Michelle: 0:00

I always look at the data, why people are interested in it, how they're interested in it, and focus on that tactics and grow that part.

Joeri: 0:09

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm so excited to have Michelle Kang on the show. Hi, Michelle, how are you?

Michelle: 0:24

I'm good. Thanks for inviting me to this amazing podcast. I'm happy to be here talking with Joeri. So nice to meet you, everyone.

Joeri: 0:39

Thank you, Michelle. People don't know, but we met at Consensus in Austin. Yeah, it was an amazing event. Also, your side event was really good, so I had a lot of interesting conversations, but it was really a good place to wind down. And, yeah, I can already tell you, but we will be at ECC in Brussels. So if people are listening to the show, if I forget to say it in the end, you can meet us there. But now you're maybe wondering who is Michelle, Michelle Kang. She's a crypto marketing professional with a track record of deploying innovative data-driven strategies for crypto since 2016. For crypto since 2016. Successfully differentiated multiple tokens in competitive markets and, as a head of marketing, spearheaded growth for six major layer one and layer two blockchain platforms, enhancing their visibility and adoption. So wow, Michelle, again, welcome to the show. Share a bit now about your journey in marketing and maybe how you ended up as the CMO of Somnia, because that's what your role is today.

Michelle: 1:55

So hi everyone, nice to meet you. Thanks, Joeri again for this opportunity. Okay, my story can be very interesting for someone, very not interesting for some people too. But long story short. I've been working in marketing in general since 2011. I feel like I'm getting very old, even though I don't look that old thanks to being Asian, to be honest. But, yeah, I've been having quite a long journey of experiences.

Michelle: 2:33

So since I was very young, I always wondered how do you? I was interested in branding story in general too. Right, because my family called me as the aggressive buyer. So I like to try new things. I like to buy things and try it out, experience some different products and different services. Till now on, and when I was thinking back then, I was very interested in like why, how do you make people to buy different things? Because I was one of the customers. That's why I was getting into marketing in general.

Michelle: 3:15

And around high school time again, long story short I was majoring in some sort of instrument and I was thinking like this won't make money unless you're the number one in the world. That's why I was thinking to actually think about my future and I was interested in marketing and that's how I started my university's major in business and marketing my university's majoring business and marketing and I was lucky that I was able to do a lot of different internships and ambassador programs, such as there is a CJ, which is a big broadcast company in Korea. I started my internship there. Also Lenovo, which is a laptop company, and I was working at some PR agencies. So there is one in Korea. KPR was having clients such as Flux, Rolex, the North Face, a lot of like custom-based product. And also I moved to the States, went to another university and I did my account executive position at Edelman, which is considered to be one of the biggest PR agencies in the world. I had clients such as Citibank and Bank of America. So that's how I got into finance in general and I started my startup with my friends back then.

Michelle: 4:50

And it is interesting story because back then there was a Syria war happening and we wanted to actually help kids to educate themselves even though there is a war happening in their country, educate themselves while even though there is a war happening in their country. So how we did was we collect the used phone that no one's actually using and at the time the bluetooth or sharing between phone wasn't available the technology so we can be actually building a product that you can share video and education contents through the phone without any internet connection. And at the time, we actually used Bitcoin for fundraise very early on 2014, 2015, around the time but we couldn't really implement the campaign because it was very hard harder than we thought to actually go to the war thing. But that's how I get to know about Bitcoin and I started my career at PaySafe back in London working as VIP account manager. I was technically promoting a lot of products and events and services to VIP customers and that's how I started to learn about Ethereum. A lot of my VIPs would start talking about crypto and luckily, one of my clients were opening some sort of VC fund in Australia, so I moved to Australia.

Michelle: 6:25

That's my officially first project I worked for in crypto and Web3. And I raised different funds for different companies, including EOS, lease, icon, kikcoin very old Kikcoin, you can say so but I had so much different freedom because at the time, iso was very booming and not many marketing tactics were set for crypto itself too, so you could literally try all different things. I did like outdoor advertisement on Amazon delivery, for example. Like delivery truck. We put advertisement there. We did a lot of on-site offline Also. At the same time, we did a lot of online marketing.

Michelle: 7:17

As you imagine, previously I was focused on technically one region, for example, being a cloud manager. I work at Paysafe. I was focused on APEC region and, as a previous, at Edelman, for example, I was only targeting the US customers. But through this global marketing I learned so much and obviously I think this is the hardest marketing you can imagine, because you're asking people to invest or you're asking financial gain from the customer to invest into your project. So it was very different to previous experiences and that's how I get into it.

Michelle: 8:08

It and after that, yes, you mentioned, I was quite not believing in crypto blockchain at the time, actually, even though I was obsessed with the Bitcoin. Unfortunately, during the ICO booming, there was a lot of bad players in the industry. I've seen a lot of projects that I even helped fundraise disappear or scamming people, so I was not really bought into the crypto. That's why I switched my career back to traditional marketing. I was working in Best Western and some sort of like payment gateway, payment services, finance sector of career, and while I have been doing that, I was having a marketing agency that helping different crypto projects when there was a DeFi booming.

Michelle: 8:57

I helped over five different DeFi platforms NFT projects, nft marketplace and L1, which is finance BNB chain in Australia and they're about to launch their chain, and I joined one ledger, which as a CMO, so another L2 project that was launching their main ledger during the time, so I joined them, and another one's called Nervous Network. So I joined as a head of growth and then head of marketing. So we launched the L2 on the top of the L1, already existing existed on Nervous Network and we, over the whole career, I always focus on growth. Why I'm talking about I am data-driven growth marketer is I always look at the data, why people are interested in it, how they're interested in it, and focus on that tactics and grow that part. After that I was advising at Syscoin and ZetaTank as well and finally I met Sonia. So again, long story short, why I joined Sonia is, as you mentioned, I helped over five, six different L1s, l2s out there and I was wondering why in this industry has to have so many L1 and L2s, because every blockchain should have their own market for the users and also I've been struggling as an open source public blockchain.

Michelle: 10:35

You don't really have a product, but you have your own token, for example, so you can't really sell or grow that. If you, for example, easily, if you sell shoes on eBay or something like that, you can have a metric, the end goal is to have as many as sales on your shoe. But for crypto, since you don't really have a product, you need to have this blockchain to be adopted by as many as developers, so many wallet holders, etc. But it's quite hard to determine what is your end goal for marketing. That's why I was looking for new use cases. That's how I'm obsessed with Somnia that actually there's a use case and for the use case we are building the L1. So we have their narratives and stories around that and I joined Somnia earlier this year and ever since that has been very great. I literally started from, like, choosing the name Somnia, with our founder building the website. It has been very exciting journey so far. Sorry for keep going. It has been long answer.

Joeri: 11:52

Yeah, no, don't worry, it's really interesting because you're really the perfect fit for the podcast Web3 CMO Stories, it's all your background. It's interesting to hear everyone's backstory. And now end up at Somnia, because I met you at Consensus. I was like Somnia already is there since a few years, but it's just really from this year on. You just invented the name, as you said, together with the founder. So for people now listening and they don't know somnia, can you share a bit about your vision of connecting metaverses and, yeah, through, elaborate a bit on that?

Michelle: 12:34

Yeah, of course. Yeah, somnia has been around only since the website launched in April, so it has been less than three months actually. So very new projects. But let me give you some backstory.

Michelle: 12:49

So Somnia is partnered with M-Square and Improbable Improbable has been around over seven, eight years that they've been leading the metaverse technologies for gaming any virtual experiences, massive virtual metaverse experiences in the industry, in Web 2, we call it in web 3, and they build this technology, m square that enable hundreds of thousand people in a one place, which is very high advanced technology when you look at it. Not even a lot of games allow you more than hundreds of users at the same time too. So they build this technology and wanted to. And also these experiences using m-square engine can be connected to, because that's one missing points for mass adoption of metaverse that there are so many isolated metaverses out there but not connected. So through this technology, you can have these connected experiences. While that's one thing, that opens the opportunity for the creator, so once the creator creates something it's better not being in the closed environment can be exported to other environments while they get, for example, royalty fee for their asset being used right. So this whole problem we didn't have virtual words to solve the various technologies out there, but scale that onto blockchain.

Michelle: 14:34

We were M2 and Improbable and our founders were looking for perfect L1, l2 that already existed for this sort of purposes and we couldn't really.

Michelle: 14:47

We spoke to all major L1, l2s and we couldn't really determine which one is the best for this connected and millions of users experiences L1, and we couldn't really find one. That's why we decided to build it our own and our L1 is a very unique data chain that enable this millions of users at the same time to interact with each other in the virtual world. Obviously, we do not want to close it for only virtual or digital world, but it can be used for DeFi or any real estate, for any purposes possible, but mainly for this connecting metaverses and virtual societies. So that's how we started it and that's the vision for ourselves to. We want to open the opportunity for any creators and any community members to be part of this open and unified virtual societies at the same time. That's our vision to start on and yeah, so, as I mentioned the backstories, it has only less than three months, but we gained so much attractions already because they're in need of such a connect Metaverse protocol and Earth-1. To connect Metaverse Protocol and Ursa L1.

Joeri: 17:09

And so you mentioned, you helped to come up with the name Somnia. Why the name Somnia? How is it relevant to your product or your offering?

Michelle: 17:20

Okay, so I didn't come up with the Somnia exactly. We are working with this branding agent, actually, and they suggest like a bunch of songs and we like Somnia because it's coming from dreaming itself, the name's coming from dreaming, so we want to make sure that this whatever you dream of can be reality too. And one thing that I've seen very touching actually, there's some improbable metaverse, like promotion video on youtube, and one person commented it. That metaverse is for everyone, whatever you dream of, whatever. There's no discrimination. Discrimination there's no limited imagination in metaverse. That became like dreams come true, right? So that's why we like the name somnia, that and at the beginning, to be honest, we were like, oh somnia, is it good? Like we're not really stick to it. But right now we love somnia brand and that's how we started.

Joeri: 18:29

Yeah, I love it too, and it's good to have a story behind the name, so it's also easier to remember if you know why it's called like that. Another concept that I think you use with Somnia is the metaverse computer. Can you explain a bit what you mean by that?

Michelle: 18:46

Okay, so we come up with. So Somnia is not a metaverse platform. At the end of the day, we're not providing a metaverse. There should be a metaverse provider on the top of Somnia protocol. So we're building Omnics protocols and L1 for any metaverses, any DApps. We call it MApp. So metaverse apps could be avatar builder, could be building lamps, building houses, etc. Or even building decks on top of this protocol and L1. So everything possible in one place. As you can imagine, as a computer, this is whole infrastructure we are offering to developer or builders to use to create metaverses. So that's why we come up with the tagline, which is the metaverse computer, to make it easy to understand.

Joeri: 19:47

Okay, makes total sense. Now in Web3, partnerships are really important. You have a recent partnership with Yuga Labs. They are known for the Bordeaux Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. It's quite significant. Can you explain a bit what are the objectives of this collaboration, how it is supporting Somnia's growth?

Michelle: 20:13

Yeah, we are very happy to collaborate with Ugalax. Obviously, they're the biggest NFT collection and creator group in the web space and, as you mentioned, the major collection plus other side, and those assets are being compatible with M2 engine that is on the top of Exomnia ecosystem Not yet, but soon to be available which is, people can. If you have a GoldM system, if you're a bold app holder, you can choose as your avatar to go to these major experiences. So, for example, previously there was an MLB event, that Major League Baseball match was happening on the Metaverse Stadium that people can go and watch the game the live game on the Metaverse. At the same time we had major K-pop concert experience and etc. So people can choose this board app as their avatar go to their experiences.

Michelle: 21:23

While upcoming, we have a playground which we will call it Dream Space. You can have your own metaverse space that you can showcase all your nfts that compatible with somnia protocol and etc. Too. So this is one thing for giving new use cases to you got lives holder or, at the same time, that we are currently doing Somnia Point Dream Hunt cast campaign for incentives. So people who hold this sort of asset will be eligible to get boost for our Somnia Point. So we're giving some additional benefits for the YouGov Labs holders and they can jump in and incentivize through our cast programs.

Joeri: 22:13

Okay. Yeah, it's always good to link with names like that. Now the name of Somnia, as you said, is also starting to take traction. You mentioned already data is important. I had a data business analytics company before. For me, data is also really important. But given your experience, Michelle, can you explain how you are leveraging data for your marketing campaigns in the crypto and the blockchain space?

Michelle: 22:54

Yeah, of course, I'm not sure many people, I'm not sure the listener if they're working in marketing, in traditional marketing companies or in-house brands, you take a look at data very precisely. Obviously, this marketing data will improve your marketing tactics and initiatives will improve your marketing tactics and initiatives. But what I found in Web3 companies they tend to be very ideological marketing. They are like oh, I've seen other people doing it, or it looks good, it sounds good or things like that. The founders most of the founders are coming from their developer side of thing or like cryptodigits. That doesn't really understand the marketing data. So I had to fight back many times for my other clients and previous project I worked for that. I have to convince people through the data. That's why I, because some people do not think, oh, why we have to do Twitter ads? Why don't you just use the KOLs, for example? So the data became very important things for us. So, for example, even working with influencers, we're going through some influencer analytic tools, going through how many engagement they have actually their followers are engaged with their posts, or so how frequently they tweet about something, or the content being generated is actually people liking it or not, and et cetera too. So we are using this sort of data for KOL. Or so we're giving them, for example, like bitly link or UTM text which you can count how many people clicking through the URL we are giving to the influencers. That we can actually track down people are being informed and actually putting actions. For example, or so we have like maybe monthly report that our marketing team taking a look at all the community metrics content metrics, social and et cetera. For example, we're looking at all the data that people are actually scrolling through our content, our own website, because view number is important but also do people really care about and learning the content, love to read more? That's more important things. And if we found certain sort of topics or content pillar being very engaged by the community or users, we tend to focus on that content for next run. Or, for example, social media that we are looking at all the engagement data that what sort of social media content is doing well so we can improve it. So that's how I call data-driven marketing. Also, you have to put a lot of text.

Michelle: 25:43

So recently we have launched Metaverse browser. It's consumer-facing UI that you can download the web application and launch it and do it all Metaverse-facing, metaverse-related activities on the Metaverse browser. So when we actually look at it, we have seen around 40,000 people within two weeks click the Metaverse browser download. That's a lot of number, but ended up only 5,000 people installing, so you can see, obviously, huge drop rate between that, meaning that a lot of people were interested in it. They downloaded it, but since majority of Web3 users are using mobiles or not tend to open the application, they're not trusted, because security is the biggest concern for a lot of Web3 users. That's why we took a look at the data and we're currently working on the web version of the Metaverse browser, so people do not need to download it and this sort of big insight can be found from the data, obviously, too. So that's how our team and myself too, are very focused on in-person marketing campaigns.

Joeri: 27:13

I like that example also with downloading something, because I myself also I'm careful. I know you, I know Somnia, so for me it was like, okay, I downloaded it, I installed it in Web3, there are so many scams or things. People are so careful, so thank you for sharing that. Something that I always like to ask, Michelle, almost every podcast episode, is what are you now the most excited about? It can be about something that you see happening in this space Can be something out. Somnia Can be something else. It's an open question.

Michelle: 27:49

Yeah, I'm very excited about this project, somnia. I dedicated my step online, as I said, like choosing from name, to building the website from the very beginning, building the logo and call it everything. My 100 focuses on sonia. I'm very, but besides that, in general, general this industry, I'm very excited that obviously right now is full market, so better than bear market. I'm very excited about it. Also, I see there is a lot more regulation and policies in place compared to, let's say, two, three years ago, which make me more secure working in this industry, and you can't imagine back then 2016, when I was working in crypto, my parents are like are you working with this game or you sure it's not black money or like a lot of bad tech money in this industry? But right now it's quite like almost gone. I think that's quite exciting.

Michelle: 28:56

I could be excited about this, like Minkoin boom and etc. Too, but I do care of mass adoption. But more than just like one, like trendy things and one the other, because we've seen so many cycles right now, back that ico and so defy nft meme coin you've seen all along but when you actually look at it too, like for the wallet provider, you can right now name hundreds of different products right now. Compared to a few years ago, there was only a major few available. So I think this sort of bigger ecosystem into this industry are still getting more regulated and people are actually adopting a lot of technologies. Great, too, like when I see that not even for like, web-treated people, but a lot of like, maybe some applications or apps, you're using blockchain technology that we don't knowing, like you knowing about it, right? So this sort of like adoption is getting grow and regulation. I think we are in the good path of getting this technology available for everyone.

Joeri: 30:16

I'm also excited about that when I go to these conferences and I see that happy faces and a lot of buzz going on and lots of, like you say, lots of products, lots of services, lots of people around, a lot of interesting presentations, companies that I discovered, like Somnia, so that's really amazing and I guess my listeners are now excited too, Michelle, and they want to know more about Somnia or maybe connect with you. Where would you like to send them?

Michelle: 30:47

Of course. So anyone interested in learning more about Somnia, please find us at somnianetwork website, and if you're a DJing, obviously you have Twitter, so just follow us on Twitter, please. Yeah, just find us everywhere. Support us doing quests, support us being in the community asking questions, and we are available 24-7.

Joeri: 31:18

Amazing. Like my listeners know, there are always podcast show notes. There is a podcast blog article. Everything that Michelle said will be found in there, also the links. If you are in Brussels in July, we will both be there, so come and say hi. Yeah, michelle, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show so much thanks for the opportunity.

Michelle: 31:44

Hope to see you soon yes absolutely guys a really insightful episode.

Joeri: 31:54

If you feel like, wow, this is something that people around you should know, they should learn about Somnia, other marketers, entrepreneurs, people in Web3, people interested in Web3, be sure to share this episode with them. If you're not yet subscribed to the show, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven not yet subscribed to the show, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't given me a review yet, this would really help me to get even more a bigger reach for my podcast. That would really help me and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.

Michelle: 32:32

Take care Bye.