NFTOpinions

NFTs a Hype or an actual use case

From branding  to royalties, to affiliate  programs  to exclusive benefits, NFTs ( Non Fungible Tokens) can be put to some brilliant use cases in marketing any product.

NFTs have been on the scene for quite a while (since 2012, precisely) but questions continue to arise as whether they are a hype or have actual use case. NFTs first attracted global attention when an artwork by Beeple, a digital artist, sold for $69 million straight at Christie’s – a popular auction house. While NBA Top Shot registered massive sales of its NFT- based sports card collectibles last year, in-game NFTs presented  a new model  of online gaming – the Play2Earn model where players could actually earn while they played. Games like Axie Infinity offered  players avatar NFTs while Decentraland sold digital land as NFTs!

From music to art to memes to moments to even ridiculous noises – the world seemed to be getting tokenized. Over $26 billion record sales were registered in 2021, and the first month of 2022 has evinced that the NFT mania is far from dying down.

It is certain, as the crypto market consolidates  further, more  money will flow into the NFT market, driving in key growth drivers to push the NFT market further up. The market, despite being in its nascence, is garnering  huge interest from  global corporate giants, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and the masses alike.

But what makes NFTs such a cult in the blockchain space and beyond?

The non-fungibility aspect of NFTs accords them a unique identity and makes them a coveted asset whose ‘ownership’ is akin to a status symbol to a member  within a like-minded community. NFTs are unique  tokens  establishing  the  ownership and  provenance  of  the tokenized art or asset. You could make a million  copies of a particular NFT, but the value of the original NFT would remain unaffected just like the Monalisa Portrait  or the Eiffel Tower – the original doesn’t lose its worth  despite being replicated infinite times.

NFTs live on a blockchain  wherein  the ownership deed is stored in a tamper-proof smart contract. Every hand from which the NFT has been passed, its transaction is chronologically recorded on the decentralized ledger.

Marketing is people-driven and  people-centric, and  so are NFTs – the  community is the leading  factor  determining the  worth  of  an NFT. From  branding  to  royalties  to  affiliate programs  to exclusive benefits – NFTs can be put to some brilliant use cases in marketing any product.

Here are a few use cases that NFTs can be put to in Marketing:

Big brands  are massively using this NFT-based marketing tool to create nostalgia around their brands and add that exclusivity factor to attract new customers and enhance the brand loyalty  of  the  existing  customers.  Minting  an NFT is a simple  task, but integrating that flawlessly  with  the  marketing campaign  makes  or  breaks  the  success of  the  campaign. Businesses  need  to build  a hype  machine  around   their NFT launch  to gain  as much community attention as possible.

A glimpse of it we have already seen with big MNCs like Microsoft,  Adidas, Nike, Coca-Cola, Budweiser minting their NFT collections and auctioning them off as a part of their marketing campaigns, while  top  fashion  brands  like Gucci and Louis Vuitton  created  a movie  and a game, and RTFKT sold NFTs of its virtual sneakers. The list of celebrities in the NFT league is endless. Who can forget the Bored Ape Mania – Eminem and Dave Chapelle buying six-figure worth Bored Ape NFTs!

(Re)building Communities

Whenever people share interests, communities are bound  to spring up around  them. NFTs and marketing both require  communities – for driving up the value in the case of NFTs and

as an audience for marketing campaigns. Currently, Twitter and Discord are the two most popular  platforms where NFT communities thrive.

NFT Marketing: Exclusive Perks and Utilities for Members  and Fans

NFTs are being valued and used beyond  their ‘intrinsic worth’ to reward  the holders  with exclusive benefits and utilities. By providing such benefits to the top customers or members, a business can boost customer  loyalty.

NFTs can be used to provide various kinds of utilities:

•     Access NFTs provide the holders with exclusive access to certain events or meetups.

A great example of this could be Gary Vaynerchuk, the CEO of VaynerMedia, aka Gary Vee, selling NFTs of his drawings  – the  collection  titled  VeeFriends –  to his online community. All those who purchase Gary’s NFTs get access to exclusive utilities, green room  access to all his public  keynote  appearances, a 40-minute podcast with Gary himself,  or  getting a chance to  attend  an hour-long virtual  hangout with  a Q&A session. Anyone can sell their NFT to another  GaryVee fan in case they want to earn profits from the NFT value increase.

•    Engagement NFTs reward  members  of the community Traffic Think Tank, an online learning community for SEO professionals,  awards the members  NFTs based on the merit within the community based on their engagement levels.

•    While gamified NFTs fuel the metaverse economies and in-game collectible markets.

The players get access to higher  traits and characters  when  they hold  these NFTs depending on a particular game’s criteria. Source: Webris

Decentralized Creator Economies

With the advent of web3, the users will get greater  power  to control  who can access their personal  data, who  can use it, and in what ways. This added  sovereignty  will  make paid creator  economies  a reality  soon.  Social media  apps like Facebook and  Instagram  have always suffered from content duplication and stealing issues, and there’s no respite available for the creators who put their heart and soul into their work.

Web3 internet will involve  creators getting paid their due recognition and compensation. NFTs, such as meme NFTs, even if copied a million  times, won’t lose the actual credits of the creator. With adequate compensation, these creators will shoulder  creative marketing campaigns.  Also, creator  economies  will allow  for  gamification of work,  i.e., work  broken down  into  smaller  tasks that can be taken up by the community members  depending  on their skill-set.

Written by: Shantnoo Saxena, COO of LBANK

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