Thanks to Friends’ Ross Geller’s (David Schwimmer) half a dozen loud screams of “pivot” while unsuccessfully trying to move a sofa upstairs into his new apartment, the word resonates with tens of millions of television fans.
That scene is a recent piece of iconic entertainment mined for instant laughs, but in the business world a pivot or a spin, swivel, shift, can be a big deal meaning success or failure for an enterprise.
In truth, pivots can be found everywhere, some successful, some not so much. The fastest man alive, sprint legend Usain Bolt, an avid football fan, really thought he could transition out of top athletics and make it as a striker. The 30-year-old Bolt, a passionate Man Utd fan, had a two-day trial in 2018 with top Bundesliga side, Borussia Dortmund.
However, he was not offered a contract and undeterred he later ended up with Australian A-League side Central Coast Mariners. This time Bolt’s eight-week trial stirred a bit of controversy with one fellow Aussie pro saying the Jamaican legend has a first touch “like a trampoline.” Despite scoring two goals in a friendly, Bolt left the Australian club and his football dreams were never fulfilled.
But, getting back to our main topic. According to an online definition: “When a business pivots, it means that it’s changing some aspect of its core products or services. Businesses might pivot to better meet customer demand, to shift their target audience or boost sales using auto dialers or some combination of both.”
For instance, the global devastation of the 2019 pandemic destroyed world economies and meant some business sectors had to find other ways to operate in order to survive. Primarily, I’m thinking of the hospitality industry in many countries. With untold millions forced into lockdowns, sit down restaurants were shuttered overnight and takeout food became de riguer.
Global management consultants McKinsey & Company reckon today’s global food delivery market, encompassing the likes of Deliveroo, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Just Eat and Doordash, is worth more than $150 billion, having more than tripled since 2017. Meanwhile, Forbes.com estimates that is set to rise to a whopping $200 billion by 2025.
In the tech world, the big Kahuna Burger (props to filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and latterly Robert Rodriguez for the spoof Hawaiian fast-food joint) of pivoting is undoubtedly in Web3, also known as Web 3.0. According to Web3-focused software development company LeewayHertz, it is a high-level concept that describes the future of the internet and involves sharing power and benefits through decentralization.
“Once Web3 is in its full-blown form, a few large technology companies will not be able to control the core capabilities of the internet,” states LeewayHertz. “Users will have control over their data and, resultantly, greater privacy. There will be no censorship, and the rewards earned will be distributed equally. Although Web3 is not yet defined in a standard way, these are its most prominent characteristics.”
So, in theory Big Tech will be humbled by the little guy allowing meritocratic access? I can see quite a few eyebrows being raised at such a notion. Enter stage left, Mark Zuckerberg.
In June 2022, he announced a major rebranding of Facebook, now known as META, betting billions on this brave, new world of the Metaverse. “People will look back and see this was a no brainer,” quote The Zuck.
Meanwhile, the idea for Rezaid’s pivot to Web3 marketing is an organic one. Our aim is quite simple: to stay in the game. Unlike a sports match our “game” of providing innovative digital services is ever-changing, has no endpoint, nor winners or losers. For an NFT marketing company like Rezaid, it’s natural and a necessary evolution, as we’ve always been about providing highly sought after innovative, digital services in custom software development, expanding into social media, branding and content messaging. The key thing about the first and second iterations of the internet – from reading online content to then being able to interact (post) and get information in real-time– is that our confidential personal data is hosted (saved) in centralized servers, owned and managed by massive corporations including social media giants, banks and other big corporates.
However, I think where that was incremental, Web3 feels transcendental with the way the world is moving towards decentralization (public shared databases) and blockchain technologies. Essentially, it’s a new Wild West of the information age. With this frantic pursuit of Web3, we’re now seeing a whole host of applications and products, built using AI (artificial intelligence), AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), like cryptocurrency, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), and smart contracts
We saw it with Google Glass, which came off the market, but wearing those glasses allowed you to walk around and see the history of buildings. That’s virtual reality right there. I mean look at the gamers, who are usually ahead of the curve. They’ve been wearing that stuff and playing games with it for a while. Now they’ll be able to personally own- through purchasing in-game NFTs, trade and sell and thereby reap the increase in value of in-game purchases for themselves.
How Rezaid plans to become a pioneer in Web3 Marketing?
Rezaid is looking to capitalize on this trend by supplying our services to businesses and companies that are launching their own NFTs and crypto tokens and need help to brand themselves and raise awareness of their products. This, in itself, presents a bit of a marketing challenge, but we essentially haven’t changed, so much as we’re making a sideways shift immersing ourselves more in delivering Web3 projects.
For example, in the hiring of software engineers. We now need them to have Web3 development skills like “solidity,” a prowess for Web3 blockchain development. Similar web3 marketing skills like discord/telegram expertise are vital to the success of any NFT marketing company. But we still need our content writers to produce exciting and optimized articles for search engines and products. Another pivot is that we’re doing a lot more 3D video and 3D animation in the creative and design side of things. One could say we’ve kinda “Hollywooded” it up.
A well renowned Web3 client in our portfolio is Edge Video, founded by US and Dutch-based entrepreneur, Joe Ward. Through the Edge Video Player live streaming platform you can watch2earn (a converging point for Web3 technology, empowering viewers to watch and earn by monetizing their own watch time), on any of the 860,000 video streaming sites and apps globally. EDGE has its own utility token (cryptocurrency), $EAT, on the Polygon blockchain, and its NFTs -called FaiCE-S – can be traded on widely used exchanges like LA Token & Uniswap. Its viewer engagement model offers rewards to users in its livestreams. This includes tagging personalities, owning NFTs and streaming live videos on the platform. Joe has been a client for a couple of years and our responsibilities stretch across multiple areas that include developing his website, designing social media posts and videos, branding, SEO and investor outreach. You can read the case study here
We think the future is quite mind blowing, so will there be a Web 4?
Undoubtedly, yes, because there will always be innovation and technology never stops evolving. As I noted earlier, on-line industries are moving to the blockchain; banking, finance, healthcare, transportation, construction, gaming, media, fashion, and the arts are all exploring how Web3 can work for them, their supply chain and their customers. But where exactly do we go from here, who knows? The devil is always in the detail. What we do know is that innovative technology service suppliers like Rezaid have a whole new world of opportunity opening up to them because everyone is scrambling around trying to understand how to build and market their products and services in the Web3 era.
