Jack Collier - Breaking Out of the Web3 Marketing Nightmare - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

Hello everyone. Um, yes, I'm Jack. I'm the chief marketing officer at io.net. For anyone who doesn't know, io.

net uh is building the next generation of AI tooling. And we have built one of the largest decentralized GPU networks in the industry, which means we're able to offer cheaper, faster, and more reliable compute to anyone building in AI. Shameless plug there. So, I'm here today to talk to you about something that I'm very passionate about, and that is how we break out of what I've coined the web 3 marketing nightmare. So, first of all, we have to admit we have a problem.

And yes, I firmly believe that we have a marketing problem in web 3. We've promised so much since the Bitcoin white paper. We promise to bring freer, fairer systems to people. We promise to give people back control of their privacy, of their data, and we promise to bring them into new economies, new tokenized economies. And if we really look at ourselves, do we think we've actually got there?

Do we think we're making that breakthrough? And I would say a stat that we should definitely take home with all of us is today less than 1% of global internet users even have a crypto wallet, let alone an active crypto wallet. So I believe that yes, the problem definitely lies squarely at the door of marketing. Now I'd be lying to say that we don't have a plethora of other problems. Um, but there's definitely things we can do within the marketing industry within Web 3 to bring these promises to life to people in a more effective way.

Now, I believe that many projects within web 3 are trapped in something that I call the nightmare loop. Here it is right here. And it starts by projects typically pre-TGE and at TGE creating incentives and goals within their organizations which don't map to the real world value that they're trying to trying to create with the target user set that they have. And so what happens is they create hype. We create narrative for ourselves.

We create promises for ourselves. And because we have the wrong metrics to start with, we chase attention and we create this false sense of engagement by bringing people into our Telegram chats, people into our Discords, people into our ex channels who we think are our target customers, who will be our mouthpiece, who will be using and fueling the next generation of of the of the usage of our products. And then for some reason we're just baffled when those people leave, when the airdrops stop, when the incentives stop and they move on to another project. We attract mercenary-like behavior as opposed to building long-term uh user engagement. And so what happens in a lot of our projects is we pivot.

We create new narratives and the cycle starts again. And so what I'm going to go through now is just three very simple problems that I think we face and some very simple solutions about how we can pragmatic solutions about how we can break out of this loop how we can wake up from this nightmare. So the first problem over craft how many of you have encountered the phrase yeah but they're not web 3 native. It's essentially code word for gatekeeping. They don't look like one of us.

They don't talk like one of us. They don't have a crypto Twitter. They're not in Telegram chats. So therefore, they don't understand what we do. And therefore, we they couldn't possibly market what we do.

And I'm here to tell you that that is a fallacy. I remember getting into a discussion with a very prominent VC a couple of years back and they were talking about a project that we were both interested in and they said, "Jack, the solution for that project is they need to promote their social media manager, their social media intern to head of marketing." I wasn't even mad. I was just extremely tired. I've heard it time and time again.

What that implies is that the craft of marketing is relegated and is almost seemingly non-important. And yet marketing is such a core tenant of so many organizations in web 2 and across the spec across the world that to just belittle it like that I think is is definitely one of the biggest problems we face. Really what we should be doing is embracing the crafts of marketing and listening to the marketing leaders who have done this before, who have the experience. Whether that be brand marketing to get the get the message out there uh to to get emotionally connect with their target audience, whether that be digital marketing where we show up at the right channels at the right time to bring people into our ecosystem. These are disciplines that have been refined over the years and that uh we need to embrace as part of our uh as part of our projects.

So the fallout from cult generating cult over craft is we hire inexperienced people who may be very passionate about what we do but often don't have the skill set to be able to execute on some of the strategies that that need to happen for us to be successful. Then what happens is projects fall into a state of chaos typically pushed by founders who want narrative out and the social media the marketing team just become a distribution channel for that and then of course we fall into this trap of building attention and eyeballs over actual adoption of our product. So I challenge everyone here today be open to hiring people who are do not have a cryptonative background in your marketing team. It doesn't mean to say that it's uh you should only hire web two marketers or you should hire people that aren't interested in this space. Obviously, passion, dedication, and being open to learning is is crucial.

But without the skill set in your marketing team, you're unlikely to succeed. And I'd also say empower them. Listen to them. They're going to bring new ideas to the table that we're not used to because we're stuck within our bubble. Okay.

The second problem, I've called it vanity over value. This is to do with our metrics. So many projects that I speak to within web 3 do not have user growth or retained users or customer lifetime value as their northstar marketing metric. And I think that is the definition of insanity. We pri we prioritize token holders exengagement discord growth.

We prioritize growth in these channels over others. And again, we are then therefore um prioritizing attention over actual users. So we build hype cycles. We don't build habits within our organization. We don't look at where our users are and then work backwards from there.

We don't learn from them. And so again, projects burn out fast. Airdrops, quests, they are very powerful tools that are unique to web 3 that we put to use to drive attention when we really should be putting them to use to drive users long-term value of users so that we can create sustainable business models and create sustainable marketing p practices within our organizations. And like I said, that's unique to web 3. At the moment, 80 to 90% of airdrops that are used within web 3 are sold within 30 days.

Now, that isn't driving long-term engagement. That isn't driving long-term behavior. It's driving mercenary like behavior. So, the fix, flip the narrative, put your customer growth metrics as your north star and be unashameably aligned to that. Now, that could mean doing things that people aren't used to doing.

That could mean alienating certain people who aren't really users or believers in your project um and alienating the mercenaries, but you'll be building a longerterm, more sustainable business and more sustainable marketing practices within your organization. And like I say, airdrops the token, it's an amazing facet to web 3 that's unique to everything we do that can create a differentiator than anyone within uh the traditional sphere. Let's use it to drive long-term behavior. Let's incentivize user growth. When I was working at Near Protocol, our primary metric was monthly active developers.

And so that incentivized us to really find people who really wanted to build on our infrastructure and for us to nurture a community of developers to be able to build the next generation of projects on on on the protocol layer. And you know even to this day near is still one of the most highly used chains for transactions and for developer growth. And the third problem I cannot believe I've put this on a slide but I tell you most projects that I speak to this is something that does not happen. and that is that we don't listen or speak to or in some cases even know who our real users actually are. Who are the people that are going to be using our products and where what are their needs?

How do they want to be spoken to? Where do they live so we can effectively target them? So what happens is we fall into the buzzword bingo card because we assume all of our users are at token2049. We assume all of our users are in our discord chats or on X or on uh every channel known under the sun and this is how they want to be spoken to when actually this type of language is generally infrastructural based language that isn't consumerf facing. It's not what is adding value to users at the end of the day.

And so the fallout of not speaking or identifying our real users is that we don't have any clarity in how we describe our products. I challenge you to go on five of your top well-known crypto project sites and see how many of these words are actually on those on those slides and perhaps have a consumerf facing proposition. This is not that what users want to want to know about. It's like Uber saying we are a ride sharing app powered by AWS when really what they're saying is we're a ride sharing app that's safe, that has availability, and that's cheap. And that is how the user base and that's how they resonate with their user base.

So yes, we confine ourselves to people in this conference when really we want to be breaking out and bringing in new and attracting new users to our products. So the fix very simple talk to your users. I t generally task the teams that I work with to spend at least 10 if not 20% of their time talking to real customers pe people using our products and I and potential customers who might not be using our product and learn from them and build our marketing strategies around their needs and talk to them then in the correct way and lead with outcomes like I said don't lead with nonfgeible layer one layer 2 interoperable lead with cheaper lead with faster lead with safer more reliable. Let's use consumerf facing language that people are used to and that actually addresses the problems that that we're trying to solve for them. So again, another shameless plug, but at IONET, we're really thinking differently about how we market ourselves so that we can broaden our appeal and really bring AI tooling to the masses.

And so yes, to this audience, we might say that we're experts in decentralized compute, might have the largest GPU network uh in web 3, but really what we say externally to our customers is that we're cheaper. We can provide them cheaper and faster AI training. We can provide cheaper and faster compute than traditional web two providers. Maybe we'll throw a number in, 70 to 80% cheaper. And that's something that really gets people going and really wants them to really be curious about what we do.

So, how do we round all this off? Well, the fix is actually quite boring and actually quite well, which I think is a good thing. Um, but it's really basic 101 things. Know who your real customers are. Talk to them and then talk back to them about how you and your products solve their problems.

There are so many projects in web 3 that are doing so many amazing things that actually have a benefit beyond this bubble. We just don't talk to them correctly. And I think we need to talk to them about how we solve their problems and do it in a more consumerfriendly way. We need to show up where they are. That might mean using traditional marketing channels that we haven't used before that this group maybe put their nose up at, but actually could be very powerful when we're building brand awareness, when we're building trust in our product, in our services, and when we're trying to acquire users.

So, we have to think from a customer-led problem backwards as opposed to just assuming we know where they live. Like we talked about, measure what matters. If your marketing team isn't putting customer lifetime value, user acquisition costs, or any of those user growth metrics as their north stars, I would really question the effectiveness of that team and whether they're going to be set up to really drive growth for your organization. And then like I said, we are in an organ we're in an industry where we can think differently. We have mechanisms at our disposal, whether that be through the token or through the way we can communicate because we live in this communitydriven world.

And so test new things. Let's let's be curious, but let's not forget the other four points on this on this slide. And let's incorporate a lot of the things that we do within a broader strategy that's more aligned to user growth and to real customers. So, I hope I've annoyed just the right people. I hope that I've started the debate.

Not everyone's going to agree, of course, but I really am super passionate about bringing all the tenants of decentralization to the masses to build a freer and fairer world. I think at io.net, we're definitely passionate about that as well and we're really bringing it to the masses. Um, but yes, if you agree, if you disagree, come find me. I'd love to have a chat and I'd love to sort of build this out with you guys as we build the next generation of products for people to use uh across the world.

So with that, enjoy the rest of the conference and uh thank you very much.