What I am going to say will sound pretty controversial to the OGs in the NFT space. But here I say it anyway, the current NFT market lacks creativity!
Opensea, the largest marketplace of Digital art, has managed to revolutionize and democratize access to a market that was regarded as impenetrable for many and very lucrative for ‘the few’ - a little bit like Tinder which created accessible and disposable love; Ryanair which allowed everyone to fly (in Europe); and TikTok which created free entertainment for millions of ‘jobless and unstable people’ (Zhang Yiming words, not mine).
Opensea has also contributed to the creation of a market valued at around USD 147.24 billion (Source: Yahoo! Finance) and the sprawling of more curated and niche marketplaces, such as KnownOrigin, Nifty Gateway and SuperRare to name a few.
But with over 347,442,293 items at the time of writing and counting, one can spend countless hours scrolling through the infinite amount of colorful content listed on their marketplace. If you asked me to pick my favorite, I probably wouldn’t know where to start - I am not an NFT art critic after all…
But wait, that’s not a skill needed in this sector.
Twitter is there for a reason! A beehive of ‘users’ championing their latest 'favorite' #web3 project and then, there is Discord, full of ‘users’ who want to belong, but with the ultimate goal to pump the project and flip it at a later stage for a higher price.
On the project side, we always see the same, copy-paste marketing tactics:
- Create or delegate the creation of a character/story/'utility'.
- Form a community of ‘believers’ with the aim to sell out the initial limited collection.
- Buy real or fake followers to inflate numbers and create FOMO (fear of missing out).
- Offer prizes, whitelist spots, discord spots, merch...to entice potential buyers or 'influencers' to shill the project.
- Create partnerships with other projects to shill more NFTs to their communities.
- Hire Chief Vibes Officers (this is new) to pump the morale of the community when the price goes down.
- Cash out as soon as possible, or at least until the community is still active and/or the price is starting to decline, or the founders simply run out of steam.
Disclaimer: Brands need to lure in buyers to survive, no matter what and I am a big marketing believer. The aforementioned marketing tactics provide results for the project, but they ultimately need to add value to the end user and increase their UTILITY (intended as economic utility = satisfaction that a person derives from the increased consumption of products and services).
In #Web3, the community is King! In fact, most web3 investors look at community numbers as a key metric to base their investment decisions (right or wrong). But in the #Web2 world, sales come first, community comes second - at least in most cases.
It’s about evolving the product and service offering. Think of Apple, they lured us in by making us feel unique and special by holding one of their headsets, then they hooked us into their Apple ‘ecosystem’ and never-ending products and iOS updates. But they also offer great customer service, unique offline experiences, an addictive app ecosystem and never-ending ancillary services, such as Apple Pay, Apple Music, iCloud, Apple TV, etc.
Yes, I hear you…this requires a massive team, an infinite amount of money and big masses of adoring customers, but this is real product marketing.
Now, let’s draw some parallels with #Web3 projects:
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Customer service is crowd-sourced by the community, at least until we run into some hack/scam/spam.
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Founders’ details are mostly unknown.
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Most partnerships are done to cross-sell whitelist spots and increase sales.
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Ancillary services are mostly access-based, i.e. exclusive parties, premium discord channels access, etc.
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Projects upgrades are slowly taking shape in the form of regenerative NFTs, memberships, and redeemable NFTs, but it’s still early dawn.
…all in the name of ‘Utility’!
Folks, we can be more creative than this!
NFTs will reach their true potential when we will start looking at this technology as a ‘key that unlocks specific pieces of content that are either stored on chain or off chain’.
NFTs can revolutionize the way we create value for the whole ecosystem and our end customers by:
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Transforming the way we run and retribute partnerships.
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Turning walled gardens into interoperable ecosystems.
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Creating real economic utility for all users involved.
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Designing new and alternative revenue streams.
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Protecting and monetizing our IP!
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Treating users as ‘Web3 shareholders’ and providing them with the flexibility to jump from one ecosystem to the other. The more they contribute to the creation of value for the brand, the more value they can take back - which is revolutionary! This is frowned upon in Web2, where loyalty is everything, but it could become a winning strategy in Web3
To conclude, NFTs can turn short-term and predatory business tactics into cooperative and resilient business models, by remunerating everyone for their ongoing contributory value. The more we put in, the more we can take out, if we wish to!
This is also what #blockchain is all about - collaboration = co-creation of value!