gm! Over the last decade I’ve been working as an advertising creative and digital media technologist for ginormous brands including Uber, PayPal, Peloton and Oculus. For the last year I’ve worked as a creative and strategy director for NFT platforms working directly with brands and IP holders. Brands’ identities and campaigns will increasingly include NFT and web3 strategies (and budgets) as brilliant minds are already building a new way to interact with the internet and each other. There is no need for FOMO, but starting to consider how you and your brand fit into the web3 space will serve you well when you're ready to dive in. Let’s suit up!

For fans and collectors, NFTs provide a new means of digital identity and a way for people to engage over multiple digital platforms via decentralized technologies. Entering the space can be daunting for brands, as it is currently run by successful artists and builders of NFT projects that have new fans and extremely engaged communities. I like to compare where NFTs are now to skateboarding at the start of X-Games and Zumiez entering malls all over the US. Think of the Steve Buscemi “hello fellow kids” meme - if you’re an existing brand, that’s you. Thankfully, with the right routines, web3 can be an anti-aging tool for your brand.

An NFT can be, do, and look like so many different things where opportunities for creativity (both visually and technologically) are nearly limitless. Because of that, clear goals and targeting the right audience(s) are paramount. The approach to developing creative and strategy for a crypto-curious audience for a brand like Barbie looks much different than something for crypto-natives. Ask around and do some research, then give the people what they want. Any approach is benefitted from a brand’s and marketer’s eagerness to explore and learn.

Including considerations of how this new market operates should be a part of assessing goals for an NFT campaign so brands can enter the space to find themselves among an eager and excited community. You can look to web3 as a place to breathe new life into dormant IP, find new channels for engagement (even for non-digital brands) and as a new source of revenue. You can also see a new means of organic marketing. Operating with the knowledge that this market pays close attention to the effort that goes into a project before it launches will make for an NFT campaign with tremendous ROI. Remember that with the blockchain your first impression is immutable.

Similar to how advertising on social media created new opportunities for brands to engage with current and potential fans, NFTs and web3 provide a new way to engage and incentivize everyone. Beyond just owning a digital image, basing a collection around the idea of NFTs as an investment tool and access pass is the best way to foster that engagement and incentivisation. An NFT can grant automatic access to exclusive web content and event experiences by utilizing a web3 wallet. Using an NFT as a pass to a VIP area at an event (IRL or in the metaverse) or token-gating a web3 page for early access to new content or sending free NFTs (airdrops) to the community provides utility to the NFT holders. The more utility and more access opportunities an NFT provides to a holder means higher potential financial value and stronger brand affinity.

We already see more marketing budgets shifting towards this space, just like the advent of social media advertising. The biggest difference being that NFTs can create a greater return on that investment for brands and consumers. Plainly, secondary sales of NFTs can cut a percentage back to the original creator for a financial return. But on an emotional level, if we look at successful brands built out of NFTs we can see that digital identity under a collective banner was the foundation of their success. One of the early uses of NFTs were as profile pictures on Twitter which established a new, ownable digital identity for many people. As more people utilized an NFT project as their PFP, especially celebrities or thought leaders, awareness and demand for that project grew which increased the value of the project and the brand associated with it. As part of a campaign, community building should begin before NFTs are launched by building on what matters to current fans. If current fans are excited, then new fans will follow. From there you can sell NFTs, people can talk about them, buy them and sell them - cool, that’s just the beginning! Ultimately, a brand will need to understand, foster and continue to build with its new web3 community. To support this new space, brands will need new in-house teams and agencies dedicated to a brand’s presence in web3. Those agencies and new hires will serve you best if they come from within the NFT/web3 community.

So how do we do it? We could think about NFTs like public shares/stocks with a layer of creativity and community attached to it. Approaching NFTs should include an open, honest plan for reinvesting back into your NFT holding community. Opening a forum for holders to vote on decisions about new products, providing early access to new content and products and amplifying projects from community members can all be valuable to holders (NFT collectors). The more a brand is linked to their holders’ digital identities and experiences, the more value the brand and its collectors will hold in an NFT/web3 project.

If you’ve read all of the words to this point - you must have what it takes to build a successful NFT collection. As a completely fungible token of my gratitude I have a little bit of advice for you - get involved with NFT communities now and follow the steps below! You’ll go from “what’s up my fellow kids” to “gm frens” in no time. If you get scared or stuck dm me on Twitter at @ethPotato or hit us up at info@moonsuit.io.

How to be cool with NFTs: 1 - Go to metamask.io and open a new wallet 2 - Buy some ETH ($100 or so) and watch it for a couple of weeks. Watch it go up and down and then up again. 3 - Follow @farokh, @betty_nft, and @greatmando_nft on Twitter. Listen to the first season of the Probably Nothing podcast and RugRadio Twitter Spaces. 4 - Watch and/or join a project with a strong community - like Deadfellaz, FangGang and Doodles for NFTs and Friends with Benefits for a token-based community. 5 - Buy an NFT! Mint something from badgifts.wtf to get the gist of user flow or find something fun in the secondary market on Opensea, Rarible or Looksrare.