To Eric Pulier, engagement is fun. But loyalty? Even better. That’s the mission of Vatom, a company Pulier co-founded that fuses digital wallets with immersive experiences designed to keep consumers not just excited, but coming back.
“Loyalty is not just about accumulating points,” says Vatom’s CEO. “It’s accumulating affinity to something you believe in. It’s something fun or interesting and connecting with others.”
Pulier points to an experience Vatom designed for Pepsi and FIFA during the 2022 World Cup. Customers scanned QR codes on the back of Lays’ potato chip bags, uploaded a selfie, and saw their image, along with thousands of other fans, attached to a digital soccer ball — which then dropped into their digital wallet. Vatom found 40% shared the experience with friends — and 60% of those people returned every day.
“What’s interesting about this mode of loyalty is you might start with one brand, but the underlying elements of that identity are now known across brands,” he says.
You can hear more from Pulier in the video below, or read our lightly edited transcript.
TRANSCRIPT
Lauren Barack
Hi, everyone, I’m Lauren Barack with Signal 360. And today we are talking with Eric Pulier with Vatom. He is a founder of more than 15 companies, I think I have that right. Most of them have some focus on technology. Some have been in the healthcare space, some have been in the education space. But today we’re going to talk about his latest, which is Vatom we’re really glad that you could take the time to talk with us today. So welcome, Eric.
Eric Pulier
Thank you. So happy to be here.
I’m hoping we could talk first on how Vatom got started, the backstory on that and what the company does.
Vatom got started with a beer. For those of you who ever find themselves in the Santa Monica, California area, go to blues bar called Harvelle’s, and let them know I sent you. I’ve owned half of this for 15 years. And I was sitting there, quite a few years ago now, and thinking about the dynamics of the coming exponential trends that were converging in technology. Every company I’ve ever created, kind of started the same way where you see macro trends on the horizon, and start to think about what are the implications of this to business and society. The trends that that were very clearly coming on us were things like artificial intelligence, blockchain, digital wallets, digital objects, the demise of cookies was imminent, different ways of reaching people were necessary. There was this mix of need, and maturing tech, that just kind of was evident that we needed a new way, a better way to engage people at scale, and to gather data in a legal and ethical way. The problem that we had been seeing was that the data was not being gathered in ethical ways, and the legal concerns were getting more prominent because the regulation was coming. We wanted to think about what’s a better way to engage audiences in a way that was value-based instead of annoyance based, and could create a mutually beneficial relationship.
First, thanks for the tip on the blues bar, because I am from the Santa Monica area, and I wrote it down. And then second, I want to go back to this idea of digital wallets that you talked about, because that has been something I think many consumers sort of associate that as something a little complicated. I’m kind of curious how you at Vatom are bringing that into more of a user-friendly, you know, consumer space?
Yes, thank you. That’s exactly right, and that’s the key. So on one level, you have a very clear trend, everybody is going to change their notion of how they interact with companies and brands. Rather than saying, I’m going to interact with you on your terms and give you all my data, I’m going to own my own data, psychologically, I’m an individual going from place to place and what I want to do will be resident in my wallet, in my data, my information, and the communities that I want to join.
In the early stages of this, the concepts of how to affect that outcome were very complicated. There was a kind of a niche group that was doing it. There were regulatory uncertainties around what would you do if you actually went all the way out into the blockchain world. What was clearly needed was a couple of things. One is an absolutely dead simple consumer wallet where you don’t have to think about anything, and it just works. Onboarding, a gamification, actions that are clear and easy to understand, and results that are perceived as valuable and in fact are. So that was one thing. The other thing is, what do you do with it that actually creates that value? What was clear to us is that blockchain, which was one of the core innovations that enabled people to think of, well, what is the notion of ownership and how does that change our dynamics actually wasn’t necessary for many corporate purposes, and actually not even desirable. But for some it is. So we needed the first thing we needed to do was to create a system that was incredibly simple, easy to use, brought in gamification concepts, but also gave the brands and the companies the opportunity to put things on a blockchain or not, and to keep it private as they wished with simple policy and lever. That was very important also to deal with the legal departments and to make sure that that was adhered to.
Then the next and final piece is the management of data has to be done extremely carefully, because we are now going into a new mode where if somebody says, “Yes, you can have my birthday,” and maybe it’s one brand, for instance, at Procter and Gamble, and someone else says, “Yes, you can. No, I like country music.” Who’s allowed to know that and when and how they can revoke those permissions is, it should be super simple from the consumer side, but it’s a more complex task on the backend. So these elements had to come together, and that’s what we set out to build it battle.
Can you give me an example of that in play right now? I remember you guys were involved in the Frito-Lay-FIFA World Cup, I don’t know if that’s an example of this. But if you could walk us through just how that illustrates this.
It’s very hard to imagine a less technical audience then a demographic where you’re saying the only criteria is an interest in potato chips, right? That’s the level of interest or knowledge you need. Anything more than that cannot be assumed. So what we did was we printed hundreds of millions, literally over 200 million of QR codes on bags of Lay’s potato chips, and other things, other tasty snacks. When you went into a 7-11, for instance, were anywhere that they were sold and scanned it, it said, “Win a trip to the World Cup.” So the first kind of call to action was enticing. There was something around it. But then what happened next was different than normal. It didn’t say download an app. It didn’t engage you in something that wasn’t one off what it did is it brought you into a communal activity. It gave you a wallet, it didn’t even know if you had a wallet. it just opened it up. No downloads, no nothing. Next thing it did is it asked for permission to collect first party data in a simple and fun way. Click a box. And then it said what’s your favorite team.? Once we know your favorite team, and we know who you are, and you can get back into it, we can then engage you. And we ask you to take a selfie and share it with a friend.
Hundreds of 1000s of people did this and started to take the selfies which as you shared too with a friend were emblazoned on digital objects that became part of a massive soccer ball, a massive golden glowing soccer ball with your selfie on it, with your neighbor selfie on it, with a famous soccer player selfie on it, football if you go that way. As that ball came to fruition, you could go around let’s search for your friends search for yourself and be part of a permanent part of history. Now this is where the blockchain part did come in. Everything was off chain until this where we now wanted to make it permanent, permanent, meaning that you could pass it down through generations and you truly owned it. So we printed it on a blockchain, or minted it I should say, and dropped it into your wallet. Every day there were new games to play augmented reality games to play quizzes and trivia points to be earned.
The most important thing is, if we were successful, you would say how many people who scan a QR code, I’m going to give you first party data. If you get three to 5%, that’d be amazing. Why would they do that unless there was some unusual mechanism.What we found was over 30% did that, and over 40% shared with friends and over 60% that did that came back every day. The most important aspect of this metrics is the cost of customer acquisition plummeted dramatically. Because of the sharing, you pay for a certain amount and you get you double, triple, quadruple because of sharing. But the ultimate thing is every single person is opted in for an ongoing relationship with Pepsi.That’s the thing. It’s not “Okay, great campaign, it worked, do another campaign.” But what if you had a new consumer direct communication channel, which is what the wallet is, and why it’s the most powerful human communication tool since the introduction of the internet, certainly more powerful now than email which is perceived as noise or text, which is annoying to people. You now start dropping the value and continuing the relationship in a way that is both ethical and legal.
Now what’s happened since is they’ve rolled out a starting in Latin America, and there’s almost certainly over three, they have close to three and a half million people that are now engaged, but not on a campaign basis, but an ongoing basis. This is truly the future of loyalty. Loyalty is not just about accumulating points. Everyone’s got points and they can’t figure out where to go and get a free yogurt if they got three more who knows what to do with that. It’s accumulating affinity to something you believe in. It’s something that’s fun or interesting and connecting with other people. To the brand in novel ways and using gamification principles to bring you back in a way that that you perceive as having continued value to your life.
What’s interesting about this mode of loyalty also, is you might start with one brand, but the underlying elements of that identity are now known across brands. Pepsi has a lot of brands just like Procter and Gamble. Now if they brought a different brand into the fore, and they wanted to ask you for permission, they know if you’re a 50-year-old woman who likes basketball versus a 12-year-old girl, and they’re gonna be able to start to do more personalization at scale, and be more relevant to your life, but also reward you for things that you might have done in one place and another. This is truly important.
Then just the last piece that I want to mention is, we talk a lot about value. There’s a lot of fancy concepts of that that we can get into and how people perceive the use of their time. But there’s also some very simple innovations that come on the back of it, such as coupons. How insane is this coupon system where Kroger, you bring in a piece of paper that some percentage of people are willing to cut out, hand it to somebody, they shut down early to count up these pieces of paper, Kroger takes this enormous risk of holding all of this money eventually goes through a clearinghouse and then bill somebody like a Pepsi and eventually gets paid. So they only have 300 or so promotions at any given time because of this cumbersome and expensive process. Meanwhile, there’s 60,000 skews, and every single one of these brands wants first party data and wants to know their customer better, and doesn’t want to have to ask Mark Zuckerberg for permission to know their own customer. So this also collapses that whole model, because the objects that fall into your wallet, can actually go all the way back to the register for redemption, and money can move a lot more effectively and fast, and data becomes more accessible and managed properly. So it really has a lot of implications.
Are we still thinking about this space and this virtual kind of physical hybrid as a metaverse? Is that something that we still want to describe it as? Or is that not the way that we think of this?
I like to think of it that way personally, but I don’t like to use the word because people get confused of what that means. So let me say what it means to me, everyone can have their own definition of everything. I think what it doesn’t mean is little men or women running around in 3D and buying things or shopping or going and playing games. That is one aspect of an experience. Roblox, Fortnite, Decentraland, things like that. There’s a use for that, there’s a certain demographic that goes for that maybe it’s widening, there’s certain value in that. But it’s much more important to break it down to a more fundamental principle.
What we’re doing is we add this meta layer onto the internet. The most powerful way to communicate out to people who aren’t physically present is the internet. We’ve spent decades building out a set of capabilities, but they lacked the notion of ownership, and they lacked the notion of identity, like people places and things. You don’t really have that on the internet. So when I want to have a social overlay, and a feeling of connection, and a notion of of ownership, like real value for what I’m doing, you need to have a wallet, you need to have an identity, and you need to have some kind of experience that’s happening. Now that experience could be in 2D, it could be Reddit-like you could be posting something, “Hey, post a picture of your cat and a hat. And we’re gonna judge that and we’ll vote them up and down.” That’s a meta layer on top. But each of these things starts with the basic principle of know your customer of identity that goes across these experiences, and then reputation and values and things that you can earn and build. Then one of the types of experiences that you might engage with is in augmented reality. Think Pokéman Go-style treasure hunts, driving foot traffic to retail, or something you might do at a concert, which we do all the time. We do lots of concerts. But that’s AR-overlaid on quote-on-quote real world. The other one is virtual spaces. So as we get more advanced on the social and ownership layer, every website will have a come inside button. Why wouldn’t it? It’s like saying at first every website was static. I mean, it’s like saying every website is black and white. Why wouldn’t you make it color? Why wouldn’t you add something interesting and dynamic on it? Why wouldn’t you make it personalized?
Now we’re gonna get to the point where every website has an option to become more social, more visual, more spatial, more memorable, and more fun. That’s the metaverse. What people were thinking about in the past, because I think Mark Zuckerberg came out guns blazing, saying, “We’re all gonna live in this like game world and play ping pong with each other all day.” People were like, ‘Well, even if that did work well, which it doesn’t, I don’t want to do it.” It doesn’t sound that attractive. It’s really more of a philosophical shift to the next generation of the internet and the future of human engagement.
I’d love to hear a little bit about, since you have founded more than a dozen companies, you probably have some great thoughts and some great points that you can offer other people who are working.
Don’t do it.
Aside from that, don’t say that. Just some points for people who might be actually just starting out, or even people who are kind of looking to innovate, you know, inside an existing company, then take it into another direction.
So obviously I’m being facetious, I think it’s wonderful to innovate and do and make new things, and bring something to the world, it’s fun to walk around and see, I had a part of that, or we did that. But for those starting out, whether you’re in a company innovating or trying to create a company, the most important thing is to get off PowerPoint as quickly as possible, if you’re going to use that, and to get to get to launch, to do something that gives you feedback, and lets you understand what you should be building versus maybe what you thought you should be building.
If you can create practical steps that are useful along the way, and actually valuable to those you do it with, but then learn and listen, you’ll get there a lot faster than people who spend a lot of time just strategizing and not actually shipping. So it’s really important to activate that. This is not for everybody, but my success, or where I found the most I would say value and driving forward in my life and career has been in creating relationships with organizations like Pepsi, Procter and Gamble, Verizon, governments, etc, who have real needs. And to try to map what I’d like to see in the world and what I think the world needs, with the practical priorities that are coming down. What happens is we can shift those priorities a little bit by saying, “Well did you know you could do this.” And they can shift our thinking to say, well, that’s interesting, but not as important as these things. And you can start to hone your position by listening. It’s amazing what you know, lunch can do for changing years of work just by listening. I would really recommend those two things together, listening to the user community, prospective customers, and incorporating that into something that you can ship fast enough to get feedback because the world changes very fast. No matter how smart we think we are, or how innovative there’s many other people working on the same things at the same time. Ideas have a time, a time has come for things. So to get ahead of it. You have to move swiftly and practically.
Eric, thank you so much. It’s been great hearing from you hearing a little bit about Vatom. Really appreciate your time. I’m sure we’re going to hear actually more about Vatom going forward. So thanks for joining us today.
Thanks for having me today. It was a pleasure.
