Use One ID, Lose Another: China vs. China

(Chiang and Mao in 1945, Public Domain)

When you obtain a government ID from one national government, you normally don’t get a second government ID from a different national government, unless you hold dual citizenship.

But for some pairs of countries, dual citizenship is untenable.

“President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) has cautioned Taiwanese citizens against China’s reported efforts to lure them into applying for Chinese ID cards and residency permits.”

Because Taiwan is a contested territory, acceptance of People’s Republic of China IDs could resulted in PRC claims to Taiwan…to protect its citizens there. Therefore Taiwan really discourages this.

“According to local regulations, citizens who receive a Chinese ID will have their Taiwanese household registration revoked.”

And we thought that moving Meta’s trust and safety teams from California to Texas was a big deal. At least the states of California and Texas are not launching military strikes against each other.

At least not yet.

Identity/biometric CMOs, Are You Still Silent?

(Silence image Google Gemini)

If you’re a Chief Marketing Officer at an identity/biometric company, welcome to 2025.

What content have you created so far to drive awareness?

None?

Guess you missed my December 30 message.

You could be well on the way to creating your 2025 content already: blog posts, articles, case studies, white papers, proposals, analyses.

It’s not too late to start.

Or you could wait until next week, next month…

But if you want to learn how Bredemarket can work with you to create the identity/biometric content you need now, schedule a free meeting with me to move forward now.

Vision Language Model (VLM)

(Flood image from Indian Navy)

A Vision Language Model (VLM) is a particular type of Large Multimodal Model (LMM).

Hugging Face:

“Vision language models are broadly defined as multimodal models that can learn from images and text. They are a type of generative models that take image and text inputs, and generate text outputs…. There’s a lot of diversity within the existing set of large vision language models, the data they were trained on, how they encode images, and, thus, their capabilities.”

Ipsotek:

“VISense (is) a groundbreaking addition to its VISuite platform that redefines real-time video analytics with Vision Language Models (VLMs). VISense represents a major advancement in Generative AI integration, using VLMs to achieve detailed scene understanding and contextual insights empowering operators to make informed decisions promptly….

“VISense allows users to ask questions like, “Let me know when something unusual is happening in any camera view” and receive a detailed response describing the unusual aspect of the captured behaviour. For instance, it might respond, “Yes, there is a flood; water levels are rising in the northern section, and several vehicles are stranded, causing heavy traffic congestion,” providing actionable insights that enable quick decisions.”

The Problem With Ready, Fire, Aim

(Ready, fire, aim wildebeest via Imagen 3/Google Gemini)

If I had to choose between acting too quickly and acting too slowly, I would choose the former. You already know I don’t like it when things never get done. But the ready, fire, aim method introduces problems of its own. Let’s look at how ready, fire, aim can adversely affect both external and internal content.

External content

If you haven’t figured it out already, I create a lot of external prospect/customer facing content. Not only for Bredemarket’s clients, but also for Bredemarket itself so I can get more clients. This blog post is an example.

Sometimes I meticulously plan a full campaign via a myriad of Asana tasks covering multiple blog and social media posts. Sometimes the entire project appears in a day or two, sometimes it takes a week, and one recent project took 3 weeks including teaser content, the main content, and follow-up content.

Yes, sometimes I meticulously plan. And other times I just do stuff.

Last Saturday I was struck with an idea for a 2 minute and 20 second landscape video about biometrics and Bredemarket. I knew it was long and many who encountered it wouldn’t watch the whole thing, but I wanted to make my statement and reserve it for bottom of funnel activities.

Only AFTER I posted the video did I realize that this was the logical second part to a 30 second video that I had previously created for biometric clients

If I had thought this through, I  could have started with the 30 second video, THEN introduced the longer video as the logical next step. Like a funnel, if you believe in funnels.

The proper first video

Well, better late than never.

The 30 second edition.

Watch this 30 second video that I made for Bredemarket’s biometric prospects and clients.

For Biometric Clients.

The proper second video

Hey, did you like that video? Would you like to learn more?

The 140 second edition.

Watch this 140 second video that I made for Bredemarket’s extra special biometric prospects and clients.

Biometrics and Bredemarket.

Hey, did you like that video? Learn more on my “CPA” page.

Bredemarket’s “CPA.”

Well, that’s what I should have done in the first place so I wouldn’t have to make this clumsy fix later.

But there’s still time to fix a future internal campaign before it happens.

Internal content

Because this content is internal I can’t really talk about it, but I anticipate that Bredemarket will be invited to a future event…and I am already planning NOT to attend.

There are a number of stakeholders associated with this event, and in a TLOI kind of way they will have different reactions to my non-attendance. Some of them probably don’t give a you-know-what whether I attend or not. But perhaps there are those who do care, ranging from mild curiosity about why I’m not going, to the other extreme of demanding to know how I could bypass this important event.

So I drafted three messages in case I was asked about my non-attendance: (1) a brief two-paragraph message, (2) a longer message, and (3) a detailed message which delved into my concerns.

But what if I don’t know which message to send? What if I unloaded my deepest darkest fears via the long message, when the stakeholder merely wanted to know if I had other commitments at the time of the event?

So I rewrote the messages so that they build on one another.

  • Let’s say Bob asks why I’m not attending. I would simply send Bob the first, brief message. If this satisfies Bob’s curiosity, we’re done.
  • If Bob asks more, then I will send those portions of the second message that weren’t part of the first one—namely, the 3rd and 4th paragraphs of the second message. (The first 2 paragraphs of the second message are identical to the entire first message.
  • If Bob still questions, I will unload parts of the third message on him—namely the stuff absent from the second (and first) message.

There’s my funnel. And if needed I can skip directly to the third message with certain stakeholders.

And if no one asks why I’m skipping the event, I don’t send ANY communication—and know that my decision to skip the event was the right one.

Future content

So in the future, whether creating external or internal content, I need to pause and think about how it fits into the tons of content I’ve already created.

So that I can tell the best stories.

And so I will achieve ready, aim, fire rather than ready, fire, aim.

Spilling One of My Secrets on Differentiation

(Wildebeest picture Imagen 3/Google Gemini)

I recently interviewed for a full-time position with an identity/biometrics company.

The hiring manager and I agreed that differentiation is sorely lacking in the industry.

However, the company did NOT agree that I was the person to lead their firm’s product differentiation efforts.

But this, combined with the upcoming completion of a Bredemarket project later this week, provides an opportunity.

Their loss is your gain

Bredemarket can now help others in the identity/biometric industry, including the hiring firm’s direct competitors, with THEIR differentiation—in the same way Bredemarket has differentiated other companies.

So I am going to help SOME company differentiate itself from the me-too “trust us” crowd

But how?

I won’t tell everything, but I will give away ONE of my secrets. 

Which isn’t a secret.

My baby’s got a not-so-secret secret

As you probably know, I like to ask questions before starting a content, proposal, or analysis project. And the first of my questions is critical for differentiation.

Why?

No…that’s the question. Why?

The life experiences of founders are very different. After all, the reason Bill Gates got into the computer business is different than the reason Steve Jobs entered the business. 

  • What if Jobs had never studied calligraphy at Reed? 
  • What if Gates had studied calligraphy at Harvard? 

The world would be very different.

Book ‘em, Danno 

I’ve written about the why question. Here’s an excerpt:

“Before I can write a case study about how your Magnificent Gizmo cures bad breath, I need to understand WHY you’re in the good breath business in the first place. Did you have an unpleasant childhood experience? Were you abandoned at the altar? WHY did you care enough to create the Magnificent Gizmo in the first place?

“Once I (and you) agree on the why, everything else will flow from that, and your own end users will benefit in the process.”

Give me that origin story and I can differentiate you and your product. Whether it’s your breath gizmo or your identity verification solution, we now have a story that your foolish inferior competitors do not have. 

THEY are just mere moneymakers. 

YOU are the enlightened giving individual solving a problem that has bugged you for years, making the world a better place.

So tell your story…and differentiate yourself!

Feeding My Niche

(AI image Imagen 3/Google Gemini)

My interests are admittedly niche (I created a YouTube video about it that most people won’t watch), but I’m still devoted to feeding the few who are also interested in this niche.

So if you’re interested in identity and technology content, ensure you’re following the Bredemarket blog and current social channels. They’ve changed since my original list and the May 2024 contraction, but…

in addition to the Bredemarket website, you can currently search for Bredemarket on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, the aforementioned YouTube, a well-known site that may or may not disappear in the next three weeks, and other places.

Subject to change.