Magic Coming to Web3 Memberships with Disney's Latest Digital Foray

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.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Hello Nick, how are you doing?

Speaker 3: 0:25

Hi Alberto, I'm doing well. How?

Speaker 2: 0:26

are you? I'm good, but I'm a bit stressed because, well, holiday is Christmas it's coming up, and that means that there's only one word in my mind at the moment. Can you guess which one? It is Santa Claus reindeer. No, of course not. The word in my mind is Disney, because Disney is Christmas.

Speaker 3: 0:50

basically, in my mind, I wasn't expecting that one. You better explain.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Yes, so well. Disney to me, is the Christmas pastime. Basically, you watch movies from Disney in Christmas, so I associate Christmas with Disney, and the reason why I'm coming up with this line is because we need to talk about Disney getting away or maybe not from the Christmas theme and getting on to the NFT slash digital collectibles theme, which they're going to do because they are launching this thing called Disney Pinnacle, an officially licensed NFT or data collectible platform, and that's that. So what do you think? Are you going to love Disney data collectibles?

Speaker 3: 1:39

I am so going to love Disney Pinnacle collectibles. I'm on the waitlist with as many email addresses as I could find. Of course, I knew that. Obviously, I'm excited. I think this is going to be huge for the space. So, yeah, let's talk about some details. It looks like this Disney Pinnacle platform. It's going to feature collectibles that are inspired by the different Disney brands. So we're talking about Disney, which would be all of their classic characters, pixar, which are the animated films that they've been producing for oh gosh, what is it? 20, 25 years at this point, and then the Star Wars franchise, which they acquired from George Lucas and has just been a huge part of their portfolio. All of these digital collectibles, then, are going to be minted on the Flow blockchain. We'll come back to that one.

Speaker 3: 2:26

It looks like they're going to have a mobile first and focus design, which, you know, absolutely makes sense. I don't see a world in which Disney doesn't aim to be, you know, in the hands of their fans more so than a screen. You know, the desktop. It just everybody's mobile first has been that way for a long time, but it's nice to see Web 3 sort of stepping in line with current technology trends in terms of you know, a really nice and accessible user experience. It also looks like, you know, timing wise. It's interesting timing because you know they obviously didn't cook this up overnight. There's probably been a ton of work going into this partnership for a long time.

Speaker 3: 3:07

But, you know, the announcement does coincide with what is looking to be like a resurgence in the NFT market and I think that's a pretty interesting overlap just in terms of the attention that we know always comes when we see, you know, kind of, the next wave in crypto. Crypto is very cyclical I mean, many industries are, but crypto in particular, and so Web 3 kind of. You know the attention rides alongside that and you know, I think, a lot of projects stand to benefit from what's ahead. But those are the details. What are your thoughts?

Speaker 2: 3:40

Well, this is, I think, probably the best example of going for taking advantage of your IP. Right, we've talked about this in the past with other companies, but in the case of Disney, I mean, they have so much IP, they could be selling data collectibles for decades and I think it's interesting development that they're jumping on this so quickly. Actually, I wasn't expecting somebody as big as Disney to get on this because, like two weeks ago we were talking about, or a few weeks ago we were talking about, was it Mattel right, selling IP? Yeah, and that felt big. Okay, mattel right, but I mean, disney is a completely different game and, yeah, and it's happening really quickly.

Speaker 2: 4:31

I want to touch on the flow blockchain thing, because you said that you wanted to talk a bit about that. But before we move on to that, I find it also interesting, or I'm curious, basically, what's going to happen with with the selling of these IP in the form of NFTs or data collectibles, because there's been some talk about Disney maybe selling some of its franchises and Star Wars has been one of that and I don't know what happens if you sell NFTs from Star Wars and then you sell the Star Wars franchise. Who is the owner of those, of those IPs? Well, I mean, of course, the new owner is the owner, but but what happens with those, with those NFTs that have already been sold, I don't know? I mean, this opens up to a few, to a few.

Speaker 2: 5:23

Well, there's a conversations that we'll see in the future. But also one aspect that I found interesting is that, well, there's some talk of Disney selling some franchises because the company is not doing so well recently, and these Data collectibles Avenue. I well, I guess it's a small for a for them, but still it's, I guess, part of a, an effort to innovate, to to jump on top of things and basically to be more proactive, to try to get out of this kind of a down town downtime that they're having now. And I don't know we will see what comes out of it, but I think it's a very interesting development and it could potentially Help help Disney become more innovative.

Speaker 3: 6:11

Yeah, I mean, disney's been thinking web three for a while. They they're actually. They had an accelerator program where they were bringing web three Startups and ideas into their internal incubator, and so they've been. They've been working on things, I think, quietly understanding the space and starting to build up their own sort of internal knowledge base. I think, you know, what I see here is beyond just, you know, there's obviously an aspect of how do they, how do they start? You know, capitalizing on some emerging trends and the timing thing is interesting, but I actually think this is a bigger strategic play for them.

Speaker 3: 6:46

So you know Disney. If you think about where Disney is, they're in physical, they're in entertainment, they're in Gaming, and I think what they're starting to see, or you know, if I were at Disney, what I would be seeing is this trend that's being played out by Roblox. All right, we're seeing Roblox just absolutely dominate the attention economy with younger generations, and so much so that, you know, I think in a recent episode we talked about Roblox dating and how that might become a thing. But you know, the the big thing here is that Roblox is a closed ecosystem, and so if I'm at Disney and I have this massive catalog of IP and I want to be able to convince a Partner like Roblox that we should open up the doors or that we should make sure that we're part of that conversation.

Speaker 3: 7:36

You know, getting my digital collectibles into the hands of my audiences is a great way to Get people at Roblox or similar companies to stand up and pay attention. Right, it's like now, because now you have this audience of people that are holding these Disney collectibles, why wouldn't I want to take that into an environment like Roblox or an environment like meta? You know, so it's. It's this interesting push-pull that I think we're gonna see in the market, where brands start to proliferate their digital collectibles across their audiences and now their audiences are empowered to basically, you know, they're activated or they're ready to be activated audiences by other digital experiences. And I think that's where we get this really interesting and what's gonna be pretty wild overlap of Metaverse interactions, where people are jumping between experiences but they're taking their assets with them, and, of course, that is the magic of web 3.

Speaker 2: 8:31

The magic and Disney, yeah, but before we move on to the next, to the next item, we don't usually get into the technology of things, because what we want to simplify the message, of course, but in this case they're building what are minting these NFTs or the other collectibles on the flow blockchain, and I want to maybe have a take, take 30 or a minute to talk about this. So why is it? Why is it important that this is happening on the flow blockchain?

Speaker 3: 9:00

I Think it's significant for a couple of reasons. So flow is the blockchain created by dapper labs, and Dapper labs is the company that acquired axiom Zen. For a little bit of web 3 history, axiom Zen is the company that created crypto kitties and crypto kitties. We're one of the first digital collectible projects, if not the real first digital collectible project on on Blockchain and in fact, it got so popular so fast that it basically crashed a theorem for a day.

Speaker 3: 9:30

I was, I was at I was. I remember the day that it crashed and everybody was freaking out. You know communities were pinging each other like what's going on, and so that that is deep History and deep experience with blockchain technology that you know dapper has on their side. They also, I think, strategically, have been positioning themselves with a focus on digital collectibles, and so Disney bringing this IP as digital collectibles to the Flow blockchain, which is actually created to support the digital collectible economy, I think just has the potential to really open up the aperture on Web 3. When you have the overlap of both of these powerhouses in the industry you've got Disney on one side, you've got Dapper and Flow on the other side I just think that has the potential to really change the game and we'll see where this goes in the next cycle.

Speaker 2: 10:29

Yeah, these two giants getting together to do something. That's a good setup. And let's move the setup and go farther, or far away from Disney and get all the way to Hong Kong, if you don't mind, because in Hong Kong and I have to read this because otherwise it's going to be hard there's this legislative council member advocate that is going to be Well that talked about Web 3 and how it could be integrated in the economy to help the seniors of Hong Kong. The person, this council member, is Johnny Ng, and he made this speech at the 2023 World Internet Conference I'm guessing also in Hong Kong, but this part I am guessing only. So basically, we have this person who is part of the government in Hong Kong or part of the council that is basically in charge of creating laws for this region, talking about Web 3 and how it could help the senior economy and, in particular, it's funny because he uses this example. An example he uses is of a person from Hong Kong called Pan Laolao, and this is a senior internet celebrity that I don't know if you know, but I don't know you know. He uses the internet to boost the rural economy activities and demonstrates the potential of seniors leveraging their experience for economic benefit.

Speaker 2: 12:15

And Johnny Ng here, the council member, is using this example as a model to demonstrate how Web 3 could be helping and technology in general could be helping the senior part of their economy, which I find interesting, if anything, because seniors are usually left out when it comes to technology advancements. And I found it interesting that this person all the way there in Hong Kong is advocating for the opposite. He's advocating for taking Web 3 and use it to help or make it available better for the senior economy, so they can use it to demonstrate that they can still add value and that they can take advantage of these technologies, which I don't know. I just found it very interesting and very inspiring. So what do you think?

Speaker 3: 13:15

Well. So I'll preface my opinion here with the fact that this person is a legislator, they're a politician, and so my guess is that the focus on the senior economy has something to do with his or her constituency. And so, you know, I'm taking this with a little bit of a grain of salt. However, I think the message is really important and I'm glad to see it happening this early in the life of Web3, because you're right, oftentimes I think aging generations are left behind or not prioritized in the push forward with new technology. You know, you think about cell phones, and how long did it take our grandparents to get a cell phone, if they have one? Even then smartphones, and then text messaging and social media, and it seems like they're always the last to adopt, and not because they don't know how to do it. You know, my grandparents and parents know how to use technology just as well as anyone else. It's just that it's not generally the prioritized use case, because they may be further away from what's happening in day-to-day culture. They may be further away from the workforce, you know, if they're retired and they're not actively participating.

Speaker 3: 14:25

And what I think is really cool about this perspective is that Web3 is our opportunity as a society to reset the playing field when it comes to technology and the internet, and one of the best parts of it is that we can all become active creators and contributors through Web3 technology because, remember, we own our stuff.

Speaker 3: 14:43

It's tracked on a blockchain so that can be attributed to us, and so when you have an aging population that is chock full of knowledge and experience and that's really always been the problem with aging societies is that you have a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge that gets lost, to be honest, as that aging population starts to pass away, and so there's an interesting opportunity here for us to kind of reset our expectations for how aging populations can contribute to our societies using Web3 technology.

Speaker 3: 15:14

So you know the example of Pan Laolau whoever this person is I've not seen them, but I like the name. You know whether it's making videos that you know highlight what they're doing in their rural economy, or telling stories like I have no idea what their jam is, but the idea that that person could be compensated using Web3 technology in exchange for all of that rich knowledge and experience I think is super cool. I think it's very promising for how we can sort of rethink or upend our approach to introducing technology into society in a way that's much more fair and much more inclusive.

Speaker 2: 15:51

We'll be right back after the award from our sponsor.

Speaker 1: 15:55

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Speaker 2: 16:30

Yeah, what I found, what I found especially interesting or funny even, is that, well, this politician, this Johnny NG, is actually telling these seniors to use Web3 to avoid centralized corporations that stay in the middle and that could be an obstacle for them when they're trying to maybe benefit from using the technology of the internet. So, basically, johnny NG here is emphasizing the role of Web3 as a decentralizer and he's basically telling them well, you can avoid these companies, you don't have to pass or to understand even how these companies work the Instagram, the TikToks or whatever. You can just use it directly and connect your knowledge, your experience, your physical sorry, your day-to-day life to the technology, or use the technology to connect it to the audience, without having to understand any of the in-betweens that are usually necessary. It's quite a leap, but I don't know. I found it very encouraging Encouraging that this person was telling them hey, guys, or all seniors, you can totally do this, and not even that you don't have to learn anything.

Speaker 2: 17:58

You can just use the technology, web3, to highlight whatever you know and that somebody may not know about something, that you know how to do, and that you've some knowledge that you have acquired over your, your time, as you said, and now there is, there's nothing impeding you from just sharing it and potentially, and not only helping you but also helping you know the economy, because, well, I think all throughout his speech he's he's making these comments about you know, encouraging community growth and all that. So so I think that part is also it's also important.

Speaker 3: 18:34

So I don't know, I just Well, I appreciate Johnny's perspective and his enthusiasm. I think he's a few cycles ahead of himself, though, to be honest, I I.

Speaker 3: 18:44

Where we skip all the middle steps and just freely distribute our knowledge and experience. Although that is the vision, that's the hope, I we've got a few hurdles to solve. Right now I can't imagine trying to get my, my grandfather, into Meta mask to interact with web 3. So it's getting better, it's good, it's getting better, it's coming and, who knows, maybe one of these days my grandpa is gonna surprise me and show me at Disney a Star Wars collectible or or or maybe the seniors in Hong Kong surprise you.

Speaker 3: 19:14

Maybe they, they might, and their friends might, just, might just surprise us. Anyway, I think it's. It's positive to see that web 3 is spreading to other parts of the economy, which I think takes us to our next story.

Speaker 2: 19:28

Yeah, yes, but sorry. One final comment before we move on, because, well, we've talked about, well, the nuances here, because, well, being a politician and having this message which could be, as you said, you know, a bit far away, I also found it very interesting that it's probably the first time, I think it's the first time that that I see Web 3 being marketed to seniors, because we've seen web 3 used by companies, industries, and never, never, never directly to to seniors and I think, well, that they are important, increasingly important part of the citizenry. And I don't know, I just I just liked this. I Just liked this, in particular, that it's maybe the first time, but I'm sure I'm sure it will not be there the last time that we we see these two, these two getting connected, as I was also surprised to see the connection in the next story, because we need to talk about, about Brazil.

Speaker 2: 20:29

So, yes, we are moving all the way from the US, with Disney, to Hong Kong and now to to Brazil, and we're going to explore not the main connection, which is, well, as you can imagine, something about web 3, but the surprising connection, to me at least, which is Japanese food and Brazilian people. I didn't know that, but Brazilian people liked Japanese food. But apparently they do, because there is this big company called the group or Rao which is now exploring web 3 to improve their loyalty program, the loyalty rewards program, and for for this, of course, they are well using all the all the basics and that the web 3 offers to improve on loyalty reward programs. But but yes, so basically the whole story is this a group or Rao, which is, which is the largest Japanese food delivery service in Brazil, is, is getting on web 3 to improve their loyalty program and I don't know. I think the connection of all of these Ideas, concept players, it's, it's something that we need to talk about.

Speaker 3: 21:39

Absolutely. Anytime I hear the words membership and loyalty, you know my ears perk up. Let's walk through the basics here. Grupo Rao I'm totally not pronouncing that name the right way. They're rolling out this rewards program and so a few high-level points to take away. They're really targeting customer engagement with their rewards program. So really looking at ways to include things like perks, discounts, product vouchers, contests, etc. Into their subscription.

Speaker 3: 22:14

They are focusing on becoming the leading wallet provider in Brazil and the Latin American region. It looks like they're going multi-chain. They're on the Moonbeam network, which is an interesting choice. We can definitely dig into that Expanding. It looks like their future roadmap is headed down this path of incentive, rewards and gamification, which anybody who has listened to this podcast before or is familiar with what we do at step three. That's a huge part of our vision of where this is all headed. So I'm very happy to see that this is happening in other parts of the world too and that even big brands are starting to look at this and view Web 3 as a new channel to engage their customers on.

Speaker 2: 22:58

Yeah, I mean, it's always good to see that a company may have a loyalty reward program, right, and they are using it to reward their users. And when they see that this is not really working so well, that the engagement is not crazy, that their retention is not awesome, they think about it and the solution they come to is, more often than not these days, getting into Web 3, right, because that means that you're going to have something more interoperable and potentially more engaging and that you can make more interesting for the user. They are thinking of using Web 3 to improve their loyalty reward program and adding rewards incentives, gamification, which we've seen in a few projects already, and all through the same system, whereas when you use let's call it Web 2 loyalty right which I guess is what Group or ROW is using at the moment the connection of all of these is not so straightforward, right? I think we talked about this when we were exploring the Serials, this Serials company that was getting into Web 3, and in the past, people to engage with the company beyond eating their Serial, they had to read the website from the cardboard in the Serials right and then get into the browser and paste the URL and then maybe get into the company's website.

Speaker 2: 24:37

I guess now with Web 2 it's somewhat similar. Maybe you use QRs and maybe it's a bit easier, but it's not as integrated as it can be. When you have a wallet that has everything that you own on it not everything that you own in terms of memberships, of course it makes it much more interesting and much more valuable for the user. So it's interesting to see yet one more company jumping on this, and especially good to see it coming from Brazil, which I don't think we have spoken about in the past, and also from a Japanese food delivery company, because I don't know how many sectors we've covered so far. They have jumped on the Web 3 wagon, but yeah, I don't think Japanese food delivery services from Brazil was one of them. Yeah, happy to see many more industries coming on this.

Speaker 3: 25:42

Yeah, and you know, I think there's something here that's really important from a marketing perspective. When we talk about the power of Web 3 and we start overlapping things like rewards and engagement. If you're unfamiliar with the Web 3 space, you might be thinking why is this different than Web 2? And you know, why would we go to these lengths with this technology? And you know, right now it's not a great user experience for a lot of people, but it's getting better. Why put all of these barriers in place when we can just, you know, track that person? Or we can use our own systems to try to understand who they are or track their engagement? And you know, every day it's getting more and more clear that the walls are closing in on data privacy or, you know, being able to collect data from people.

Speaker 3: 26:33

Data privacy is becoming a hot topic globally.

Speaker 3: 26:36

I think all consumers are starting to get this pervading sense that we're being watched all the time by these systems that track our behavior and we're not always aware of where that data is stored, where it goes, who controls that data, who's buying and selling that data, and oftentimes we're not the beneficiaries of that activity.

Speaker 3: 26:55

And so Web 3, and particularly rewards and loyalty programs bring to the table is this ability for us to now collect our engagement with brands.

Speaker 3: 27:06

As a consumer, we can collect our own engagement. We can connect that to our NFT or a membership pass and we can use that now as our proof of engagement, if you will. And so now when I enter, when I meet a new brand and they see that NFT or that membership pass that has my engagement history connected to it, they know how to treat me. They understand me better than if I had never seen the brand before. They can customize offers for me. They can do things that make me feel like I'm already known by the brand which you know. At the end of the day, brands do that to some extent today, but the hoops they have to jump through and the way they go about collecting that data, I think, is not in the best interest of consumers in most situations. And so Web 3, I think, is just a big reset on the way we think about collecting user data, tracking user engagement and really bringing people on board with rewards and incentives. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Speaker 2: 28:02

Right and I mean I think I think a good summary for today could be could be the following because, well, following on what you said, because I mean what could be the case here and it's not something in the future?

Speaker 2: 28:18

So this is something that could happen next week, a senior person from Hong Kong could be buying this data collectible from Disney and then traveling to Brazil, ordering this Japanese food from a group or out and then connecting to the membership program, and this membership program from group or out is going to know that this person has a Disney NFT made from Star Wars. And, well, if they have some kind of program that specifies something for these users who have NFTs or data collectibles from Disney, maybe the senior citizen from Hong Kong receives his Japanese food in a Star Wars theme at the box only because, well, the group or out people saw that this guy had NFTs or data collectibles from Star Wars in the wallet that he used to connect with a group or out Membership program. And, yeah, I mean, try to do this, try to do that in Web 2. Try to do this now. Yeah, it's not going to happen.

Speaker 3: 29:28

Well, I love your end to end example. Don't share it with Johnny, because I have a feeling he'll try to steal you away from us and join the marketing team. I agree with your takeaways. The bigger picture is starting to come together and I think it's more and more clear every day that we are going to be able to do things with Web 3 that were never possible with Web 2.

Speaker 2: 29:48

Yeah, and yeah, it's only a matter of more people getting on board than as we saw today. Well, people are getting on board from all over the world. So, yeah, that's cool and well, I think that covers it right. I think that's it. That's a wrap. Yes, nice, okay. Well, I'll see you next time, thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:30

Talk to you soon, thank you.