A Tale of Two Strategies: Azuki's Rise and the Creator League's Downfall in Web3 Marketing

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Marketing Meets Web 3, a podcast that helps marketers navigate the news trends, opportunities and insights surrounding Web 3. Today's conversation is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal or investment advice. Hello Nick, how are you doing?

Speaker 2: 0:18

Hey, alberto, I'm doing really good. How are you? I'm doing, fine, I'm doing, uh, I'm doing good.

Speaker 3: 0:25

I'm doing good, I'm doing good, I'm doing good, I'm doing good, I'm doing good.

Speaker 2: 0:28

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. All right, I'm doing all right, I'm doing good. Thanks for that. And I'm doing awesome. I am excited to get to the news today Well, not really because the first item on the list. It's going to be hard for me, so I think I'm going to give it to you, because it's about something called football, but it's not the kind of football that I know. It's not really about football, but the person involved is a footballer. I guess it's how you call them. That's how we call them, you know, in our football. But anyway, sonic, can you please introduce the first piece of news?

Speaker 3: 0:57

Yeah, this is my kind of football, not your kind of football, so I'll take the ball and this one. So the headline here is that Azuki, which is a very popular NFT project, one of the most successful, really, in this space has partnered with the Museum of Mahomes We'll come back to that in a second for the release of a special edition of Collectibles. So what is the Museum of Mahomes? It's this digital collectible platform. It was founded by the Super Bowl champion, patrick Mahomes he's the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs and they partnered with the DOM Marketing Agency and they're using blockchain to really kind of redefine how fans collect cards and memorabilia, and it's unveiled a collaboration with Azuki, which, of course, is this popular NFT project, and so this is actually not Azuki's first foray into these kind of collaborations.

Speaker 3: 1:53

They've also partnered in the past with Formula One or specifically the Oracle Red Bull Racing Team in the Formula One championship. So this is an interesting story because I think this highlights yet again the opportunity for brands, influencers and web three communities to come together to create more marketing or more interesting marketing partnerships that I think really lean into the collaborative strengths of what happens when you bring together fan bases with celebrities, with brands, you know. It's just there's a lot more momentum, I think, you can create than any single one of those entities could on their own. So what's your take on this?

Speaker 2: 2:38

Well, I think it's an interesting collaboration because, as you said, I think everybody is bringing to the table whatever they are best at, and so I don't know this Patrick person. Apparently he's a champion, twice champion, and I guess he's a celebrity in the US and then so he's going to be, I guess, the inspiration for some of the trading cards that are gonna be used or created as part of this partnership. But the inspiration is gonna come, as I said, from this Patrick Mahomes, but the design is going to be created by Asuki. Asuki, as you said, it's a very well-known project and I think its strength comes from the design, which is well anime-styled and very cool. To be honest, if you have a chance anybody listening they can go and check out the website. It's even the website, it's styled very nicely. So, one of the elements coming out from this partnership, it will be a special one of one card with this Mahomes theme that designed, created by the Asuki team, and this trading card will be ruffled by the Asuki community and it will be given to one member of the Asuki community. So, yes, you're basically talking about the case here where two communities, different communities, because I don't think they overlap a lot, but they must have some kind of overlapping for these two projects to get together, to create this special collaboration and bring the two worlds together.

Speaker 2: 4:14

I haven't had the chance of looking at designs created from Asuki for this partnership. It could be interesting to see how they go and design these things, and I guess I find this to be interesting, even though I have no idea who this person is. I don't really know what American football is about. So even for me this is interesting because it's one of a kind thing. It's this crossover that we've seen forever.

Speaker 2: 4:46

I think from comics were the first ones that they thought, okay, what if we put this superhero and this other superhero and we just put them two together and see what happens? And it always brings something new and something that feels special and it's very easy to create with Web3, of course, and with these communities. So I like what's happening here and I also like that Asuki, despite being a very successful project on their own, they are going out and creating these partnerships with, or, in this case, sports, like, in this case, football, the other one you mentioned with racing. So I think it's interesting that they are testing what collaboration can bring for them and, yeah, I think I like that.

Speaker 3: 5:36

And there's two. There's two patterns here that I want to call out just from a marketing perspective. So you know, anytime that you're trying to take a concept to market whether it's a campaign or a new product, you know anything that you're trying to build buzz around you always have the challenge of where do you start? Who is your core audience that you're going to go to first, and then they're going to spread that, and that's how you're hoping to go viral and create this sort of ongoing and growing audience for whatever it is that you're working on.

Speaker 3: 6:04

I think what's really cool here is that they're going to the azuki community with this project and they're basically rewarding them by giving them access to this project. And you know, in the case of the, the special raffle that they're doing for the one-of-one card, you know that's that's prioritizing their, the azuki community, who will then become kind of the early evangelists for this project. Right, they're. They're going to be the ones that are most apt to go out and promote this project, even outside of the web pre-circle, because of course, anybody in web 3 also has friends and family and networks outside of that. And you who aren't in web 3 and inevitably with you, know very mainstream topics like football and racing. That's going to bleed out to more mainstream audiences, and so I think this is a really great example of how web 3 and brands can collaborate in a way to kickstart a marketing effort, to create that core community and to grow from there.

Speaker 2: 6:58

I wonder and maybe we can talk a bit about this for a minute I wonder how would you go about creating something like this, something like this kind of collaboration in web 2, because I'm thinking of the ways in which this could happen and they all seem like very weird to me. I'm thinking maybe receiving an email from my home, I don't know.

Speaker 3: 7:21

Yeah, I mean, I think where we see this most often in web 2 is just with influencer marketing. And so you see a brand that partners with an influencer and then that influencer uses the strength of their network to basically start the campaign, start the messaging, spread that through their audience and you know it's effective. Obviously, influencer marketing isn't going anywhere. It's a huge part of modern marketing strategy, but I also think that there are limited numbers of influencers and you know there can only be so many top-tier influencers and then beneath that, you start getting into micro influencers and even nano influencers, and so these audience sizes keep getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And I think web 3 presents the opportunity to give us an additional channel, as marketers, to be able to reach out and connect with audiences. It's not going to replace influencer marketing by any means and, in fact, may work alongside it, but I do think this is an interesting opportunity to grow audiences in a new way.

Speaker 2: 8:19

But this. So I see that right because, well, as you said, influencer marketing has been happening, I think for the past six, seven, eight years, has been big. But yeah, in terms of like how flexible this influencer marketing campaigns can be, I just don't think they can be as flexible as what we're seeing here and also as quick to interact with. I also don't see, you know, because I was thinking okay, let's say that this influencer goes out and says let's say, this is happening in web 2, so Patrick Mahomes says I am, I am partnering with these guys and you see, here is this, this, this product that I like, asuki, and I just will test it out. Okay, so then if I follow Mahomes, then maybe I subscribe to Asuki and then this email, this email information from me goes to, goes to Asuki, and then I have to follow them via email or something like that. It does seem that it could work, but I see that with web 3 this becomes much more flexible, easy and allows to do more things.

Speaker 3: 9:28

Basically, yeah, I would agree with that. You know, I think that the web 3, because it is, it's driven by community involvement, it's not a single person or a single entity that's, you know, having to coordinate everything. There's a lot of grassroots promotion and fandom that happens within web 3, just to the grassroots level. So, you know, this is an opportunity, I think, to kind of engage your audience in a new way and make them not just fans but actually co-promoters, because obviously they they care about this topic. They have, in this case, they have an interest, a personal interest in this topic, because the Asuki token holders are connected to the Asuki brand, which is now connected to the Museum of Mahomes, and so, you know, I think it's putting your audience into a different level in terms of a stakeholder, and so, you know, bringing them to the table is more participant than just passive engagement.

Speaker 2: 10:23

Okay, so let's continue to talk about influencers, and now we're gonna talk about the biggest influencer, the beast of influencers, mr Beast, of course. So Mr Beast promoteda thing called a Creator League and that this Creator League was launched by this esports firm, tech firm called EFUSE, and a few other influencers signed in on this, something that people like Bella Ports I don't know any of these guys okay, I'm just gonna say the names. I show speed and clicks, apparently influencers of their own. I already know Mr Beast, but I'm sure the others are also influencers of a very high mark and they so they created this thing and then they talked to these influencers. They told them they participate in this and it's gonna be fun and promote it so that more people join.

Speaker 2: 11:15

Right, and at no point this esports Creator League thing said anything about using the blockchain behind the, behind the game itself, right, but? But there seems to be some blockchain involved, in particular, the near blockchain. It doesn't matter. So what happened in this case is that this game was created by this company and a lot of people were working in this project. They had the endorsement from these big influencers and then, because they didn't communicate properly the blockchain part, it looks like everything is blown apart and we can discuss now exactly how it happened, but I wanted to get your first impression as to creating a project, creating everything, having even the endorsements from people as big as these guys, and then everything going south because you didn't speak of something that apparently is very important, as, in this case, the use of blockchain.

Speaker 3: 12:26

Yeah, I guess I'll start with the impact and work backwards from that. But the impact here is that you've got a project that overnight has been shuttered, which obviously puts anybody working on that project out of a job or onto the next project, which that has real impact on people's lives. The second is any of the fans that we're looking forward to this project now have to set that aside because it's not going forward, and so that's a net disappointment, I think, all the way around. But there are a couple of things here that I think are worth digging into. The first is that this is a good example of, I think, what happens when we throw blanket statements or impressions on industry.

Speaker 3: 13:11

So crypto over the past year and a half has had a lot of bad actors. We've had FTX, we've had NFT scams. We've had all of these different players in the space that turned out to be not what they said they were stole money from people, shut down projects overnight, things like that, and what happens here is that the general public takes a look at that and says, well, it's crypto, it's NFTs, it's blockchain, it's all the same thing. It must be bad, and that kind of it leaves a bad taste in the public's mouth, which translates to an overall negative sentiment. But I think what's lost in that is that we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here.

Speaker 3: 13:52

There are bad actors in this space, and then there is technology at play. The way that they're using the technology in this project actually is very benign. I mean, there's no speculation. It's very much used as a technology layer, and so I think if somebody were to take a hard look at this project and say, okay, where is the potential for this to go wrong or to turn into a scam? It's actually probably as safe as any normal Web 2 project because of the way they're using the technology. So I think, when I look at this, I think it's unfortunate around the house. I really look forward to a day when we stop doing this as an industry and the general public has a better understanding of what the technology can do, apart from being involved in some of these more speculative scammy type things.

Speaker 2: 14:41

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Speaker 1: 14:45

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Speaker 2: 15:18

Yeah, let me add some color to the how this project was supposedly using the blockchain, in this case, the technology, so they were selling these community passes. As the name suggests for the project, it's called the Creator League, so there was to be some voting involved from the community and in order to participate, of course, they need to have a community pass. This is very common in gaming. You buy this pass and then this allows you to play. It happens in Fortnite, happens in most of the games, I think. So in this case, we're talking about the community pass and you paid $20, I think per pass and this allows you to participate in the league. So in this case, of course, the thing that wasn't really well communicated and cost all the backlash and the blown off of this was that this community pass was, in effect, an NFT, of course, and this NFT lived in the near blockchain, but again, the fact that it was near blockchain could have been polygon, could have been whatever. That wasn't important. The important part is that they didn't mention that this was going to be, in effect, an NFT and when this became public, some of the YouTubers, influencers that were participating in particular one, I mean, it doesn't matter who specifically mentioned that they weren't going to participate in something that involved NFTs because, well, they didn't like NFTs. And this comes back to the point of what you were saying, that really, the fact that it's called NFT, I mean you could just say, well, this is a ticket and, yeah, and the ledger or the database where I am saying that this ticket belongs to you, it happens to be a blockchain. It could have been a spreadsheet, but in this case, it's a token in the blockchain, which, of course, gives you more flexibility going forward than having this in a spreadsheet and potentially, more security and transparency. But besides all that, I found it to be very interesting.

Speaker 2: 17:28

I'd say that some people were so opposed to the NFT thing that they were willing to just come out and say, well, I'm out of this and just leave the whole thing just because of the NFT thing. So I think it speaks of the situation and the time where we're at. I don't know. I mean I don't want to talk bad or the opinions of people. Of course, everybody has their own opinion, but it seems being inside, I guess, this industry.

Speaker 2: 18:01

It seems fun to me to see some of the not fear, but could be called fear of whatever has happened, and I see some people saying, oh, this is an NFT that must be dangerous, whereas in reality, I mean, it's not dangerous. Of course it depends. Of course you can do many things with an NFT. That could be dangerous, let's say, or it could be a scammy, but that doesn't mean that the technology itself is bad. So I just find it. I found it both hilarious because it is a bit hilarious, but also sad that this happened and, of course, left all these people down and also got all the people fired from this project. So, yeah, very sad, I think, but I think in the future we will look back at this and say see what was happening before and where we are now.

Speaker 3: 18:55

Yeah, I mean to your point about FUD, right? So the fear, uncertainty and doubt around this technology that sometimes crops up because people had a bad experience or heard about a bad experience, and generally this isn't the technology's fault, right? This is bad actors in this space, and you have bad actors in every space. Every technology, every industry is always going to be subject to some swindler coming along and trying to take money from the people. That's human behavior, that's not technology, and I agree with you.

Speaker 3: 19:29

I think we'll look back in a few years and we'll look at situations like this and say, well, that was kind of silly. That was like saying I'm not going to participate in a project because it uses the internet, right, and in reality, the internet, the technology, has no stance about good and bad. It is just a technology layer. And so the fact that, to the credit of the influencers involved, I do think that there is a reputational element involved here, where many of these influencers, I think, have publicly come out against NFTs and NFT culture and in gaming in particular. I think it's a split decision right now. People are very on the fence about or not even on the fence. It's very binary. You have people that love them and hate them, but gamers, in particular, have very strong opinions about technology, and so I think any of these influencers who may have previously gone to their audiences and said NFTs are bad, or I would never be involved with this kind of technology. For them, it's a matter of reputation when they go back to their audience and have to say oh well, by the way, there is some blockchain technology in this project, and so, from that perspective, I do think that this was a miss on the projects. From a strategy perspective, there should have been clarity with the influencers, so the influencers could decide for themselves and for their audience if that was the right move and if they wanted to go down that path.

Speaker 3: 20:53

I think this could have turned out differently, in my view. Right, you've got a major promoter, mr Beast, one of the biggest influencers in the world. This could have been turned into a shining night moment where you had people coming together and saying you know what? This isn't the technology, this is actually bad actors, and we're going to show you exactly how you can use this technology in a more productive way, to your point, in ways that provides more security, more transparency, a better experience. But it didn't go this way this time. So hopefully the industry will get another shot at bringing together some big names around a project to really highlight what this technology is capable of.

Speaker 2: 21:32

Yeah. One last point, because I think it's important to stress this, is that if you're a company or you're a brand or whatever and you're thinking of using a Web3, I think the communication part has to be very, very good. It's easy to just go wrong with this and to your point. It's true and I think it's now even more present than before that some influencers have been burned for participating in some of the projects, like, for instance, this project from Mila Kunis and Aston Katchi comes to mind. Now, I think a fund they created has had to come to an agreement, I think, because of some wrongdoing. But this is where I think communication is important, because in the case of this project in particular, the one pushed by this fund from Mila Kunis, they were talking about selling these NFTs and then potentially selling them in a secondary market. So it was a completely different idea for using NFTs, completely different to what we're talking about here in this Creator League, at least with information we have, of course. So I think this is where it's important to nail the communication, because, if you are upfront about this, you guys were using the blockchain, but it's just to keep a database of this so that they can later move it around and we always know who these guys are and stuff like that, but this is not something created to then be sold afterwards at the profit. Then it would have been much more clear. Actually, these NFTs, in particular, the ones that they created, these community passes they were sold bound, so you couldn't really send them anywhere, so it was impossible to make money, let's say, with this. So, yeah, I think communication is always important to keep that in mind and to do it well.

Speaker 2: 23:31

And this brings me to the next point, which also stresses the importance of doing things well.

Speaker 2: 23:38

In this case, drive safely, drive good, because otherwise you may crash. So we're talking about Grab, which is like Uber, but in Asia and, of course, like everything in Asia. This is huge. It has a lot of users I think something like 180 million active users and this Grab company in particular I think it's talking about Singapore in this case has launched a project to use NFTs in their app, so people will be able to create a wallet within the Grab app and hold NFTs and, I guess, some other ways of crypto payment in this wallet. All this is done with the approval and the help even of the Singaporean government, and what speaks, I think, speaks loud about how this technology is being used everywhere, and in some cases, it's used in one way and there's some clarity or regulatory clarity, and some other places there's something else, but this is moving forward at different, at different places everywhere in the world, and so this is what's happening with this app in Asia. Do you use Uber or Grab, nick?

Speaker 3: 25:01

I don't use Grab. I know of Grab, I've been to Southeast Asia. I do use Uber, I do use Lyft. So obviously these ride sharing apps and any of the sort of gig economy apps they have potentially massive user bases because generally their value proposition is broad appeal, right, everybody needs a ride, everybody needs food delivered or would like food delivered, and so you know, the potential to go mainstream with these apps is huge. And so that's the headline for me in this one is that we've got a major company, you know, 180 million users that's huge, I think 35 million active just in their food delivery service alone Looking at the Web 3 space and saying there's an opportunity here for us to create a better or more engaging relationship with our users.

Speaker 3: 25:49

Let's do that using Web 3 and NFTs to drive reward spending. So I think this is a great example of how businesses are starting to take a look at the space and say you know, there's something more here to this technology than just gambling on monkey pictures. There's something here that's generally available and useful to all kinds of people all over the world that has the potential to have real impact. And so, you know, I think this is a great development of how businesses can embrace this technology. You know the fact that they're doing rewards and vouchers that are redeemable for different kinds of experiences and different kinds of leisure activities in Singapore. Now you know sidebar here.

Speaker 3: 26:38

Generally, southeast Asia is far ahead of the United States and many markets in terms of their usage of technology and even their usage of Web 3. I think, just as a society, they've decided that NFTs have a lot more potential or have potential in ways that other markets haven't grasped yet. They're leading the charge here. One of the things that we talk about quite a bit on this show is rewards is a huge use case for NFTs. Obviously, we're tightly connected to rewards, but beyond step three, rewards are a great way to create ongoing incentives for users and they're a powerful driver of collaboration between businesses.

Speaker 3: 27:24

Back to the headline here being able to redeem your loyalty across different experiences or with different businesses is an activity that consumers haven't been able to fully embrace to date. Generally, you have alliances between different brands, you have these partnership marketing efforts, but it's very tightly controlled. It doesn't give the consumer a lot of freedom and therefore I think it limits their ability to see the value of those rewards and that translates to their loyalty toward the brand. There's an opportunity here for companies to really embrace this technology in a new way, to break some barriers, to change some thinking and to treat loyalty as something that can be owned and consumed by the consumer by their own accord, using their own choices and with more of an open partnership perspective.

Speaker 2: 28:18

Again. I think this speaks of the value of the technology. We were talking about this with the first piece of news, with the museum of Mahomes and Asuki that using this technology really allows you for more flexibility. This loyalty and this collaboration between companies in this case Grab and Restaurants and Grab and maybe a Spass or whatever these collaborations have been there forever. This example comes to mind I was in a little town in Spain and I had lunch in a restaurant and when I paid they gave me a voucher and with this voucher I had a 10% discount in the store where you buy souvenirs from this tiny town. I was like okay, this is basically co-marketing and using some kind of loyalty reward for me for having lunch in there.

Speaker 2: 29:16

This, of course, is in the minds of people, but it's difficult to do all of this with Web 2. I mean with Grab. They are using an app, so they know how apps work. They know how mobile phones work. They have emails, so they know how emails work. But now Web 3 comes on and they say we could do this loyalty thing and create ways for people who use this app to also benefit from using other apps or other services. It's not like they didn't know this could be done before. It's just that doing it with emails it's a pain, and doing it with paper vouchers is even more painful, so yeah.

Speaker 3: 29:52

That's a great point If you think about how technology makes it into our lives. Let's walk the evolution of communication here for a minute. Go back in time. We started off communicating verbally, and so we could only do that with the people that were physically near us. Then we got long distance communications so now we could do things like send a letter. We had a postal service. Then we could do things like pick up a telephone and make a phone call, and then we could do things like use a fax machine and we could send messages. Well, I guess before that it was the technology, not the tick or tape.

Speaker 2: 30:30

The telegram yeah, telegram yeah.

Speaker 3: 30:32

You could send a telegram message. The previous telegram no, the previous telegram.

Speaker 3: 30:36

Yeah, and so you can see how this unfolded is. We found new ways to communicate, but what you're saying is that, fundamentally, the behavior didn't change right. We were still sending messages, we are still sending messages, and however we communicate next, whatever's beyond iMessage or Android messages, we will still be communicating. We will still be sending messages to one another. And what you're saying is look, this behavior exists in the world. People are already using loyalty across these different businesses as a way to drive more business and more customer loyalty. It's just less convenient right now, and this technology has the potential to make that more convenient and unlock the usage a bit. I mean, how many more messages do you send today than you did 20 years ago?

Speaker 3: 31:22

And so we can see how this technology starts really enabling not new behavior, but more behavior.

Speaker 2: 31:28

Yeah, yeah, no, just said that Talking about communication. You see, we've made it all the way to creating podcasts and stream this to people all around the world. So, yeah, it's evolved a lot and I think this is going to continue to be seen by more companies and will continue to be seeing more brands and more companies adopting Web3 for this reason because it's more scalable, it's easier to do it and it's more useful. So anything else you want to share from these pieces of news that we've covered?

Speaker 3: 32:04

today. Well, let's break down some takeaways from today's stories. So first one up, collaborative marketing, co-marketing, partnership marketing, alliance marketing with Web3 projects is, as evidenced by things like the Azuki partnerships with the Museum of Mahomes and Red Bull Racing, we're starting to see that this kind of collaboration is making in-robes into mainstream brands and mainstream activities football and racing huge, globally huge and this is likely to be a pattern that we see play out as more mainstream Web2 brands start entering the space. So I think that's a really important thing to keep tabs on. Is this collaborative marketing idea?

Speaker 3: 32:49

In the second story, we saw that the industry is still suffering from the impacts of bad actors in the space. I get it, it happens, and look, nobody is downplaying the impact of those negative events. But I do think that it's important, as marketers and technologists, that we're separating the technology from the bad behavior and giving the technology a chance on its own to mature into a new medium for behaviors like redeeming rewards, like we just talked about. And then I think, last up, we're seeing that more businesses are starting to see the potential of NFTs as this surface area for ongoing customer engagement. So, as a way to create more of a dialogue, as a way to create opportunities for customers to connect, to be rewarded and to stay connected. So I think these are. I'm bullish on the stories. Today. It seems like we're making progress as an industry. We still have some sentiment issues to deal with, but onwards and upwards.

Speaker 2: 33:48

Yeah, I'm looking forward to the next few months because we've covered a lot of projects that have launched recently and a lot of them are going to start showing results in the next few months, and I'm really looking forward to seeing some of the results from some of these projects and I guess I'll be here commenting on those with you. So thank you for being here. Okay, see you next time. Have a good one.

Speaker 1: 34:17

Thanks for listening to Marketing Needs, web 3. If you enjoyed today's episode, please like and subscribe in your favorite podcast app.