In web2, success is in how much you can take.
In web3, success is in how much you can give. It's the battle of the oilers.
Why?
Because web2 is society as a default. Web3 is society-as-a-service.
When your society (community) needs to incentivize folks to opt-in, the value proposition changes. Providing content in the local newspaper was once enough to have everybody's attention - now, local newspapers are dead.
Opt-Out vs Opt-In
We used to root for local sports teams, now we opt-in to root for digital esports orgs.
We used to read local journalism, now we opt-in to read our favorite blogs.
Local nightclubs and bars have shifted to opt-in dating sites and chat rooms.
Local live concerts die while Spotify thrives.
The Reversal of Supply and Demand: Which is Scarce?
In the era of digital, supply and demand are flipped. On the internet, we have an overabundance of supply and a significant lack of demand.
AI and digital tools can help increase supply, but until we have conscious robots, they can do nothing to increase demand. We don't have a DALLE-2 for audience creation - only art creation.
As AI tools get better, the opportunity for creators to distinguish many failed Mr Beast copycat channels have shownthemselves through superior content is diminished - and the new game is not content creation, it's the Battle of the Oilers.
The Battle of the Oilers
Mr Beast is one of the most popular humans on earth. It's no coincidence he is the ultimate oiler.
Oilers are the folks who donate, subscribe, and otherwise financially support content creators. They are in the lowest supply, and have the highest demand, of any archetype within the creator economy.
Oilers are the "true fans" in Kevin Kelly's marketing model.
Oilers are the ones who know how to operate between worlds - breaking the barrier between institutions and individuals, earning paychecks and redistributing that income to freelancers and independent creators.
Oilers understand that a high-inflation financial environment means human goodwill (earned through oiling) may be more valuable than dollars in the bank.
Oilers know that $5 spent on someone else drives more happiness than $5 spent on yourself. And so on.
Oilers represent the ability to earn money in today's challenging environment combined with the EQ to give that money to others to drive positive energy into digital communities they care about. It's the rarest and most difficult skillset, a combination of circumstance and hard work required to maintain financial stability while oiling the world.
We live in the Era of Oilers, and to grow a digital community you must win the Battle of the Oilers.
How to Win the Battle of the Oilers
That's it, that's my new marketing thesis. I use this mindset in my job at Block Born and I've been starting to apply it more to my personal channels as well.
The thesis is so important, let me say it again:
We live in the Era of Oilers, and to grow a digital community you must win the Battle of the Oilers.
The goal is not to get a certain amount of viewership or engagement. It's not even to get more followers/subscribers or push people into your sales funnel - as good as that stuff is. The real challenge, the distinguishing factor between long-term success and failure, is the challenge to become an oiler.
The people, organizations, and networks that are able to consistently oil up their communities over time are the ones that win the lion's share of attention in the next years. Oiling is the mechanism to get attention -the ultimate form of engagement farming, in the positive sense.
Why Copying Mr Beast Doesn't Work
However, as many failed Mr Beast copycat channels have shown, it's not enough to do a few big giveaways. The winners in the battle of oilers are the ones who can build a sustainable community via oiling, rather than commanding attention via giveaways.
Man, I remember so many popular channels back in 2017/2018's ecosystem on Hive, back before it was even called Hive.
Some dude named Jerry was sooo popular with his giveaways -- he hasn't been around for 3-4 years now. No offense to that guy, I can't even remember his full name, but it is one of many examples of old Hive projects that juiced short-term but didn't survive.
Oiling - giveaways, free stuff, job opportunities, and beyond - is the mechanism that gets someone's attention for the first time. It leads them to the "rabbit hole" of that brand's content. You've led the horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
Long-Term Oiling - Getting the Horse to Drink
For the giveaways or other oiling to work long term, there must be a value proposition that is revealed beyond the giveaway. A real community with real value, supported by the oiling, but not held in orbit around the center of gravity that is the giveaway. The giveaways should be the gateways to other sources of value in the community.
At Block Born, our giveaways get people to pay attention. Then, they notice our esports events.
They notice our many blog posts explaining every game in the Tezos ecosystem, they notice our active Discord community, they notice my regular live streams where anybody can ask me anything, and the big picture becomes clear: Block Born is a web3-native esports org that truly cares about the Tezos community and the gamers within it.
The giveaway does not communicate our value proposition - what it does is get initial attention which then leads some people down the rabbit hole of games on Tezos. We become the main portal and trusted source of information for Tezos gaming, as is our goal - and in so doing, we build the beginnings of a strong web3 gamer community.
If we did the giveaways, but we didn't have all the content and events around gaming, we would have no "rabbit hole" to send people down - no "red pill" to give them.
People would happily take the giveaway and never think about us again.
Giving things away is not enough to be an oiler - necessary, perhaps, but certainly not sufficient.
What Will You Do?
This is the challenge for marketers in 2022.
How are you going to create proper incentives for an opt-in digital community/society? How will you be an oiler for years and decades to come?
These are the questions of digital marketing in 2022.
Step one, addressed in this article, is to even understand the questions/challenges that lie ahead. If I could get every marketer in the world to read one blog post, it would be this one, because I think most people in the world of marketing/content are fundamentally confused about this.
If we understand that marketing in 2022 is essentially The Battle of the Oilers, that gives us a stable place to start from when planning our marketing/community-building endeavors.
For everything that comes afterwards -- this is where I'm still experimenting and learning, and will take many more blog posts. For now, what do you think? Do you agree with my idea that we are now in the era of oilers, experiencing the battle of the oilers? Thanks for reading :-)