think is what obviously mentioned around speed, around the fact of scalability and the fact that it violates the core principle that we thought data should belong to you not belong to everybody else.

[00:16:32] Abhijay: I think an important thing though is we see blockchain as a technology. We don’t see it as a panier solution for everything, and we wanna utilize the technology when it’s relevant. There are models in which, like, for instance, the simplest idea is in our cloaked card.

[00:16:45] There’s no reason why your cloaked wallet or your, blockchain wallet could be the other end of that tunnel. Where we have a CLO credit card and the funding source could be your blockchain wallet, that’s totally within realm. We’ve also completely sketched out models on what would look like to have, say, a [00:17:00] monetization flow in terms of how your data gets transacted that has a blockchain analog.

[00:17:04] So we’re definitely recognizing the value of the technology as a whole. I think it’s just a little putting blinders on and just solely focus on that as the only answer

[00:17:13] Arjun: to everything. Got it. No, that makes sense. I missed it. Right. It’s a tool. Yeah. No, it’s a tool. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a tool that we

[00:17:19] Donny Dvorin: think it’s a, yeah.

[00:17:20] it’s not pixie dust . It’s not like you can just stick it on everything and it makes every, all the problems go away. Yeah. It’s a hammer, and sometimes you need a hammer for the nail, but you don’t want a screwdriver for the

[00:17:30] Arjun: nail . Right. Yeah. And sometimes it’s a screwdriver, right?

[00:17:33] Donny Dvorin: Absolutely. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, this season’s all about the Metaverse and web three. Are there applications for your product in the metaverse?

[00:17:43] Arjun: Yeah, so I think, we saw that firsthand. We’re excited about thinking about how the metaverse shapes things. I’m very bullish on, I’m still waiting to see how VR shapes up, but I’m excited about mixed reality.

[00:17:53] How does ar vr play together before we even talk, jumping into the metaverse fully. Even the gate check of the metaverse, we saw the [00:18:00] huge controversy of Facebook in Oculus combining together, having to have a Facebook account, and then even the fact of even just signing up there, having to give an email, signing up for giving information to do the just join one of the huge prohibit and blocker people just didn’t join cause of the way data is being handled and thought.

[00:18:18] So when we think about the metaverse and I have some bigger ideas that I think are mixed. Reality is that privacy is inherently in all of this. You’re putting something on your head and you’re spending a lot of time in there to make sure that one, your environment isn’t being scanned. When you’re browsing the metaverse, it isn’t impact or even things around you aren’t impacting what you see in the game.

[00:18:35] How you start seeing ads or start seeing things digitally. I think there’s a big point of how do I have some control when I’m in a full different world. I’m digital. I’m just experiencing what people putting me in front of. There has to be some control in that layer, but I think the Metaverse is an exciting opportunity for us to say, this is a new frontier.

[00:18:52] Price is everywhere. It’s ubiquitous. It doesn’t actually stop at your phone. A website, you sign up for a person you talk to, [00:19:00] it comes to everything you do in life. So when you come into Metaverse, it now just opens up new challenges. The fact. You’re looking, your eyes are there, you’re, let’s say, browsing with AR glasses.

[00:19:09] I think about JI and I talk about sketch out technology where, well, what if an AR glasses starts to scan the fact that I have got a bottled wine in the room, I’ve got this soda can in the room. What if I start seeing personalized ads based on that? Well, there’s nothing you can do about it. And so what is technologists gonna create?

[00:19:25] Where, you know what, I either stop traffic data, I put people saying, you know what, please don’t track me here. Or maybe I do want some personal. So I think that’s some thoughts that I’ve had.

[00:19:35] Abhijay: I think a critical point here is people’s trusted technology ultimately comes with brand, obviously as a marketing podcast will understand.

[00:19:43] and also the agency they feel. I think right now we’re noticing with like the Metaverse with the Big M as a Facebook’s Metaverse. Mm-hmm. . This could be really cool. I think a lot of people will not learn if it’s cool or not because they’ve just actively chosen to stay away. And this is not because of technology or anything else.

[00:19:59] A lot of it is [00:20:00] largely because, a lack of trust in the technology itself. So our business is ultimately in the business of increasing people’s trust and increasing the quality of their relationship with technology as a whole. So how do we fit in this metaverse play? Frankly, I think it’s fundamental.

[00:20:15] People need to be able to trust the technology they use, and they need to have agency in their lives when it comes towards these new technologies. Our goal also give them more. Give them a little bit more control and allow them to explore new technologies without being freight.

[00:20:29] Arjun: And

[00:20:29] Donny Dvorin: so what would be an example of like somebody using cloaked in the Metaverse?

[00:20:33] Arjun: Well, if you had to do simply what we are today, it’d be when you’re setting an account, you use cloaked. I think that’s cloak to evolves. What we’re thinking about is that we’re a technology layer. So let’s say if you’re in the metaverse and you’re joining a new app or trying new experience, well, if you meet someone as like a VR character or you’re playing a.

[00:20:49] You’re giving and experiencing a lot of data, sharing that moment. And I think what that data sharing looks like is what Cloak can control. And I think that’s where we build apps that work on the technology [00:21:00] itself, the hardware itself. We build apps that connect with other apps in the metaverse and we’re saying, Hey, if you want personalization, you can choose what the metaverse, what someone’s talking to.

[00:21:09] If you say, I don’t want to see this character, see this ad, see this relationship, I can turn that off. So I think for us, CLOs can either work directly. Network, the network layer, the hardware layer and the app layer in whichever integration lets us start. But I think that’s where it comes in. In every moment you’re experiencing, there’s a data exchange and a data tracking and whatever you want to have, you should have whatever you don’t click to stop it automatically.

[00:21:32] How about you guys and marketing? Are you guys marketing or still in beta? So, not yet.

[00:21:36] So we’ve been doing some marketing. It’s actually been a fun, interesting challenge for us because as a privacy company, We don’t do retargeting. We don’t do, if you notice, one thing on our website, which you’ll see in every other website, is a big cookie banner, and I think that’s because I and Ambuja talked about we don’t want that when you come to Clark, we don’t want this big banner that says, Hey, we have these cookies.

[00:21:57] We track you. despite that, we’ve taken very pricey from [00:22:00] the approaches where we’re not actually looking at user. Strictly, but getting aggregate information, driving insights. But we’ve done paid search, paid ads, we’ve worked with Brave, we’ve also done even, um, talks, but even the TikTok, we’ve had creators who really like what we’re doing, talk about us.

[00:22:15] As opposed to us trying to just target individuals and reach segments, well let make it more creator and individual driven. But from that, we’ve had a really great click through rate conversion, despite not having to do deep, retargeting across the board, which has been awesome. Yeah,

[00:22:29] Abhijay: I mean, part of our marketing interest here is that we actually had.

[00:22:33] Almost too many signals of good marketing angles. So when we’re talking about customer profiles, personas, all this stuff, what’s really important to us is the integrity of our brand. I think when you’re talking about a company that deals with so directly with consumers and the trust, they hold that, that is a key word, trust.

[00:22:49] So we’ve been very cautious about the large scale efforts. we’ve done a lot of testing of different personas and it’s all gone really well. So now the second equation, as we sort of transition out of beta into a [00:23:00] larger marketing effort is, making sure that we are confident in how we are coming across in this hyper, hyper desire environment.

[00:23:08] There’s a large amount of interest and how do we position ourself in that?

[00:23:12] Arjun: Yeah. So you

[00:23:12] Donny Dvorin: said this, the marketing that you’re doing is not fear-based. So what would be the emotion that you’re trying to provoke in the marketing?

[00:23:19] Arjun: Yeah, so I could take an example. One way of taking what we do is one message you could say is, You’ve been breached, your email’s been hacked.

[00:23:26] People track your phone number. It’s fear based and we could totally do it. I could take that. You could say that that’s what, one way you could have done it is that Exactly Fear-based. You could say that right now a lot of the companies are starting to move away from pixel based tracking to aggregate information collection via your phone number and email.

[00:23:43] That’s a whole campaign we could run and talk about, but we didn’t. The simple message, we realized the resonate with users is an idea that never share your phone number or email ever. So flipping the fear, tracking, like how companies using it to you should not have to. I think [00:24:00] that’s where, what it mean to be empowerment versus fear.

[00:24:02] That’s just the way, in some ways we, we approach it is that, well what’s the angle from the consumer? Well, how could the life be different? And I think that’s one way is how empowerment could be, is never get your phone number, email a credit card ever again. You are in control

[00:24:14] Donny Dvorin: of yourself. Right, right.

[00:24:15] So the emotion there is empowerment, confidence. Yeah. Like, you know, feeling. Secure. You know, like, feel like you have a warm blanket on you. Yeah.

[00:24:23] Arjun: I

[00:24:23] Abhijay: think our logo on our brand too is a little fun tidbit, right? Like when you’re wearing a cloak, right? You can sort of choose to have the hood up or choose to have the hood down.

[00:24:31] Either way, you have this layer of protection around you. And we wanna give people, agency, let them have control, but we don’t want them to feel like they’re hiding under our rock. We want them to explore more than before, not explore

[00:24:42] Arjun: less.

[00:24:43] Donny Dvorin: Yeah. So if you put your, marketing hats on, stepping away from cloaks, how do you think marketing has changed over the past, you know, five to seven years?

[00:24:51] What makes marketing different today than in the past?

[00:24:54] Arjun: It’s

[00:24:55] Abhijay: interesting how much we’ve moved past just these simple growth levers of [00:25:00] poor, X amount of dollars into Facebook ads in your business now multiplies. we are seeing a much greater shift into creative as a whole. And seeing how brands actually uniquely identifying themselves through their creative strategy and their creative vision.

[00:25:12] I think 5, 6, 7 years ago, especially as we like start reducing the amount of access the advertisers have to data, right? This whole ask app not to track from Apple. That completely destroyed a large amount of growth funnels through Facebook’s ad tracking network. There’s less and less immediate pay-to-win options when it comes to advertising, and now it’s a little bit more of the strength of your own team and how they can navigate this landscape creatively.

[00:25:38] Arjun: I think Ija tackled exactly the point. It’s like part of this underlying difference. Seven years ago, data collection was a big goal in seeing, pouring in and really figuring out what’s going on. Really dissecting and really tweaking to run an optimized right ad. I think now they have so much access data, a lot of things.

[00:25:57] It becomes, frankly, a lot, and this is why we’ve seen the [00:26:00] rise of AI and analysis of all this data to try to help individuals because there’s so much of it. I think now it’s getting to the point that obviously there’s this creativity approach. How do you work? Really strong, influential groups, audiences, and get them excited and energized about what you’re trying to do.

[00:26:16] I think about a marketing campaign that ran recently, that’s the exact epitome of where we are today versus where we are seven years ago was the Burger King campaign. I don’t know if you’re aware, but what Burger King did was they sponsored the worst team on the, soccer league across the ocean or football there.

[00:26:33] And, it was ranked 26 outta 26, but they knew that team will be featured in fifa. So, because all the teams are gonna be in the latest FIFA game, so when they, sponsored it, they’ve got their logo in the game. And then they also tied digital campaigns and rewards if you won matches with their.

[00:26:51] Now the number one team played in FIFA is their team, and obviously their logo, their brand is in there. And I think that’s the combination of. The [00:27:00] creative being digital savvy, thinking about infoship groups that are very, very vocal, the gaming community, tweeting, posting, re-sharing. I think that’s that, that cross conventional aspect of to it, that’s a lot different today than even seven years ago.

[00:27:13] Donny Dvorin: Got it. Is there something in marketing that you’re a bit worried about right now? Like it could be privacy or something like that? I think from

[00:27:22] Arjun: a marketing perspective and MJ feel, I jump in. My take is. We’re worried about right now is that marketers are need to take one of two directions. We’re gonna take the approach of privacy’s dead if we’re gonna keep going exploitive or are we take that Privacy is important and I think marketers in the marketing function are at the crossroads thinking what they need to do, and I think a privacy preserving practice will win out over the next 10.

[00:27:47] What that looks like will be determined by the top players. What we hope is cloaked is involved to help marketing still be a strong function, but create privacy throughout that, that experience. But I think it is a wary [00:28:00] that I think most people aren’t sure of where, what’s gonna happen next. Yeah. I mean, just from

[00:28:04] Abhijay: our own perspective, right?

[00:28:05] Like marketing in general is very. Clear and make sure we don’t get stuck in a rabbit hole. Obviously everyone fears this, but like say one of our dimensions could be, younger women dating, and then if we do a large campaign there and suddenly we’re a dating adjacent app, and that is a very sticky stickiness on marketing is really interesting.

[00:28:23] So we have to be really careful around that. Abstractly. Something I’m a little wary about is just, I think it’s incredibly exciting, but how much of marketing has shifted towards like influencer based content and the strength of celebrities, endorsements? Obviously that’s always been a thing. It’s really exciting to see how this is shaping up, but I think it’s still very nation for a lot of people, so a lot of marketing functions are catching up, trying to figure out how to best utilize.

[00:28:47] Arjun: Yeah,

[00:28:48] Donny Dvorin: I think that influencer marketing has definitely changed a lot over the past seven years, where really, because of Instagram and, and TikTok like there were sponsorships and celebrities promoting brands. But you didn’t [00:29:00] have, you know, Charlie de Emilio, as a spokesperson for p and g.

[00:29:03] Everyone would be like, who is this random dancer that’s actually from the town next door to where I live and goes to the same, you know, dance. We used to go to the same dance studios as my daughter, you know, like she would’ve been no one. And now, she blew up to like the number one TikTok

[00:29:16] Arjun: er.

[00:29:17] Exactly. Yeah. We saw the, biggest company that did this was honey. They’ve taken a big bet on Mr. I think sparked and pushed the whole idea that how do you work closely, the creator, an influencer as opposed to just sponsoring an ad or just kinda sponsoring a take. And obviously that paid huge dividends.

[00:29:33] Yeah.

[00:29:34] Abhijay: I think what’s interesting too is it’s a lot of microcom communities are forming. I think like just for any, in any marketer sort of being almost chronically online is ever more important. Understanding like the communities of Twitch, the communities of YouTube, and communities of TikTok. And how we can cultivate individual communities for evangelists.

[00:29:51] I think the access to communities has increased tenfold in the last seven or eight years. and the number of communities that are, have passionate bases [00:30:00] have increased tenfold. So any scenario in which your choices increase, I think it’s obviously a room for great opportunity cause you have more choices, but the difficulty of making a choice also

[00:30:09] Arjun: increases.

[00:30:10] Donny Dvorin: Yeah, I think you’re right that the number of communities has exponentially grown over that past few years because every time have a new platform, it could be Roblox, it could be the Metaverse, it could be a new music artist. There are places where people can congregate and have communities, and then there’s people who are, let’s just say, more popular in those communities.

[00:30:33] They all of a sudden become influencers and now you’re influencing like a micro community. And same thing with crypto too, right? There could be the polygon. You know, community. And then within the Polygon community, there’s someone who’s really passionate and then he’s an influencer and then some new app wants to build on Polygon and all of a sudden he’s promoting it and like that didn’t happen five years ago.

[00:30:53] I think that’s probably one of the biggest changes to marketing recently. And I think one

[00:30:58] Abhijay: note about [00:31:00] technology, since this is a Web three metaverse focused podcast, is I think as you see this, right, there’s nobody in the web three world who doesn’t know the value of community. Every single crypto, every single project gets started with a small community and I think.

[00:31:14] this is a double-edged sword for a lot of people where they ride on the way of the community over the legitimacy of their own product. There’s a lot of illegitimate. I mean, you can see this Logan Paul Crypto Zoo scandal as one of the latest things that happened. People have realized that the strength of their community and their influence can overshadow or just completely mask the quality of the part.

[00:31:36] So I think one thing that we are obviously cautious of ourselves is to make sure that we are leading with legitimacy. And I think when we consume products in this space, it’s important to try to separate out the strength of the influence versus the strength of the product. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:31:52] Donny Dvorin: Speaking of community, how big is your community?

[00:31:55] Arjun: Well, we’ve got a, right now, a fairly large size community across our wait list, our discord [00:32:00] and our active users. But, we’re not, we’re providing beta, so I’m not comfortable sharing the numbers yet, but we’ve been actively growing a pretty large wait list and, now a pretty sizable discord community that’s been engaging.

[00:32:09] But we’ve been really happy to see, especially going to ga this community even going from there. The big part for us, It’s been a large chunk, organic people sharing, talking, mc cloak coming to one, to being cloaked, and then a mix of now seeing these, the paid ad tests turn to people saying, Hey, I wanna use cloak tomorrow.

[00:32:25] And now trying to balance putting it off the wait list, but it’s been growing pretty quickly. How do people get in

[00:32:29] Donny Dvorin: touch with

[00:32:30] Arjun: you guys? So right now, if you want to join Cloak, would love for you to reach out and join our wait list on cloak.app. We’re pulling people off the wait list every day, slowly pulling people off as they’re getting on.

[00:32:41] But yeah, cloak.app. Otherwise reach out to me and Aja you can at just support@cloak.app. We’re always following every customer issue. I have one step further. I think we can actually

[00:32:52] Abhijay: show the value of the broad. Right now. I’m willing to share an email and a phone number that links directly to me on air just to [00:33:00] show how comfortable

[00:33:00] Arjun: I am with my own agency, if that’s interesting.

[00:33:03] Yeah, go ahead. My phone number’s (

[00:33:05] Abhijay: 572) 500-1731. Anybody can text me or call me and my email is melt dot speed. Phil cloak dot I. And those are those linked directly to me. They go to my inbox, they go to my phone, right here. it took me two seconds to create it. And I’m comfortable sharing that online because I have complete control.

[00:33:24] And if and when I decide that people who are reaching out to me are no longer desired, it’s infinitely easier for me to control the

[00:33:31] Arjun: access. So let’s

[00:33:33] Donny Dvorin: just say in that example, they were millions of people listening and you know, there were a hundred people that really wanted to get in touch with you and they were real people.

[00:33:41] And then there was another. That for whatever reason, wanted to like spam the heck outta you. can you shut off the five and, communicate with the hundreds? Yes,

[00:33:49] Arjun: yes. Absolutely. yeah. So Cloak has a basically sandboxing aspect. So the fact is that obvious, you can probably start, you’ll see them, but a lot of ’em become sandboxed and someone starts to bombard you, cloaks like, Hey, let’s [00:34:00] block Orm, mute these individual people trying to reach you on that one cloak number.

[00:34:04] Donny Dvorin: Cool. Well, that’s great. Well, thank you for that as well. I’m assuming you’re not being able to create Twitter handles with that.

[00:34:12] Arjun: No, no. I’m not creating Twitter handles. No. But we to change information on Twitter ? Not yet. No. Can

[00:34:18] Donny Dvorin: you guys nominate anybody that we, you think we should interview on the show?

[00:34:22] Well,

[00:34:22] Arjun: there’s a team that I know a lot bigger than us, but they’ve done a really good job with marketing. I think the notion. We’re well connected with them, but we know notion really well. But overall, the Notion team, they’ve brought in marketing from working with influencers, people talking about the product.

[00:34:37] They’ve done a really great job, but I’d love to get them on the show. That’s great.

[00:34:40] Donny Dvorin: So thank you for coming on the show. Any last words to the listeners?

[00:34:44] Arjun: From our end, we’re really excited to be working and the fact that we’re on Brave is that where there’s a strong alignment of privacy and the way we’re approaching both privacy, security, and even the marketer product is a different way of looking at the.

[00:34:56] Clunked, we really think that you should be in control of yourself, and that is the [00:35:00] future. And 10 years from now, if it’s not cloaked, it’ll be some company that’s saying, Hey, we’re rethinking the way you own your data, your information. And that’s just how the future’s gonna be. And so we’re excited to take a strong stab at that.

[00:35:11] So I’d love to have you on the journey and check us out. That’s awesome.

[00:35:15] Donny Dvorin: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show.

[00:35:16] Arjun: Thanks. I

[00:35:17] Donny Dvorin: thank you. Thanks so much for listening to 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.

[00:35:29] Or write us a review on your podcast player, 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 Brave’s 60 million users and have a budget of $10,000 or more, simply email us@addsalesbrave.com. That’s ad S A L E s brave.com, and let us know you’re our podcast listener for a 25% discount.

[00:35:54] Number three musical credits. Go to my brother Ari Devork. And finally number four, [00:36:00] go use brave@brave.com and we will see you next time on The Brave Marketer.