Global head of marketing for WhatsApp talks the company's U.S. market ambitions.

Opening Bell

Eshan Ponnadurai

right now we have a Sean penn endure. I he is the global head of marketing for WhatsApp. So thanks so much for joining us today is Sean. Thanks for having me miss jo so I just want to jump right in congratulations on the new campaign. Why was it the right time to bring WhatsApp to the U. S. Spotlight right now? Yeah, I think I'll start with why WhatsApp exists. Um in many ways WhatsApp our mission is to connect the world privately. And we do that for over two billion people in the day across the world. Over 100 billion messages get sent on WhatsApp every day and they are all encrypted and into an encrypted. And what that really means is that when something's into an encrypted the content of that message or the conversation really stays between the person sending the message and their intended recipients. And we do that for all our users across the world by default. Uh And more recently we've even given our users the ability to ensure that their their messages are stored within to an encryption as well. But what's funny is over the last couple years we've become sort of the default private messaging service for the world. But the US lags a little bit behind that where people still love sending SmS and and we put that down to a number of factors uh mobile carriers in the US have traditionally incentivize people to send smS is people send messages across different operating systems. Um And to the point where the C. C. I. A which is the governing body that looks at mobile carriers in the US estimate 5.5 billion messages get sent every day in the U. S. That are unencrypted and by being unencrypted um they're they're prone to being violated, they're prone to safety issues. Uh And we see an opportunity there to really help us consumers understand the benefits of private messaging and create awareness for the need to message in private. And hence this campaign. So the campaign really looks to educate but we're doing that in a humorous way by creating an analogy between open mail and not being very similar to sending a message that's unencrypted. So I'm glad you brought up that point. You know when you travel overseas or if you have any international family you're probably very familiar with WhatsApp but american customers might not be as used to it using it every day. What else are you guys doing to push us adoption? Right. Our intent right now is really just to introduce ourselves to us consumers and and and hence the intent intent of this campaign. Our first step is really just to create a sense of awareness and appreciation to to message in private uh and then hopefully you know provide share WhatsApp as a potential solution to that. What we've seen across the world is that people have adopted what's happened really big ways and once they do that they start to look for features inside WhatsApp that enhance their privacy. Things like disappearing messages, encrypted backups, so we hope to see something similar here in the US as well. So is the idea really, you know, in the US it's very common to use whatever your phone's messaging service is, is the idea to provide an alternative or and kind of replace that default messaging service or is it really just to give people another option? Yeah, I think it's actually perhaps one step before that really, it's to create awareness for the need um as I was saying, SmS is are still very much entrenched behavior here and people don't quite appreciate that and SmS is actually not quite safe or protected uh and people value their conversations are highly uh so the first thing for us is just really creating that appreciation and awareness for for messaging in private um and then obviously ensure that they know what's up an option for them. Now. Your parent company meta has talked a lot about the metaverse, where does WhatsApp fit in in those plans to expand this digital world? Yeah, there's no specific plans Justin on WhatsApp that I could share, but I think there's a couple of things worth noticing for a lot of our users across the world. They are environments with much lower bandwidth, much simpler smartphone technology, so and in a more embodied internet, which in many ways the metaverse is for them could be just a better group calling experience or better connectivity. So we're mindful of that, ensuring that we're serving all of our users across the world in the right way as we introduced the metaverse to them. But I think what's important, whether it's inside the metaverse or outside of messaging your loved ones and the people you care about is going to be very important. So what is going to play a very important role in that? And we're excited about it. So, meta recently reported earnings and it was a little bit disappointing to the street. They also warned about headwinds coming forward, especially in the advertising business. Now, I understand that WhatsApp isn't in advertising, but you guys have a really interesting business model where you do think that WhatsApp can make some revenue on its business use cases, can you expand a little bit more on that? Yeah, I think what the trends we're seeing when it comes to business messaging and connecting with business on WhatsApp of really encouraging. We're seeing over 100 billion people every week engaged with the business on WhatsApp now. Um so we're partnering companies like Uber and Geo and India to give consumers the ability to book a ride through WhatsApp order grocery through WhatsApp, which we believe is a significant value to our users and something they find very meaningful. We're also seeing people start to shop on WhatsApp using our catalog feature. I think over 100 and 50 million people a month are now browsing catalogs from businesses on WhatsApp. So these are trends that we're really excited about. We're excited about connecting more people with businesses through WhatsApp and and that's a big focus for us. You know, I want to go back to this encryption issue because I I do agree a lot of people aren't as aware about it. You know, some people have been concerned with metadata issues in the past. What is WhatsApp doing to ensure that user data when you send messages, whether that's through video or through voice are safe and stay between the people it's intended for. Right and so on WhatsApp we offer into encryption by default. So that means the conversation you're having with your loved ones or your family members or your friends all encrypted by default. So we ensure that it's a default procedure. So it's the user knows from the beginning that they're protected And that's a big focus for us. Great. And what's the next plan for WhatsApp? Where do you guys want to go besides expand further in the US. You know, we continue to focus on our users. I think we continue to provide them additional privacy and security so they can have great conversations and um as we were talking about ensuring that connect with businesses in a really meaningful way. So they're big focus areas for us. Well, thank you so much for joining us. That's Ishaan Pond Durai. He's the global marketing Head for WhatsApp. Alicia back to you. All right, thank you so much Michelle Castillo there, our correspondent, of course, on Pandora, head of marketing at WhatsApp.