Loyalty Series Part 4: Brand Collaboration with Web3

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome back everyone to Marketing Meets Web 3. This is the fourth conversation in a four-part series about Web 3 and loyalty marketing. In the first conversation, we introduced the series by covering some foundational Web 3 concepts and discussed opportunities for Web 3 to enhance loyalty marketing. In the second conversation, we spoke with Drew Beechler from Holder, a Web 3 CRM, and during that conversation we covered how Web 3 creates new paths to customer data insights. In the third conversation, we spoke with Toby Rush from Redeem, a Web 3 onboarding toolkit, about how seamless onboarding experiences can empower customers to take control of their digital assets. Alberto, tell us what to expect from this talk.

Speaker 2: 0:51

Hello Nick. Yes, the series closes with a bang in this final episode, which had with Thomas Pan, a prolific, very prolific Web 3 thought leader. In this conversation, Thomas shares ideas about how Web 3 impacts marketing and partnerships. We delve into the potential for streamlined collaboration across brands and look at how Web 3 communities are redefining brand co-creation. Let's get on it, shall we, Nick Casares. Thomas, welcome to Marketing Meets Web 3.

Speaker 3: 1:22

Glad to be here. Likewise, thank you guys for having me Excited to share some thoughts and insights and what's going on in my world.

Speaker 2: 1:31

So we have Thomas here as a guest for this conversation. Thomas is known as T-Pan online, so if you want to follow him and find him, he's known by this name. He's going to now describe a bit of his work and his profile so that we can set up the conversation. So, thomas, all yours.

Speaker 3: 1:51

Yeah, thanks, alberto. So my background has been in growth and marketing. I'm based in the Bay Area in California and I've been working at small startups, big startups, across a variety of industries in growth and marketing roles for about a decade. And when, during COVID early 2021 came around, I got sucked into and introduced to the world of MBA Top Shot by Dapper Labs and, as a growth guy, when I saw number go up and not even just go up but go exponentially up, it was just fascinating to me and I got hooked into that space ever since and this space more specifically.

Speaker 3: 2:37

But what happened was I started from something like Dapper Labs and MBA Top Shot. Let's just say I overinvested way too much but really understood, I think, some of the community and cultural aspects and just even some of the simpler applications and use cases from a consumer point of view of what could happen. And just quick, funny anecdote, I thought that in months, in a matter of months, mba Top Shot would be an every single MBA game Like you could literally live mint a moment or something like that. I think probably that's still in the books and the plan, but definitely taking a lot longer just because of natural sort of legal IP licensing reasons and just the realistic difficulty of it. But that really sucked me in and took me into more Web3 native communities.

Speaker 3: 3:27

So if you find me online, my profile picture my little mascot, is still a cool cat today and really appreciating what I mentioned in regards to community culture and sort of the creator aspect of this ecosystem in a slightly in a much deeper way. And that continued to encourage me to dig deeper into the broader ecosystem, primarily focused on Ethereum, but across other chains and areas as well. So started a sub stack or a blog called Web3 with T-Pan and I wrote a lot. I think I'm on number 221. I forget now. So have shared a lot of thoughts and, from a work standpoint, I'm currently the growth lead at Pollin Labs, which is a product studio under the Ethereum Foundation organization, also consulting and advising with various Web3 companies and related organizations within the ecosystem and, of course, writing and sharing my content, thoughts, opinions, sometimes interesting, sometimes just sort of fun, and also like to incorporate a lot of memes again for the culture. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.

Speaker 1: 4:43

It's probably for an entirely different conversation, but I would love to know more about your creative output and how you stay so prolific with your writing and your thought leadership, but really excited for this conversation.

Speaker 3: 4:55

Yeah, I appreciate it. I always joke and it's true to a large degree, but I call it a happy accident. Never really have been. I'm not a train writer, not a journalist. I've only done personal journaling like deer diary stuff since I was like six, seven years old consistently. So I think that definitely was a foundation in it. But yeah, conversation maybe more deeply for another time.

Speaker 2: 5:20

Well, as always throughout this series, nick goes without an introduction. And, yes, we are now at the fourth episode and last in this series, where we have been exploring how loyalty may be improved by Web 3. We've talked about the company angle, we've talked about the user angle and today, with T-Pan, we're going to be talking about how companies could interact using Web 3 and, specifically, how they could go about this concept of co-marketing for their businesses. So, to introduce the conversation, maybe, thomas, could you explain your definition for what co-marketing is.

Speaker 3: 6:01

Yeah, definitely. I think there's a lot of ways to define it, there's a lot of terms that could be used, but in short, for me co-marketing is a form of partnerships, a form of sort of expanding the tool set of distribution for whatever the message, whatever the product, whatever the initiative might be. And I think traditionally let's just say a couple of decades ago, even before larger social media platforms came about that typically was between companies. I'm naming names, these are all hypotheticals, but let's say, salesforce partners with Shopify and versions of that happen all the time still today and are very important just because of the ecosystems and the network effects. But it was more like that, larger partnerships, large behemoth companies doing that. And I think as social media started to really allow for more democratization of voice, content, attention and also the tools to create and have that proliferate, co-marketing started to evolve to relatively smaller creators and I like to say I'm like a retired sneakerhead but still like to follow what some of the latest and greatest is. I think retail fashion is actually whether it's luxury, whether it's a little bit more large scale is such a great example of seeing what co-marketing or in that world, more typically termed as collapse looks like. So simple example. I'm a fan of Nike and many other sneaker brands as well, if anyone from those companies are listening by chance. But Nike has really done a lot of their output from a release standpoint, these collaborations very simple example Travis Scott, very popular rapper, large, large, large fan base, literally happening now and over the past several days he's been releasing his Utopia line of Nike Air Force One. So clearly I still follow the sneaker news and some of that culture, whether it's artists, music artists, other builders and creators in the space to like actual brands. Louis Vuitton has done collabs, Tiffany collabs, dior, et cetera, on the high end side. So that's what it's looked like, what it has looked like to other things that are a little bit more in the spur of the moment from a co-marketing standpoint For anyone, if you know, I won't go on down this rabbit hole, but there has been more of this MPC influencer TikTok trend recently.

Speaker 3: 8:38

The creator, I think I forgot her name so I don't want to misspeak but basically one of the large Pinky Doll. Yes, thank you. I think I was like there's pink, there's sugar. Maybe it's Pinky Doll, yeah, pinky Doll, but you know, gang gang ice cream so good. Gang, gang ice cream so good. Blah, blah, blah Again. If you don't get it, look it up. This is huge. She actually signed a music partnership and is releasing a single with Fashion Nova. So you know that's co-marketing, right.

Speaker 3: 9:07

But now when we talk about it in a Web 3 standpoint, we actually go deeper and we go broader. And what does that mean? That means this can happen in a much more interesting way at scale with an audience, with a community, with sort of a partnership mentality. But with someone like myself, someone like that's a super fan of whatever your product brand, or even if you're B2B, there's actually some very interesting things that you could do to apply those same frameworks as well. So I think Web 3 is enabling that.

Speaker 3: 9:35

Web 3 is going to empower that to happen more effectively and it's actually going to be just naturally the next stage. Right, we're already seeing versions of that in the Web 2 point of view, where it's UGC. Right, it's still largely centrally controlled, but you're looking for more human, more normal, more average types of actors and maybe not the biggest influencers, but taking that content and those testimonials and sort of putting gas on the fuel on the fire and putting gas on that pedal in regards to proliferating that piece of more organic and more genuine, sincere content versus your standard, like 10 million follower influencers. So some elements and multi-dimensionality attached to that definition and we'll definitely dive into more what that looks like with Web 3 enabled, empowered and enhanced.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Yeah, you began by saying that there are multiple definitions of co-marketing, so I would like to hear what Nick has to say here.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Yeah, you've captured so much in your definition, thomas, so I'm not going to retread that ground, but one thing that I will add from my perspective, that I think is very, very powerful about Web 3 and it's actually a superpower of blockchains is the fact that we have this new substrate, we have this new surface area now that communities, that brands, that anybody who is on any side of a partnership can start to interact with, and that all starts to come together through things like NFTs right, these digital items, these tokenized goods, anything that we're able to recognize on the blockchain as an indicator of a community can be connected to another indicator of a community.

Speaker 1: 11:06

And now we have collaboration in a much more ad hoc and fluid way, which, if you think about the speed of the world and the speed of change, the pace of change, it's the way that we have to collaborate going forward. Businesses, companies, communities don't have time to go through these arduous processes of red tape and business development. We need to be able to move quickly. That's where the creative firepower is going to come from. That's what's really going to push communities and keep them engaged and excited about moving forward. I'm personally very excited about this technology as an unlock for much more fluid and open collaboration.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Okay, so, now that we have a couple of interesting and thorough definitions of what co-marketing could be, how could a brand or a business grow using co-marketing opportunities on the Web3?

Speaker 3: 11:55

Yeah, I would break this down into two categories. One is more like the hard stuff, right, because if you're running a business, at the end of the day you have to perform and typically that means hitting metrics, hitting KPIs, actually having number go up and hopefully in a sustainable and meaningful way, right, simple example. And as a growth guy it is a little bit of a pet peeve, but also I understand why it's still an important indicator. But when you talk about metrics from a growth standpoint for an app or a platform or a product, a lot of people like to say, hey, we have like one million signups, not to say that's not valuable, but a signup is not the same thing as a user, which is not the same thing as an active user.

Speaker 3: 12:42

So with that said, when we think about metrics and some of the valuable things from a business executives point of view or an operators point of view, the cold hard facts of how it's valuable is data. At the end of the day, it's data Whenever. For those that may have a Web 3 or a crypto wallet, whenever you connect your wallet I'm not sure for the audience listening if you know this or not, but they can see, typically, what you have in that wallet. I think in the future there will be more tools and protocols that can help obfuscate some of that, just like how that's happening today with. Things are getting much more cookie list on the mobile side, no more IDFA or GAID and application. There's just different ways to play that game. I won't get into detail, came from that world, but you know, for the time being, largely things are transparent and that's very valuable right, while there still is, to a degree or, depending on certain Circumstances, still on non-imity, which is actually great right. So, as a simple example, already touched upon Nike, so I'll just sort of, you know, just mention them a little bit more as an example. If Nike is able to, you know, have an avenue for users for whatever their initiative might be to connect their wallet. You could actually easily understand. Well, okay, uses that hold, let's say, a Nike NFT, you know. If it is, you know, not within a custodial way they're they're able to see. Well, what else do these people hold? How can we create a larger data set to see what these overlaps look like? Well, 80%, you know, as an example, hypothetically 80% of our, let's say, nike, you know, sneaker, virtual sneaker holders also have an NFT from NBA Top Shot. Okay, interesting, that's an insight. What does that mean? Well, maybe partnerships, going back to co-marketing, right. Or maybe Saying, well, you know, 50% of the people who hold, you know, our virtual sneaker NFTs have have never touched it, meaning like they're not, they haven't listed it on a marketplace, or like they're, they're just like really they're showing strong intention that this is theirs and they want to own it. Well, how do we reward them for that? How do we Maybe create a unique activation around everyone that qualifies for certain you know that have hit these certain milestones, like you've just held, and held only you know, at least one or two or maybe ten of these virtual sneakers for a year or longer, or a month or longer, or something like that. So there's a lot more mechanics coming on that front, and that allows for more opportunities to identify, to reward, to, to sort of partner using that data from a softer standpoint. This is where you can layer on the data with more Thoughtful approaches that are community led or partner led. I think some Simpler and more clear examples of this with other larger players in the space that have established themselves one is board a piazza club owned by you collapse right, one of the probably larger brands, communities and companies that Will continue to be a larger player in this space with their fundraise and just sort of the, the sort of slight first mover advantage that they have and their aspirations.

Speaker 3: 16:12

I recently saw a really good graphic from An individual his, I think his name is on Twitter Harry H a r r y, underscore forge, forge. So look that up. I'm pretty sure that's the handle and basically he and his team created an Amazing graphic of the Yuga IP ecosystem, and what I mean by that is not as Is not you guys IP as in which, which is very rich as well, don't get me wrong. They actually just acquired a metaverse studio, roar studios. So very interesting in terms of if you're to reverse engineer what the strategy looks like, but again for another conversation, another day.

Speaker 3: 16:54

But you know, you know Yuga has crypto punks, board a bell club, me bits, mutants, kennels, etc. Blah, blah, blah, heavy metal. But Coming from that, you got people because they have a pretty broad commercial license so they let any of their holders, basically, you know, use their own board a or, you know, mutant for different products, and Harry and his team identified over 330 brands that were created from this Board a yacht club IP and an associated IP. They can't use, for example, a Yuga logo, but they could use their own board a for whatever. Literally food, bottled water can water. There's so many things like. There's been DJs that you know have been putting their board a on their visuals for years now at this point, because this is over a two-year-old IP and Company and brand. So there's really interesting things happening there.

Speaker 3: 17:50

You know, as a precursor to Nike, nike, nike subdivision artifact, rt, fkt, you know has been doing a lot of co-creator and sort of co-marketing and co-partnership types of opportunities and efforts which I think Nike has taken a fair amount of insight from and is starting to apply More thoughtfully just because they have a way larger audience.

Speaker 3: 18:14

But you know they are opening up the usage of, you know, for example, 3d files. So for anyone that has been a part of the dust swoosh ecosystem and participated, you as of some point, last week you were able to download 3d files of the actual Virtual sneaker and do basically whatever you want with it. Right, you know, within certain means, like you know, you're not allowed to do, like you know, put a DDS logo on, like the Nike 3d file, and then start selling that or something like that. But it's actually quite broad, very, very, very broad from a personal use standpoint. Commercials somewhat limited, just because some complexities there, from a multinational fortune 500 top of company, adidas, similar example. And there's, you know, other projects that are art-based, like OPEP and by Jack Butcher, which is actually CC zero, which is a creative commons license. Creative commons zero, meaning it's very, very similar, a pretty much the same as public domain, meaning anyone can do anything with that art. And there's something there's been some really cool initiatives.

Speaker 2: 19:20

I've come from that is this something that all can only be used by by companies such as Nike or Adidas and Nick? Do you think this is the playground of big companies, or is there a room for the small ones as well?

Speaker 1: 19:32

I think it's a great question. So I think right now what we're seeing, you know, these are the, these are the guiding lights for the industry. So we're seeing really big players come in and experiment. Obviously, they have the budget, they have the capacity, the resources to put behind some of these experimental projects. Not everybody, not every company, has the marketing resources or the creative ability to dive in at this level, but I think what we're seeing are some early examples and some just inspiration about what can be done in the space and what I'm really excited about on on the community side of things Thomas, you hit on this quite a bit the co-creation side.

Speaker 1: 20:09

I think what we're seeing from brands like Nike and Adidas are one example of co-creation. But I think we're gonna be really surprised looking back in two, three, five years at how companies get their hands around this idea of Co-creation and start bringing communities into all the way, you know, as far back as their product creation process. You know, if you think about branding, if you think about the power of a brand like what is more and more impactful about branding than a customer actually creating products with you, you know they are becoming a maker in your brand. That's, that's branding it, probably the deepest level you can go.

Speaker 1: 20:45

I'm thinking about your brand as theirs, and I think that the co-creation opportunities and web3 are really gonna bring to light some creative use cases and applications for being able to use your customers in a way that treats them as owners and creators and changes the playing field and the relationship between brands and and users.

Speaker 3: 21:03

Yeah, and, and what I would add to that is like there's it's already happened for a very long time and continuing to do so, but you're starting to see, like you know, maybe brands you wouldn't expect to start diving into this for strategic reasons, but experiential, right, and what's interesting here is the examples we provided. You know, and traditionally you think of experiences like, hey, you go to a three-day music festival right, that's like a live synchronous experience. You go into a store live synchronous experience like oh my gosh, that's such a cool display and like I'm just gonna buy the thing you know. Also, like those, those sort of like pop-up museums Netflix is doing versions of that like stranger things, many other shows around different cities.

Speaker 3: 21:48

But what's interesting here is actually you're able to do, you're able to do this at scale and there's there's Some ability to replicate this. But it's experiential. But it's asynchronous, right. Because it's asynchronous, you're able to actually have a lot of advantages versus like, hey, this is only in one city and you have to physically be here to do it. That's not the case in many of the examples that we provided and we'll continue to share.

Speaker 1: 22:13

That's such a great point and I think it really is a. It represents a superpower web 3 that we haven't been able to do with web 2 technology, you know it's. We can coordinate things on platforms, we can try to do timed events and interactions, but actually being able to unite people by an experience and that experience is memorialized by something on chain, I think that's where it gets really interesting, yeah well as, as Thomas bottomless well of examples shows, there's plenty companies doing doing working here in Co-marketing and using the web 3 for this one concept that we explained and we covered in our previous conversation.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Actually, the first conversation for this, for this series, was tokenization, which is a very important term, only because it appears a lot in this, in this ecosystem. So I wonder if, thomas, you could, you could help us here with understanding how tokenized rewards in this case a play, or help helping to incentivize this, these projects, and Play into what co-marketing is used.

Speaker 3: 23:16

Yeah, yeah, I think one more recent one that's Actually I wouldn't say it's recent. I think there are a couple of specific examples that are that have been coming to light and it will be coming In the next couple months in a much larger way. In regards to tokenized rewards and incentives, is reddit and there's been. I think there's been like a steady simmer of Content and sort of insight about what they're doing. I actually recently I think it was last Tuesday or a little very recently shared like a deeper analysis and just my thoughts. Like I have no insider information or anything About my belief that reddit is going all in on web 3. You just don't know it right and that that's the actual that was the title of the piece reddit is all in on web 3, in parentheses you just don't know it. And I think that's the point right because I think, in terms of mass adoption and many people have said this in various ways like you don't need to know as a average consumer, like the exact mechanics of what happens Right, when I take a picture on my phone, like I don't know the details of the lens, etc. But with reddit as an example, tokenized rewards, you know, a high-level summary is basically they. One have created an ecosystem around avatars so they call them reddit avatars which is a great sort of product, market fit, opportunity and insight that they really seized, because reddit is primarily or at least you know in terms of a majority of the users an anonymous platform, right, like very large percentage of people do not like their username is not first name, last name, or like you don't know where they work or whatever. It's not linked in, but it's like, just as an example, I share this the other day with a friend my reddit username is a toothbrush right and tooth is spelled T, zero, zero, t, h, right. So like no one would know that's me and then I don't use reddit a lot, but like that's my, my handle, right and great and I could track them if you want.

Speaker 3: 25:22

But but with that, you know, there is a Maybe not always stated, but a desire to represent your personality, interests and who you are without revealing much more about yourself Via like the image you upload in your profile picture. And reddit sees that and saw an opportunity to actually Formalize some of that and to provide an opportunity to represent that in an even richer way, right? So what they're doing there is as one thing with reddit avatars is those are all actually, you know, on polygon, especially if you take that out of your vault, which is basically the reddit wallet, and they're sort of incorporating blockchain behind the scenes. But, in short, you could just represent yourself in other ways. They partner with artists, so, on top of you know, maybe making a In a much more affordable fashion a 999 USD purchase for a really cool Reddit avatar, you're also supporting an artist while you're doing that, so that really hits the nail on the heads for multiple ways.

Speaker 3: 26:23

The other thing, more specifically around tokenized rewards, that gets very interesting with reddit is doing is actually announced Literally about a year ago, so August 2022, the the emergence of community points. So it's been a long time coming. It's literally a year later. But the whole impetus of this was based on a series of insights that they had Over the past several years as they introduced different ways to show and support and reward valuable content on the social content platform.

Speaker 3: 26:58

And what they did was they created badges in particular, which is basically, if you see a very High quality and high value add a piece of content or post on reddit, you typically see next to the title all these little Symbols and widgets next to it, basically meaning people have spent money or points or coins to actually reward and award that piece of content, which is great. However, that's it like what's? You know, you get some brownie points and clout, right, and that's not even karma, right. Those are completely separate Things for my understanding. So anyone that's a hardcore reddit user apologies if there's slight nuances. I'm actually a core user, so okay great, you can call me out.

Speaker 1: 27:38

Please call me up, I'm wrong, okay.

Speaker 3: 27:40

Okay, great, glad, glad we have a fact-tracker here in the best way possible.

Speaker 3: 27:45

So, with those insights, you know, they they started to roll out, at least announced the emergence of community points, which is effectively tokenizing that contribution, and what they will be doing is Create flexibility for each of these subreddit communities, to one token, eyes to set more guardrails around how, you know, tokens could be rewarded and, three, how they could be used. Right, so this is somewhat a rumor, but just based on putting pieces together, this is Con-, con-, con-, con-, con Con-. Now why one? There was actually a more public announcement, you know, relatively recently, from one of the lead product managers that they were deprecating awards and badges, right, what? The mechanism I described? Because of those insights that they publicly shared, right? So this is coming from someone internally from the team.

Speaker 3: 28:41

Big announcement To they changed their terms of service or come terms of use where they're actually allowing trait there in their terms, they're allowing this, like you technically could have done this already, but now they're formally allowing this from a legal standpoint. They're allowing users to sell, trade, buy this stuff In the open market right on secondary. So that includes points basically are the tokens of community points as well as the red avatars, which that has already been happening. So you really seeing the setting and the stage being set more specifically in that regard. So this is an example of a social platform With its progressive to a degree progressive decentralization right, what they are decentralizing the platform and the content itself. What they're decentralizing and creating more ownership of, right through the blockchain and transparency around, is the value of that content and to capture it, redistribute it to the people that deserve that and decentralizing that process To the communities themselves. Right, may not fully right, this isn't like fully automated, but they're really did decentralizing that empowerment to really you know, as that word implies really empower the communities, the moderators and the contributors of that.

Speaker 3: 30:03

So that's one example that I just think is more relevant and recent and anyone that's trying to better understand of like hey, what is really happening in a more tectonic plate shift standpoint, versus just like hey, here's like this really cool, sexy announcement. Versus like whoa, this company is actually revamping their Infrastructure like to a degree right there, their actual like Ecosystem and economy. Right, again, like there's a lot to be figured out. There's probably gonna be, you know a lot, a lot of edge cases and people trying to game that system. But, like, these are communities of you know, the largest community, I think, is oh, I should know this because I was referencing this earlier this week, but I forget. You know, the largest communities on Reddit, like, are literally 50 to 60 million members. Maybe not active, but like, even if it's 10% active, that's insane, right? So so these are some really big tectonic plate level shifts that are worth keeping an eye on, at minimum.

Speaker 2: 31:01

Yeah, I can attest, and anybody who's listened to the previous Episodes, that Nick knows reddit and that he's a huge fan of this, of this project and what they're doing with their digital collectibles. So we have the in a co-market, in partnership. What we have is to two brands or more, I guess, collaborating on on a strategy that is going to bring benefits for the different audiences of both right, and I think one area that we can explore now is how web3 could help to ensure that the benefits from these two or more brands and companies are distributed efficiently and in a fair, in a fair way between the two audiences.

Speaker 3: 31:48

Yeah, definitely, I think. I think a good example of this going back to board at the club. Just because the brand has been around longer, there's just a lot more to reference and also from a recency standpoint. I saw this headline which is sort of funny and but Snoop Dogg has a board Ape and he's had a board Ape for some time. He released an ice cream line you could get that today. I think it's in like 2,500 Walmart's across the US of several thousand Called Dr Bombay, right, and he has just like all these different crazy flavors.

Speaker 3: 32:22

The context is, like you know, he loves ice cream and he always like he was never satisfied with the flavors because he like mashed. He mixed and remixed a lot of flavors together to just get whatever you know he liked, which is really funny because he shares that backstory. But Dr Bombay is his board, is the name of his board Ape, right? So that's a great example of how he's using that more open commercial licensing to bolster his own brand lines. He he's a business mogul as well, as you know, rapper and music artist, among many other things. But, like you know, from a business standpoint, he's expanding significantly and it just seems like he is using his board Ape, not only, as you know, a name in some of the products, but also as a character. So I think on social media he, you know, he sort of featured him some of the other brands. He featured him side by side with his like 3d rendered ape, right, like in terms of the actual branding of the ice cream itself, like it's more just the name and the flavor and like the design a little bit. But for example, you know he doesn't want to necessarily be as like aggressive about showing the board ape there, but actually one thing that I noticed is, for example, one the flavors on the lid it was actually in a cheetah pattern, right? Why is that? His ape is a cheetah ape, right? So that is paying homage to those traits. So, like you know, if you don't, if you don't know, that, like it doesn't matter, doesn't hurt you or anything. But like you know, for those that get that it's just interesting to see how like there's different levels, to how much you can infuse that into the story, whether it's the channel, whether it's actually on the product or not. But like you use as a character to supplement, you know, or even just in a little bit of design, because you know a lot of NFTs on the digital collectible side are trade based. Another example is with Pudgy penguins, of course.

Speaker 3: 34:02

So you know they've made a lot of waves more recently because they they're actually starting to bring more traditional business model, business models and approaches into. You know, web three. So instead of web three, you know consuming web two, it's more web two starting to come back, bite back, so to say, with best practices and infusing that into web three and being enhanced and empowered etc. So launch a lot of toys, all their toys to date. There may be changes in the future and you know full disclosure I have one. So definitely have a little bit more insight, which is helpful just to, like, you know, break down what they're doing.

Speaker 3: 34:39

They they, you know, are licensing the likeness from and they have, you know they have deals and contracts with their holders, right. So you know, out of all the different toys you see on Amazon and I think they're in Walgreens now, they have in Amazon and I think they're in Walgreens now, they have international retailers, like their distributions actually quite impressive and crazy. These are deals and these are actually characters that literally have all those straight traits from. You know the actual collection and you know, there are some limitations on the commercial rights or, like the the, the ceilings of the sort of royalty and partnership distribution in terms of the money those holders can make. But, like, these holders are literally having a share of revenue Through this distribution. So that's really, really cool and they're committed to do that a lot more.

Speaker 3: 35:28

So that's going to be very interesting and they have something to keep an eye on and I don't know the details. They've been hinting at it for months. They have something called project overpass which is going to make licensing Easier for the whole space. So that's something to think about from a co marketing standpoint and what I imagine whether it's, you know, when they announce it in the first iteration or, like you know, you know, version 1.0 versus, you know, maybe at a later point is, I imagine, the.

Speaker 3: 35:58

The secret sauce here is Opening it up for other external partners outside of Web 3, right, so, like, board apes could come in and do something with, maybe, some of the pudgy penguins, but maybe, you know again, like we talked about ice cream, but maybe, like Ben and Jerry's wants to do something with a pudgy penguin, which would be actually a pretty dope collab because, like, obviously, ice cream. Ice is cold, so. So that might be very interesting, right, where they sort of build hooks to actually be much more friendly and open to just brands that like don't understand all the details of the industry that we're in but like understand co marketing and partnerships, right. So those are just some examples of what's going to come down the road and are already happening today.

Speaker 1: 36:39

There's something that I wanted to chime in on, just in terms of recognizing the community contribution. And so you go. Labs recently announced they're made by apes. Sort of it's a brand on their co creation process is the kind of how I think about it. But beneath just the branding benefit of being able to unite all of these really driven projects, businesses, by this this made by apes tag, they're also granting or recognizing the IP ownership on chain with the made by apes program and so if you have an ape and you're creating a business out of that, you can now be recognized on chain as the owner of that ape and that way, you know, it's a very clear licensing structure at that point and so there's a way to kind of work backwards towards royalties or any kind of benefits that are owed the creator and the community around that. What I think is really interesting about how this whole space is evolving around co creation and how this relates to co marketing is the idea that you know as a brand especially as a brand gets bigger their global brand.

Speaker 1: 37:43

Culture is complicated. Cultures change so fast and you know you think about meme culture, you think about social media how fast everything changes. It is virtually impossible for a single brand team to stay on top of all of that and stay relevant. And what's really cool about where web three is taking us is it brings the community around your brand on board as sort of the curators of everything that's happening around them, and giving them the opportunity to inject your brand and their perspective Into culture and mashing that all up into something that there that could be a product, it could be, you know, a derivative work that recognizes your brand, but it's. It's again opening up this really creative playground for brands, marketers and communities to come together.

Speaker 2: 38:28

For marketers that may be thinking, ok, co marketing sounds appealing. This is, this is very interesting. We should maybe explore this further. But they're concerned about, ok, how can we actually you know track any of these? How can we follow up on this? Is this working? Is this not? Can we maybe talk a bit about how can help we're three, sorry optimize the tracking of these campaigns and potentially increase the transparency behind them?

Speaker 3: 38:55

Definitely, definitely. That's a great question and to a degree it still is the Wild West. But also to to counter that, even though what we're talking about, like the core, let's say the digital collectibles or entities are on chain, there's still a lot of off chain activity, right, a lot of this content that might be promoted or shared or, you know, created from excited community members, if there is sort of initiative under ways done on More traditional channels and social channels, and there are some great emerging social platforms as well again for another conversation but that is off chain, so to say. Right. So this can integrate and plug into existing Sort of more tech stocks, so to say, and can be supplemented with other tools and sort of platforms that integrate relatively easily. So I could go very deep on this, but we'll keep it a little bit more high level, as one example is, there are A healthy number of options and partners and companies that work on the sort of quest and engagement layer, of sort of the martyre stack. So if throw throwing a few names, I've used pretty much all of them to a degree. So, for example, zeal Layer three, galaxy intract, sesame labs they are a partner for a lot of web three companies, protocols and products to not only help acquire and onboard users, but to engage them and sort of identify what types of users or who is more loyal and engaged and rewarding them accordingly, tracking them through the funnel, you know, encouraging users through some high level forms of incentivization, how to get them to take an action.

Speaker 3: 40:53

And with Pretty much all of these tools and platforms I mentioned, you would connect discord, you connect twitter, you could do. You could connect a lot of other things if you want to. You also connect wallet already mentioned, why that's very valuable for other reasons, specifically, more on chain, you can, you can, you know, of course, collect email and stuff like that. So you start getting you know for, especially more established companies and teams and sort of, let's just say, your MarTech stack. Like you, you might believe and I'm not arguing that you don't have, but you might believe you have a 360 degree view of your consumer or customer.

Speaker 3: 41:31

Now, you, you actually not only have a 360 degree view, but with any on-chain data, if you're going in that direction, you have another dimension, odd, added on to that 360 degree view.

Speaker 3: 41:42

Right, and, like I said, because it's integrated and there's tools that help make that easier, you really start to get a much More interesting view of what is going to be the future of understanding your customers, persona etc. With that extra dimension. So you know if anything recommend you just understand a few of the players and say how that works and if already more comfortable in web 3 and the general ecosystem and you have like a web 3 or crypto wallet, you know, just explore those tools, maybe try a quest or some sort of campaign from one of those platforms and see what that looks like, see what they're asking to connect to from a social platform standpoint, how they sort of create these engagement quests. Simple example they they have like a daily check-in quest, a weekly check-in quest and you get XP for that right, you level up Etc. A very standard gamification, but pretty sticky too, especially if you have the right hooks and sort of flywheels to encourage that.

Speaker 2: 42:45

Transparency is a word that came out a campaign in the two previous Episodes and I wonder, nick, if you wanted to maybe share a couple of thoughts about how transparency can be achieved in web 3, using web 3 in these co-marketing campaigns.

Speaker 1: 43:02

You know, kind of touching on the engagement journey that Thomas was just mentioning. You know, I think is as marketers and people that are interested in creating better user experiences, it's it's always been important to understand the user's journey and what the user is doing along the way. There are very specific interaction points that signify Somebody's progression through a user journey, through user experience, through engagement with the brand, through engagement with the community. And what's interesting about web 3 and how I think this helps with transparency, is that web 3 now, you know, by being able to do things like dynamically update NFTs or being able to take snapshots of transactions via on-chain activity, we can start to, I think, more clearly Really document the user's journey and and user's interaction with our brand, with our tools, with our systems. Because as they hit those sort of checkpoints where we've identified, you know that's an important, that's an important thing for somebody to be able to do and then move on to the next stage of the journey we can capture, that is, as an NFT or as an on-chain transaction. So, in terms of transparency, I think, from marketer to consumer, it becomes much more clear what's happening in that journey.

Speaker 1: 44:12

On the flip side of that, from consumer to marketer. It now is much more clear how marketers are trying to use my data to understand the user's journey and how marketers are trying to use my data to interpret who I am. So, instead of just, you know, following me around the web and you know paying for as much data as possible to try to zero in on a particular attribute that they might use as a signal or an indicator that I'm going to purchase or I'm going to engage, it could be more of a situation where marketers are asking for my data and then showing me exactly how that data is being used, and then I'm going to ask myself you know, if I'm going to be able to use my data as a customer, as somebody who's interacting with that brand? I can actually see my profile evolve. I can see my profile on chain and say, okay, that's how this brand or this community sees me, and then I can make the decision Do I want to be part of this ecosystem?

Speaker 2: 45:04

If not, I unplug. You know I'm not going to contribute my data. I can disconnect my wallet and I'm no longer a part of that system. I can continue to have a full journey on one of them, and I think one that T-Pen mentioned before was Pudgy Pengwins. They have a potential journey using Web3. That is interesting and I wonder, thomas, if you could share your thoughts about it.

Speaker 3: 45:29

Yeah. So in regards to Pudgy Pengwins, oh my gosh. Yeah, they've had a very interesting story, so I'll try to keep it. It can't, it's impossible to keep it brief, but we'll sort of share a little bit more, end to end, what happened because, as I mentioned, I'm fairly close to and have been following them since the start. So they initially launched in 2021, I believe, h2, so I don't know, I don't recall exactly when, but let's say, around fall 2021. So they were an earlier project.

Speaker 3: 46:05

During all the hype, all the craziness, so I believe the floor, or like the cheapest, the lowest price at one point, of a Pudgy Penguin was something close to like high single digits, something astronomical and ridiculous in hindsight. But back then it was just like, oh yeah, everything's like that valuable, which you know an obvious hindsight, wasn't. So I was one of the victims, so to say, of that mindset. But hey, we're just here for the art, right, that's what they all say to cope. So, basically, it was like something ridiculous, like 20, let's say, 25 grand for, like the cheapest Pudgy Penguin. Actually, a lot of popular influencers and you know, celebrities I think Steph, believe it or not, steph Curry still has a Pudgy Penguin. He also has a board Ape too, but you know you just keep quiet about it. You know they didn't do anything crazy but you know probably not enough. It's not valuable enough to like to make any moves because that'll cause more commotion and eyeballs on him. It definitely reached mainstream Pudgy Penguins partially because it's just a very cute and approachable art style and character and just got a lot of hype, in short.

Speaker 3: 47:15

And what happened was the founder essentially was there to make money. I wouldn't say it was like a hard rug, meaning like he didn't necessarily just left them, left the community high and dry, just hey, bye guys, oops. I was like making a gesture and just like hit the pen on my whiteboard to animate it. But he basically was actively and openly, you know, made it public and known that he was looking for a seller, right, he's just not someone that he's good at having a good idea, scaling it up, building hype, marketing and doing BD and selling the thing, but not necessarily like, okay, how do you go going from zero to one? Maybe great. Also, right time, right place, right character, cute penguins, but like one to 10 and 10 to a thousand, not him. So fortunately he also realized that, although that led to a lot of like concerns from the community, like, oh no, what are we going to do? We're going to zero, like some other things and definitely had some turbulence, to say to say the least.

Speaker 3: 48:16

In regards to the community, the floor, the sentiment, is also an indicator not the indicator, but one of floor price. So that dropped significantly and basically in April 2022, so a little over a year ago, lucanets and, you know, a group of other individuals basically bought out the whole IP and everything related to Pudgy Penguins for two and a half million dollars, which sounds super stupid If you don't know what's going on and just like just silly, right, like clearly it's a bubble for some people, although that was still at a point where, you know, the market was much healthier, at least from a price standpoint or like a perception standpoint, versus where we are today. Bought out for two and a half million everything, and you know he shared publicly, he was willing to pay, I believe, up to like from a pure offer standpoint. He was willing to go as high as seven and a half million and I think in his heart of hearts, he was able, he was willing to go up to 15 million dollars, which is like, again crazy right and it's like, first of all, like that capital on hand. He's not a VC, he doesn't have like LPs or anything like that to my knowledge, but like he believes and it sounds like he was right with a bet that he got a steal right Because basically they were like, yep, cool, two and a half mil, we're out Like they got what they wanted. He got what he wanted as a good deal. Basically, what he saw was a very, very high ceiling and high potential IP brand right, even despite all that turbulence, very strong community, very committed community and he saw a path to really turn this thing around and really turn it into a real business.

Speaker 3: 49:56

So a little bit about Lucanets and his team that he brought over from previous endeavors. Basically he's an E-com genius. He's like only 25 years old. He really came from like a rough background and just really hustled his way to where he is today and, more specifically, what he focuses on and his specialty is in the E-com set of things. So he's worked with a lot of celebrities, influencers and other products to basically from a lifetime standpoint Like it's not directly under him, it's more under the brand, but like basically done a lot of work to achieve lifetime like nine figures plus of sales, right, and I think even just one of the products it's called gel blasters.

Speaker 3: 50:33

I looked it up the other day and I was like what the heck is gel blasters? But pretty cool, it's like paintball, but it's like without the paint, right. It's just like little little, like tiny water balloons and like paintball pellets, but, like you know, it's just water. There's no stains. You know, it's just very fun and friendly. It stings just enough to be like, oh, I got hit, but like just generally very safe for everyone to participate in, right. So like Nerf guns, but like just a little bit more like to it, like a better experience.

Speaker 3: 51:00

Since we talked about that, he did nine figures and sales and sort of led the whole end to end process with that, from my understanding, right. So basically he's, you know, in certain circles he's like an E-com God, like sort of literally, which is pretty crazy if he understands background. So he basically, you know, over the course of a year, started planning, building in the background all these things like the E-com portion and sort of the product portion of this. So May, a few months ago, they launched, you know, their toy line on Amazon. I mentioned all the brick and mortar stores at the time of that recording. I think they were on track on an annualized basis to like do three to four million approximately around that ballpark range in like physical toy sales which like, first of all, no one else is in.

Speaker 3: 51:43

Web three is doing toy sales, like I mean they are, but like not even close to that degree. And also you know, with like he's just started right Like a lot of interesting stuff that he's doing. So you know I've written about it, check that if you want, or just like follow the brand. The other piece that hasn't really even been turned out on yet is social, turned on in terms of like adding, adding field of fire from the E-com side. So a few things that they've done very, very well and other similar what I call acute meta. So any projects that have more like cute capability and potential and ceiling are following versions of this and maybe have done it, but are probably being a little bit more explicit in following a version of a playbook, so to say that they've really proven out.

Speaker 3: 52:33

And again, this is Web two. Right, this is what I'm saying. Like Web two, best practices were scoffed at initially, but we're are sustainable and scalable. And now you know a lot of Web three companies and brands are sort of like shifting back there and that's nice because it shows for Web two companies and brands are like, okay, this Web three things interesting might be the future, how do we get in? They're starting to see like, okay, it's not as scary and foreign as it might, you know, initially seem to be, so it's a win-win on both sides.

Speaker 3: 52:58

But basically they only really started social efforts like several months ago, like more officially in January, but you could even just look, because they don't have too many posts. You could actually see when they started hitting traction with their sort of content, sort of output and like the style of content right, which is actually truly only more like few months ago, versus they really start ramping up, you know, testing and iterating on their content strategy and like the types of content they wanted to test. So they basically went from like very low six figure followers, if not like less than that, to now they have 738, as of yesterday, I think, because I just follow their like. I only use Instagram partially just to like. See, you know, follow the content because it's so damn good. Honestly, it deserves swearing as well. It's so damn good and you know they've grown rapidly and they only recently started turning it on, but that's going to be purely right, like a Web two or just like outside of the tiny, tiny audience and echo chamber of like NFT enthusiasts, web three enthusiasts and crypto folks and they finally, a few weeks ago or a couple weeks ago, had their first piece of content promoting their toy line. Right, they have done very light social ads as well, but you're going to see a lot more of that come and boom. You just flip the switch. Tiktok doing a similar thing, smaller audience, but their link actually isn't even to the shop or anything. It's actually to the Instagram account. So you could actually tell where they're funneling their audience towards in terms of sort of the external audience outside of like their core community and Web three folks.

Speaker 3: 54:34

Lastly, what they're doing, also from a partnership standpoint and IP is very, very interesting because, again, the core thesis here is like Pudgy Penguins, is like going to be a world-class IP. So what are they doing? They're being very strategic on the B2B standpoint. Right, they attended the licensing expo in Las Vegas. So if you're a brand or an IP, that is, that is the thing you go to. If there's only one thing you do from like a conference standpoint, every year you go there and I learned about this actually last year versus some other. You know Web three folks that are more in the game, but like they supposedly have some very big and interesting deals that they signed basically from that, and Luca's been there before so he knows that game. So you know again, very notable dudes only 25, right, but this is like the sort of next generation entrepreneur that gets it exception and Outlier, yes, but like is he someone to just even pick into the brain and just reverse engineer what they're doing? 100%? They went to Comic Con, right, so that's more on the consumer side of things.

Speaker 3: 55:30

But if you see the social videos of what they've done and like lines literally 100 people long, like you think this was Disneyland, like a Disneyland, like mini ride or something, and it isn't. Part of the reason is because they just have this really cute and cool claw machine, right, like this should be just copied. Honestly, this should just be copied by every single person, no matter it's Web three or not. But like they have a claw machine and if you're lucky enough, obviously, and they don't make it super hard, like out of arcade. But like, if you get, if you win, you win one of the toys, right, and that's just such a surprise and delight moment. It doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter if you know what the hell Pudgy Penguins is, it's just like cute right. So you win right for a very, very low cost. So that's just a little bit of insight into what they've done so far on the tech side touched upon a bit, but they have a lot of stuff happening on the tech side that's maybe a little less exciting from like.

Speaker 3: 56:20

You know, just like how do you capture a very wide audience and net. But you know, I forgot to even mention but you could find this on anything that is that uses Jiffy on their GIF or GIF back end. But you know, you search Pudgy Penguins on. You know, like Instagram, twitter, etc. For GIFs. You type in Pudgy Penguins, anything. You get a variety of things. I think total, as of a few days ago or a week ago, 5.6 billion views On all of their GIFs combined, and I think they have like just shy, like 3.8 or 3.9 thousand GIFs.

Speaker 3: 56:57

So just do the math, divide it like obviously not distributed evenly, but clearly that's also part of the awareness game. Right, the point isn't necessarily to be like Pudgy Penguins is like an NFT collection, but Pudgy Penguins is just a cute brand and, like I like their content and they're fun, right. And then that really bolsters and creates a much stronger business model. So, regardless of where you sit in the ecosystem or if you're just curious, check them out, it's literally just, you know, a masterclass on so many different levels on what they're doing Technical, social content, community building, co-marketing, co-partnerships, co-creation, all that fun stuff. So that's my spiel. I could talk a lot longer about that, but that's for you to just sort of dive into as a listener, because I'd like to say I did my part.

Speaker 2: 57:44

Yeah, as we've seen well by the examples and in particular by this one, we can see that this is definitely moving. To some it may feel like it's moving slowly, but to some others it may feel like it's moving actually really fast. And I wonder whether it's a matter of you know some of the challenges and concerns that may that may appear when a company is trying to use a Web 3 for their co-marketing efforts, that this is a, this is the reason, right. So maybe, nick, maybe we can start with you here. What do you think are some of these challenges and concerns that a company may consider when using a Web 3 for their co-marketing strategy?

Speaker 1: 58:26

So this came up in one of our other episodes in this series, but I think it's the fear right now that a lot of marketers and organizations have of participating in such an open way. Right, if we think back to the beginning of social and the beginning of UGC, there was a lot of hesitation by companies and brands to actively get involved with social, to engage people that way, because you had less control. Who knows what people are going to say about our products? Who knows? You know we can't put the brand filter on top of that, and I think right now we're in a moment in time with Web 3 where people who do get it are starting to experiment much more rapidly and we're starting to see this really play out for them. You know the Pudgy Penguin strategy that you just recapped for us, thomas. I mean I think that's a great example of somebody who understands Web 3 very natively and is using that to build what sounds to be an empire around this.

Speaker 1: 59:19

I think for marketers that are less connected to Web 3 or haven't really taken the time to immerse themselves in the technology, there can be some hesitation, some fear about how do I get involved?

Speaker 1: 59:33

Do we lose complete control of our brand, and I think what's tough right now for a lot of organizations is seeing what that future looks like. And so, you know, I guess, to counter that with maybe a little bit of advice or insight, education is the most important part right now. Right, getting involved, getting our hands around this technology, trying things ourselves so that, as marketers, we can understand how do we actually turn this into strategy? How can we do this at scale? How can we do this in a way that's going to protect the interests of the business but also allow us to be innovators in the space, instead of being, you know, the laggards who, in five years from now, look back and say, oh, we should have gotten involved in Web 3, the same way that some people relate to the game with Instagram, with social media, etc. So, yeah, lots of learning to do and lots of, I think, initial fears to get over.

Speaker 2: 1:00:21

Thomas, any more concerns or current limitations that you see in for companies using Web 3 for their marketing?

Speaker 3: 1:00:29

Yeah, overall, I agree with Nick. The obvious thing, especially if you're a US based or that's where most of your audience is regulatory. But I think there are still different ways that actually are fine from a regulatory standpoint, which is more about like tokens or, like you know, actually having like a cryptocurrency, but as purely a digital collectible and with certain guardrails, you know. Let's just say, simply put it like, there's a reason why Starbucks and Nike are pushing ahead because of the structure that they put around it. There's no token like in like, let's say, there's no like Bitcoin or there's no coin associated. These are all tokens, but as a digital collectible and they're pretty explicit and you could tell that they really are right. Can you trade them? Sure, just like you could trade Pokemon cards right on eBay or like in person, I think so. So that's something to take note of. In regards to like regulatory and some of the nuance there and like was still somewhat great area versus like what is like, completely fine and like. Mind you, the Nike and Starbucks initiatives are US first and for now, us only. So like, there's a fair level of confidence. Like if you, if like you don't have the resources or don't know who to reach out to, from like a securities lawyer or just, like, you know, crypto Web 3 lawyer. Well, you know, some of these Fortune 500 companies have had some probably very deep and complex discussions and like they're moving forward with this in the US. So, you know, forward is worth, you know, worth mentioning.

Speaker 3: 1:01:55

I think the last thing I'll say is, hey, you don't have to dive into it today or tomorrow. It takes a while and you know, for myself it took like months and I'm not exaggerating. It literally took me, you know, like several months to be just like, oh, I sort of get this. Let me go a little deeper on the rabbit hole from like my, my world of NBA top shot, because that's what I was focused on, right, but there's just so much more. So I would encourage anyone that's just like on the fence just to like keep the pulse a little bit more Right and like what are your favorite brands? Like maybe one of those brands are doing something in Web 3 or like exploring, just follow that Right, and then you'll probably, just by nature of that, will realize like Okay, like example, like let's say, you're a big fan of Nike, well, they're clearly doing stuff there.

Speaker 3: 1:02:42

Like that's not a big lift, just to follow them a little bit more on a specific topic within their ecosystem. Right, you're a Nike fan already, so why wouldn't you like what they're innovating and testing? Whether it succeeds or fails, then you probably like, you know, sneakers and other stuff. Well, wait, a second. Adidas is doing something too. Let me just keep tabs, right, that's it. Nothing crazy. I still like, for example, I still like Nike better, right? Not saying me Adidas is listening, but listen, you know hypothetical, right? Oh, wait, a second, puma is doing stuff too. Okay, well, let's see what Puma is doing, right.

Speaker 3: 1:03:15

And then you slowly go down that rabbit hole versus like, hey, you got to drink by the fire hose. So that's what I really, you know, recommend, I get it and I know judgment, this takes time and there's just a lot of reasons not to get into it. Still like totally fair. And what I will say, without revealing anything, is and I'm sure, nick and Alberto, you guys have some insight, or like your version of this too is just like basically every major brand consumer facing or otherwise, even is like deeply exploring this industry and is in at minimum R&D mode, but, even more realistically, just like quietly building things in the background. That's all I'll say. I've just heard a lot and it's like a little mind boggling. They're just not out yet. It's not the right environment. You know crypto is still a little murky. You know general sentiment is, but, like your favorite brand is working on, likely working on something in the space, if not already in early discussions or even deep discussions, if not building the thing.

Speaker 2: 1:04:17

Yeah, this is definitely happening, as Nick and I cover in the news that we explain or we'll cover in the Marketing Meets Web 3 podcast. Initially it was not hard but harder to find examples of companies using Web 3. And nowadays you need to pick which one you're talking about, because there are plenty. And the same thing I'll say about co-marketing it wasn't something that I had heard before Web 3 came around, but nowadays I keep hearing about it. And so for the last question, thomas, I mean I wanted to ask you about the future, but the future certainly feels pretty close already. So maybe what do you think in the next six months or one year we are going to see in terms of co-marketing and companies using Web 3 for these efforts?

Speaker 3: 1:05:10

Great question. I don't think I have any like super crazy hot takes off the top of my head. I do think it's apt that you know we're talking about. This is all related to loyalty and this is part of a mini series around loyalty, but I believe maybe not six or 12, but I think we'll see. You know very clear arguments for this. Everything loyalty will be just on chain and much more dynamic, flexible, open to a degree permissionless.

Speaker 3: 1:05:50

I'm very, very convinced that loyalty is going to move in this direction and is like there's just the most clear and obvious use case and easy argument for every brand to do it. And I'll break it down very briefly. One is because if you're already on the cutting edge and again the top brand names we mentioned Nike, starbucks are great examples like using the existing sort of paradigms around loyalty like this, is it Like there's nothing else, like like Nike's head of loyalty If there is that role or head of CRM, it's just like you did, like great gold star, like you did the thing you're doing all the best practices you're pushing, you're pushing the boundaries and like you're optimizing every single 0.1% lift. You can do right. Like you did it right, you won right. What's next right? Like that's my question for any anyone that has a world like McDonald's, starbucks, nike, like less familiar with international brands and how they do, like every airline loyalty program. Like you did it Good job. Like what's next? Seriously? Like without a buzzword, like like a serious game changing, like new paradigm thing it's Web three. I was gonna say guarantee. I strongly believe in that right.

Speaker 3: 1:07:00

The second thing is let's say you're behind right. You're like oh man, we're like a huge brand. You know we just haven't focused on loyalty that much. We know there's so much we need to do. You know we know all the best practices on all playbooks and we have a decent sized budget to like get that spun up. Great. Well, to that point that you made, you're still behind right. Like the Nikes of the world are like just running laps, literally and figuratively, because they're a running company, you know, around you.

Speaker 3: 1:07:29

So you're just going to play that game forever or you parallel path it, because you're a larger brand that has the resources to do the standard best practices that exist today and leapfrog, leapfrog yourself at the same time, and that's an advantage in of itself because you're going. If you're going like building the infrastructure, you could just like build the best Mar-Tech setup that supports Web two and Web three, like Web three loyalty right. So like actually, you were arguably in a way in an advantage and an advantageous spot. So I think we're gonna see both versions of that happening. I believe on the former it's a little bit more clear in terms of examples. I think in the latter no one would want to admit it if they're, if that's their actual strategy anyway, but I do believe we're seeing versions of that and basically everyone's going to move loyalty to some form of on-chain, some form of tokenization, some form of more flexibility, openness, permissionlessness, with some guardrails involved. So that's. I don't think it's that hot of a take, but like that's my take.

Speaker 1: 1:08:22

If I could throw one thing in there. You know, thomas, and I'll caveat this with your earlier comment about top shots, right, and you know the prediction that it was going to go to the go exponential, you know, in six months.

Speaker 3: 1:08:36

It did, and then it just, and then exponentially went the other way.

Speaker 1: 1:08:41

So I don't have a specific timeframe on this, maybe it's 12, maybe it's 18 months, maybe it's a couple of years, but I do think that we are the stages set to see a resurgence of interest from businesses in membership programs. And I think those membership programs are going to start to look like hybrid membership and loyalty programs, where you have, as a consumer, you're opting in to become part of a club, but part of that membership then grants you things, not only perks and benefits, but starts pulling the loyalty aspect in in a way that you can start moving loyalty points around in a much more open way. And I think you know we might see a half step there in the future. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we're not going to go full open loyalty overnight. Right, this is going to be baby steps. The industry is going to crawl before we walk and we're probably going to see these coalitions form almost like you see.

Speaker 1: 1:09:31

You know Star Alliance or things with airline points. I see that happening with open collaboration first with you know organized groups of companies that see brand affinity, but they're going to set the stage for doing this at scale and that's that's what I think is going to set the stage for the next 10 years in terms of what it looks like to be able to freely, fluidly collaborate, you know, whether it's brand to brand, community to brand, community to community. So exciting things ahead. I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't have a time frame, but that's my take.

Speaker 2: 1:10:03

Agreed Well, thomas T-Pan, nick Casares. Thank you both for being here at the Marketing Meets Web 3. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker 3: 1:10:13

Thank you Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:10:16

This was the last episode in our four part series about Web 3 and loyalty marketing. We really hope you enjoyed it. To listen to the whole series, please visit stepio you will find a link here below. And, of course, if you enjoyed it, please share with your colleagues, share with your friends, share with whoever you think is going to find value in it, because we really think it's going to help a lot of companies and brands. So give it a share or like and thank you very much.