Although the discussion of “NFT” and “metaverse” is still polarized, this does not prevent commercial activities related to it. From rejection to confusion, to panic entry, generally considered the most traditional wine company, this time it did not fall behind, and even went ahead.
Jinsha Ancient Wine, which was the first to act, launched a metaverse-related game in 2021; at the beginning of this year, Yanghe teamed up with artists to release 4 3D digital wine bottles; Jiang Xiaobai is the basis for issuing limited gift boxes for digital collections , created two avatars… Brand NFT marketing has been expanding the boundaries, just like the way brick-and-mortar companies viewed the Internet in the 1990s, you can’t help but get in the car, it’s just a matter of sooner or later.
Entering digital collections, an outdated choice
”While the current hype cycle may be driven by millions of cryptocurrencies and Discord-obsessed Gen Z users,” said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Yes, but NFT may be the killer application of Web 3.0, and it is also a channel for it to enter traditional business.”
The key point of entry is how to find the entrance of this channel. Mr. Wang, an industry insider, said: “It is relatively fast to do distribution. When you release an IP, the subsequent IPs will follow.”
”Distribution” refers to digital collections. Numbers are easy to understand, and the collection must have two points: on the one hand, it must be liked by someone; on the other hand, it must have long-term holding value.
Artwork is rich in content and easy to be NFTized. It can highlight usage scenarios without application scenarios, so digital collections have become the first step taken by most companies. At this stage, this seems to be a choice that will neither be outdated nor go astray.
However, strategy is intention, and tactical support is needed to put intention into action.
Sort out requirements and resources
After the project is established, the first thing an enterprise needs to do is to sort out the brand needs and existing resources based on its own situation. The former is relatively easy to determine. The current NFT marketing needs of most brands are nothing more than two aspects: one is to increase the source of brand revenue and explore multiple benefits; the other is to expand the way consumers contact and experience the brand, and deeply market the mind of users. The resources are generally divided into brand resources and artist resources.
For those companies with brand precipitation, transplanting the current product series into the Metaverse and generating replica digital collections can perfectly combine the virtual and the real. From the perspective of the interviewed experienced people, this is also the advantage of brands as digital collections, especially brands with higher premiums, such as Coca-Cola.
Over the years, the brand value of Coca-Cola has become an important asset of the company and is a typical visual symbol and mental symbol. And Coca-Cola’s first-ever digital collections project honors the core elements of the brand, reinterpreting them in a new and exciting way in the virtual world.
Among them, the wearable jacket is inspired by Coca-Cola’s classic express clothes, the friendship card is a replica of an artwork created by Coca-Cola in 1948; the retro vending machine is inspired by the classic Coca-Cola vending machine in 1956, which is very memorable.
Some brands without a century of history can also create valuable digital products if they can link to artist resources. When the talk show “Thirteen Invitation” was transformed into NFT, it continued the previous genes, and launched a digital audio NFT collectible with many stars, priced at 18 yuan, limited to 300 pieces, and sold out almost instantly after it went online.
Design gameplay, choose platform
Re-engraving offline things online to generate a digital version of the “clone” is just a primary, that is, a digital twin. After the company has determined the distribution content, it can design more marketing methods in combination with different distribution platforms.
At present, the domestic NFT issuance platforms can be roughly divided into three categories:
one is based on the alliance chain built by Internet manufacturers. This type of NFT mainly focuses on the collection function and lacks the function of token trading. For example, Ali Jingtan mainly covers animation, cultural creation, sports and other fields, focusing on user scale effect. Its first attempt at NFT is two skins jointly released with Dunhuang Art Research Institute. After the user purchases, the NFT skin will be displayed on the Alipay payment code, and the movie “Green Snake 2” has also released virtual movie tickets in this form.
Tencent’s Magic Core focuses on the cultivation of ecological diversification. It cooperated with the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to launch Van Gogh’s “Born to the Sun” series. As the only digital collection distribution platform in Weibo, TopHolder pays more attention to the application of social scenarios, which is suitable for designing avatar games with social attributes.
Another type of NFT trading platform has more comprehensive functions, but the threshold for ordinary users to issue NFT is higher. For example, Bigverse is a new “Web3.0 Internet e-commerce” platform, with star products such as painter Zhang Daqian, artist Huang Yue and other related digital collections; iBox is a decentralized trading platform deployed on multiple public chains, supporting some digital assets It has published Leslie Cheung’s public welfare digital collections and the Havoc in Heaven series of digital collections. This type of platform is more suitable for companies and brands with rich artist resources.
There is also a type of distribution platform in a broad sense, such as small programs of some brands, and other third-party platforms, such as Modian. Compared with the first two, using its own mini-programs for distribution is more suitable for private domain gameplay and more suitable for brand NFT marketing.
”The most playful little biscuits” Oreo launched a white Oreo in the applet, which combined with the classic black style to form an ink painting country style. Based on the simultaneous issuance of digital ink and wash scrolls on the chain based on the offline ink art exhibition, and decomposing the digital ink and wash scrolls into 5,000 NFO (non-fungible tokens), consumers can purchase multiple times or share with multiple friends to get lottery opportunities. Combine social fission with NFT hotspots.
competition for artists
Of course, not all digital collections will catch fire. Although there is no explicit regulation, in the digital collection circle, there are implicit standards for the quality of digital collections. In their opinion, the derivatives of famous artists and artists are more likely to come out of the circle, so the artists who created them have become Fragrant pastry.
Generally, cooperation with artists is in the form of contract, and the form of cooperation is flexible. If your own resources are limited, you don’t necessarily have to sign the artist directly. You can talk about the works and only sign one or a few works.
In addition, there are already professional MCN institutions on the market that can provide artist resources for enterprises. A village once cooperated with MCN and invited 100 young painters to restore local customs, generate digital collections, and carry out online village tours.
”To put it bluntly, now is the time to grab people. Whoever has more resources will have a bigger and bigger system in the future.” The person in charge of an NFT platform said in an interview. Just like Bubble Mart signed many trendy artists, NFTs with IP blessing often have higher premiums, are more popular with users, and can provide continuous popularity for brands.
It is the logic of drainage, not the logic of collection
Although the gameplay is different, the underlying logic is actually very similar. Whether it is Coca-Cola, Oreo, or Balenciaga, Yanghe, their marketing activities ultimately point to one point – to obtain certain rights.
This is inseparable from the characteristics of digital collections themselves. The prevailing voice now believes that the most important utility of digital collections is practicality and convertibility. When a user purchases a digital collection, they can also participate in the activities behind it, and even in the brand building.
Therefore, we found that each of the 4 digital collections released by Yanghe is priced at 13.68 yuan, and a total of 1368 pieces have been sold. After purchasing the digital collections, they can be used as identity certificates to enjoy large discount coupons in designated malls, free birthday wine, and Yanghe base tour. and other value-added benefits, Yanghe will bear the cost of board and lodging. The digital collections of Balenciaga and Nike are a kind of qualification that diverts the joint effect from the virtual world back to the real world, forming a closed consumption loop.
The real metaverse logic may be just the opposite, first there is a virtual product, and when it has a certain popularity, in turn, it can be made into real objects, and virtual products can be brought into reality. And this interest is held for a long time. No matter where consumers buy products from, they can always obtain an NFT, and then through the brand’s digital collection, establish a long-term relationship with the brand, and enjoy various rights and interests provided by the enterprise to realize the construction of the membership system and user community .
Brands do not have to worry about being far away from consumers, nor do they have to worry about the loss of core consumers, because the user relationship has changed from participation to ownership, and digital collections have become a pass connecting online and offline.
Going back to Yanghe, if you think about it according to the logic of pure collections, the brand is a loss, but from a marketing perspective, it actually makes a profit. After all, after a few bottles of wine are sold, the cost will come back. From this perspective, digital collections are actually the logic of drainage, not the logic of collections.
Fight for cognitive depth, not information breadth
At present, the development of domestic digital collections is still in a relatively chaotic stage. In the view of Mr. Wang, an industry insider, this stage is about cognition and understanding of the project, not the amount of information. “The deeper your personal awareness, the more you can summarize the cycle of the industry and take advantage of the industry to move forward.”
For brands that enter the market in a hurry, digital collections are a product of circles, and liking is the premise. Only by forming a consensus based on the cultural background of the small circle can slowly develop and expand the community ecology.
As Arun Sundararajan puts it: “Pretending to be a community member by borrowing NFT slang on social media posts can be counterproductive and make yourself appear alien to the outside world. How far can vanity sites in the internet age go? , and the work of pretending to collect NFT art may only go so far.”
