AiThority Interview with Ben Plomion, Chief Marketing Officer at Dibbs

Hi, Ben. Welcome to our Interview Series. From Martech to NFTs– please tell us a little bit about your journey in the industry. How did you arrive at the idea of starting at Dibbs?

I’ve been in technology pretty much my entire life. I love the fact that this industry is constantly evolving and it’s intellectually stimulating.

I started in fintech in London. I worked on the first mobile application for a Dubai telecom operator in 2000 (before smartphones even existed!).

I then relocated to New York City and moved into financial services for a little while. I led GE Capital’s Center of Excellence for digital marketing. That’s when I became passionate about advertising and marketing technologies.

I joined adtech in the very early days – we built the infrastructure for programmatic advertising. Programmatic was wild back then and is now the most common way to deliver ads online.

I sold my first adtech company to Magnite, a leading video and CTV company.

I then relocated to Los Angeles to work as Chief Growth Officer for GumGum, another adtech company.

After more than 12 years in adtech, I wanted to find my next challenge in a new, emerging industry. Web3 was an obvious fit. It’s wild, it’s disruptive and it’s the future. I joined Dibbs as CMO to launch the company’s Tokenization-As-A-Service business. The business was founded by Evan Vandenberg, our CEO. He needed help  managing all commercial activities.

My day-to-day job includes strategy, sales, customer success, and, of course, marketing.

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What is Dibbs and what are your core offerings?

In simple terms, Dibbs moves your favorite physical collectibles to the blockchain. What this means is that we can store, insure and tokenize a variety of collectibles such as trading cards, watches, music memorabilia, and more. The physical collectibles always stay in our vault. Its digital twin (aka physical-backed NFT) is traded on marketplaces such as OpenSea, Kraken, and others. At any point, a holder of the NFT can redeem it, and we will send the physical collectible to the owner. We are in the business of modernizing collectibles and our physical-to-digital capabilities remove the frictions typically associated with the shipment and insurance of collectibles. The best part is that every time an NFT is sold, the original NFT creator (the IP holder or artist) gets royalty payment, a percentage of the secondary sale.

As a CMO, what are the fundamental challenges you try to solve for your customers?

My role is to develop a set of products and services that help our IP holders enter Web3 without the hassles that are associated with this new category. We do so by leveraging things that IP holders are familiar with: physical collectibles. In addition to conducting market research, developing a value proposition, and going to market, I am also the voice of the customer to Dibbs’ senior leadership team. The real challenge is to make our value proposition as compelling as possible in a space (the Web3 industry) that is changing almost every day. This requires a lot of education: we have a small marketing team that is producing high-quality content. We are currently working on a comic book that demystifies Web3 for marketers. These are the sorts of things that can move the needle for the industry and Dibbs as well.

Tell us more about how blockchain-centric technologies are enabling businesses?

Dibbs is one of the very early businesses that leveraged blockchain technology for a commercial application, outside the world of financial services. We help IP holders sell more of their physical collectibles directly to their global consumer base and capture more revenue along the way.

The power of blockchain is its ability to decentralize and record large volumes of transactions in a trustless and permissionless type of way.

While we started with collectibles, it is not hard to imagine blockchain technology being used to tokenize any physical item. Today, we can even buy an NFT that gives you ownership of a house. Tomorrow, your DMV records could also be stored digitally on the blockchain. The sky’s the limit.

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What is the future of AI-based NFTs? Which industries are you targeting with your services?

We see brands tapping into the vast opportunity for one-on-one dialogue that only AI can bring.

Imagine giving someone a chance to interact with an AI representation of their favorite superhero — they can ask them questions and share details about their own lives and have their favorite characters respond. That level of engagement and connection we can give fans is truly exciting.

It also goes both ways. Filmmakers or musicians can tap into their body of work and train AI models on them to efficiently generate an infinite array of art, giving fans a chance to own one-of-a-kind creations.

Right now, we see massive potential in entertainment industries like film, TV, music, or video games, but any industry that can tap into the unique interactivity AI provides will find value.

In the era of ChatGPT and generative AI, how does Dibbs position itself? Tell us more about the AI engine at the backdrop of your recent marketing campaigns?

We see tools like ChatGPT as just that: a tool. If you’re expecting it to generate marketing campaigns whole cloth, you’re probably not going to be very impressed with the results, at least in its current state. However, it’s extremely good at brainstorming ideas.

To give you an example, I challenged ChatGPT to write me an article based on the prompt, “Will NFTs become popular in rural America?” It told me that their popularity would likely be limited due to a lack of internet access, but that’s about as detailed as it got.

Instead, I tried a different tack: I asked it if it could write 111 blogs about NFTs. In response, ChatGPT gave me 111 unique editorial angles for potential articles, many of which were worth exploring. I think ChatGPT can help us get fresh perspectives and try ideas we otherwise wouldn’t think of.

ChatGPT conversations are everywhere. How do you see ChatGPT and other generative AI apps playing a larger role in your industry?

I think content marketers in any industry can find value in the iterative assistance ChatGPT provides, especially when it comes to looking for fresh ideas.

It’s easy to get trapped in certain routines, and that’s just as true with marketing. We all have our favorite words or turns of phrase we lean on when we get stuck. ChatGPT can help us get “un-stuck,” giving us new hooks to keep our work fresh and exciting. Doing so will help us better reach our customers and improve our business outcomes.

What is your take on the future of blockchain and NFTs for B2B space:

Blockchain and NFTs are just two of the several technologies under the Web3 umbrella. The potential of blockchain technology to promote online ownership and authenticity is well-known, along with the increasing popularity of NFTs. Despite the hype around Web3, many people are still unclear about its practical applications for marketing. However, Web3 marketing has significant potential, and there are many opportunities beyond just celebrity collaborations that are not widely known. In a nutshell, the potential of Web3 in the B2B space is a smarter and more fair way to communicate and do business online.

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An event/ conference or podcast that you have subscribed to consume information about B2B technology industry: If invited, would you like to be part of a podcast episode on CX and B2B SaaS?

I will be at the Youth Marketing Strategy  in NYC, speaking on the panel “WTF is Web3 – What Does the Future of the Internet Mean for Brands?” later this month and would love to connect with fellow Web3-native folks.

Yes, I’d love to be invited on your podcast!.

Thank you, Ben! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]