Episode 231: Branded Merch + NFTs: The Power Duo (Nick Casares, PolyientX)

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

NFTs, non-fungible tokens, are quickly being adopted by not just collectors but brands of all types, from Wrangler to Adidas. And many of them are creating tactile experiences alongside the digital. For example, a supplier in our industry, Wendell August, created a commemorative physical coin to accompany every NFT they create. NFTs are finding their way into many brand conversations, which is why we wanted to dig deeper by inviting an expert in NFTs to join us for today's chat. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Commonsku, and I'm joined today by Nick Casares, Head of Product at Polyient X. Polyient X helps brands with turnkey strategy and technology solutions to mint, sell, and engage with NFTs. They provide Web3 tools to deliver NFTs, merch, digital goods, reward tokens, and more. Nick's a leader in the NFT space, and I discovered Nick through an article he wrote for MarketingProfs titled What Marketers Need to Know About NFTs. I talk with Nick about everything from Web3 to cryptocurrency, but we spend most of our time learning about what NFTs are, why they're attracting so much attention, how the rental economy impacts digital collectibles, whether NFTs are a complement to physical merchandise or a threat, and why brands and also we should care. And hey, if you're going to ASI Chicago next week, the week of Tuesday, July 19th through the 21st, we are going to be there too, and we're hosting the summer social not to miss. It's in partnership with our friends at Numo, held on Tuesday, July 19th from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at the Ace Bounce. Join us for good food, tasty drinks, fun games, and hanging out with your friends at Ace Bounce. Space is limited, so be sure to RSVP. You can register at commonscue.com/summersocial. Today's episode is brought to you by CommonsCue, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonscue.com. Now here's my chat with Nick Kasaris.

Hey Nick, welcome. Web3 is a very confusing term. How would you explain Web3 to the uninitiated like myself?

Well, first off, Bobby, thanks for having me on the podcast.

Uh, pleasure to be here, and I'm excited about digging into this conversation a bit more. Um, Web3— we'll start with some basic ideas or basic definition. So we've essentially had two versions of the internet. We had Web 1.0, which was in many ways what you could consider read web, right? You were able to download information, you could search for things, you could find information that was published originally by academia and then eventually the entire public. But there wasn't very much that you could do as a participant on the web other than read. So the second version of the internet was really about reading and writing. And so in addition to being able to download all of this information, we could also start interacting with each other. And that was really the birth of social media, which for people that are as old as I am can remember back to the days when social media was really things like blogging, right? Long-form blogging. So people were publishing their thoughts and they had blogs about their food adventures and all kinds of random and strange and wonderful things.

And eventually that morphed into what we know as modern social media.

But the underlying principle there is that as citizens of the web, we could now read and we could also write.

We could contribute information back to the internet in a very real-time and a very dynamic way.

What Web3 introduces is a new pillar in this whole paradigm of interconnection, which is ownership.

So you can think of Web3 as the web of ownership.

And so we have read, then we got read-write, and now we have read-write-own. And own.

And what that really means is that as citizens of the internet, we have been using platforms, you know, big tech platforms.

We've been using the Googles and the Metas and the Netflixes of the world really to get access to things on the internet.

But we do that as non-stakeholders.

In other words, we don't have any sort of incentive. We're not monetized by that system in any way, or we're not incentivized by that system.

Because we don't own any part of it.

It's owned by these big platforms, by centralized services, by small groups of investors, when in reality, the people using these platforms are really, they're the ones contributing value.

We're the ones putting our thoughts onto social media.

We're the ones interacting with these posts and creating this dynamic web of information. What Web3 does is it unlocks an opportunity for us to become owners in the future of the internet. And to dig into that just a little bit further, how do we become owners?

We do that by owning our digital assets.

And, you know, I think we'll dig into what that means through the rest of this conversation. But NFTs in particular are the first opening to this idea of being able to own things on the web in a meaningful way, and then being able to do things with those things that we own to engage, to monetize, to create our own sort of value streams so that as participants in the web were also incentivized.

What types of technology fall under Web3? Like, is NFTs we know, metaverse? Like, what would you list as the primary technologies right now?

Yeah, no, it's a great question. So there, you know, I think of Web3 in sort of some, uh, in a layer approach, right? So at the bottom of, of the base of this pyramid of Web3, we have the idea of decentralization or infrastructure that runs the internet.

But is owned by many individuals instead of a few concentrated companies.

And so blockchain technology is really, you know, it's powering the entire idea of Web3.

And blockchain fundamentally works by bringing in many different participants into the system who can decide to participate. They can run their own blockchain software and they can be a part of the system in a way that doesn't require permission from Amazon, doesn't require that they own a huge data center, you know, somewhere where power is cheap. So that's a base layer, is blockchain technology.

On top of that then, we have the digital assets that I talked about ownership.

So things like NFTs, which allow us to basically prove again on the blockchain that we own these things, that they are verifiably ours. When I go purchase a picture, which today is an NFT, and maybe it's a picture of a Bored Ape or a Cool Cat, The way that I'm able to prove that that belongs to me is by showing on the blockchain through cryptography and some very complicated math that I am the owner of that asset. And so those two technologies work together. We've got blockchain, which is kind of this open environment where we can see all of these transactions. We've got NFTs, which are the digital assets on top of that. And then we get into things like, well, what about cryptocurrency?

Right.

So before we get to crypto, let me—

yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

Let me ask you this. Um, pretend I'm a small business owner and we are hanging out at some networking thing, or we just met each other, maybe at Run On Out, and I'm running my business. Um, and I'm very good at what I do, and I see on the horizon this thing called Web3 and NFTs. I'm fascinated by it. But then you just mentioned something that might just cause me to jet and go, okay, I'm out, like blockchain. How do you explain to somebody like me who is very fascinated by technology, but has yet to get my mind around what the blockchain really means?

Sure.

So, uh, you know, blockchain, it's, it's essentially an open ledger.

And so without getting into the complicated technology, what it gives us is a shared understanding of things that have happened in the world. So when you buy something and that's recorded on the blockchain, anybody else can verify that you purchased that thing. And so what that does is it creates this open internet of value because now these transactions going back and forth, they're visible. We can see them.

We can do interesting things with them, whether that's have a conversation about them or build products on top of them.

And so as a business owner, as a marketer, thinking about how this will shift the transfer of value on the internet, I think is the interesting part of this conversation, right? If we think back to e-commerce, you know, bricks and mortar versus web commerce.

You know, in the beginning, bricks and mortar pushed back and they said there's no way this is ever going to take off, people are not going to shop online. And, you know, what just saved us during the pandemic? You know, I mean, Amazon constantly at our door, right? You know, that was an enabling technology that allowed us to realize value with the web.

And this is another step in that progression.

So this allows us—

what's different here is that this is person-to-person value. Right? So between you and I, we can now trade value on the internet using these technologies.

I see. If we— are there some of these technologies now that we're using and we're not even aware? And give me an example. You mentioned to me a very curious statement. You said with Zoom, we're already in the metaverse. Are there other examples like we're already sort of dipping our toes in some of this? Are there examples of technologies we're using now and it's not quite a leap as much as it is an evolution and how we're growing?

Yeah, so I'll give an example. I was just out at NFT NYC, which is kind of the Super Bowl or the Woodstock of the NFT world.

And, you know, the idea of a metaverse, how it was manifesting in a lot of conversations, was this idea of a 2D metaverse.

And I was like, well, okay, what is that?

Talk to me.

And so I'm having conversations with people and a 2D metaverse, it turns out, is something called a token-gated website.

And what does that mean? It means that if I have an NFT, I can access content on a website. Well, aren't we already doing that with things called passwords?

Don't we already log into websites to access information?

We do. And so what's interesting and different though with an NFT is that I own that login. And so it's up to me as a consumer, if I want to go plug my NFT in a website to get access to something, I can do that, and my information isn't walled off in a company's database just sitting there waiting to be hacked, which, I mean, at this point it's a, it's a joke. It's a running joke for companies that are getting hacked on a daily basis, right?

So, you know, this gives us a new way to think about the way we're already accessing information, but in a way that gives us more control as consumers, um, which has implications for our privacy, um, has implications for the choices that we make and the services that we actually we want to spend our time and our energy with. So that's logging into things is a very real-world example. And, okay, you know, the comment I made about Zoom—

the metaverse really is about digital, bringing our in-person world to digital environments. And Zoom is one of those sort of sneaky half steps where during the pandemic, you know, we all got used to looking at each other like this on these calls.. And pretty soon it started to feel pretty normal, pretty natural.

And even the naysayers who said, oh, I'll never do Zoom meetings, by the end of the pandemic, they're like, I don't know if I want to go back to IRL.

It's so time-consuming. Right, right.

Because we realize we can actually have these meaningful relationships. We can have interactions. We can get things done in a digital way, in a digital-first way. And that's how I think the metaverse is sneaking up on us. So these ideas of like taking things that we're already doing and making it just a little bit more digital, Maybe connecting that to things like NFTs and opening that up on a public blockchain, on a ledger where these things can be seen publicly, that takes us, I think, into the next step.

You were about to mention cryptocurrency, and can we chat about that for a minute? Because I have a real basic question. Why does the negativity bias surround crypto right now?

It's a couple of reasons. I think historically, crypto has you know, always sort of been associated with fraud, with money laundering, terrorism, things like that. And, you know, it got a bad rap in the early days because of primarily Silk Road. Um, you know, anybody who's been following the space knows that that was a nefarious website.

They were selling drugs and, you know, connecting people doing nefarious things.

And, you know, but that's, that's one very small example in a huge world of activity.

Um, the other reason is just there has been so much, I think, interest that with any sort of boom, you know, or bubble that happens, it brings some bad actors, right? But you see this with all technology.

I mean, how many times have you been spammed in email, right? And right, right, cell phones. I mean, how many robocalls have you gotten this past month?

You know, it's almost ridiculous at this point.

They're passing regulation, or they already have, to deal with that.

So it's part and parcel, I think, with any technological innovation.

I want to ask the same question Forbes recently asked in an article. Why does everyone else see something in crypto when I don't get it at all?

That's a really good question, and I think it really depends on where you're coming from, um, in a couple of different ways. Number one, I think there's a generational aspect. So, uh, people that are more digitally native, you know, have grown up with technology in their hands, have never known a day without the internet have spent a lot of time, uh, you know, using social media, playing video games, they have an innate sense or feel for value in a digital environment, which is really what cryptocurrency is, that I think is just—

it's very intuitive to younger generations.

And so, you know, there's, there's a gap, I think, there just in terms of people that have been on this planet longer might think more about the tangible aspects that they've grown up with and had experience with. Um, but we saw the same sort of resistance with smartphones, right? I mean, right, yeah, you know, I don't know about anybody in your family, but my grandparents certainly didn't want or think they needed a smartphone, right? Now I don't think they would—

they wouldn't leave the house without one. Exactly.

So some of it is just closing that gap. And really, I think the way that we close that gap is also about, you know, what use cases work for you. And that, that really is an unlock for, for people, you know, when they find a use case, whether that's, you know, with a smartphone, maybe that's being able to get pictures of the grandkids, maybe that's being able to have GPS on in case somebody has an accident.

Those are meaningful personal unlocking moments with the technology where it actually becomes an aha moment and you say, oh yeah, okay, I get it, this is, this is why it's important.

And I think we're going to see the same thing with crypto.

We've already seen it with things like remittances, people trying to send money to family in other places where sending money across international borders is traditionally is very slow and can be very expensive. Moments like that where it starts to make sense for personal use cases are really where I think people are going to find their aha moment.

Are we with cryptocurrency, back to your wonderful phrase, a sneaky half step? Are we, are we using technology right now that's sort of a sneaky half step? One of the examples, like when I'm Venmoing and PayPal somebody, I realize that's coming from a traditional fund and a traditional finance system, but is that kind of what we're talking about?

Yeah, to an extent. I mean, there are definitely systems at play, you know, behind the scenes, even in, uh, you know, commercial environments, banks, etc., where they are piloting or using in production blockchain systems to power their sort of internal ledgers that are transferring value between banks or between institutions. Um, so Yes. And again, to the sneaky half step, you know, that will start to creep in. I have a personal hypothesis that digital wallets, not crypto wallets, but things like Venmo, things like PayPal, things like Cash App, they're going to be an unlock for a lot of people. You know, you can already buy cryptocurrency with those apps.

And PayPal just recently announced that you can now transfer currency, cryptocurrency out of their app. And so now you have this two-way window.

And so, you know, as soon as there are other apps in the ecosystem that start connecting the dots through cryptocurrency, you're going to have that unlock moment.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny how fast the adoption happens because I'm already using my iPhone 80% of the time with purchases that I want to do. And it's now kind of a pain in the ass just for me to grab a credit card.

Right.

It's not a big deal, but it's like, yeah. I want to add another great gem from Forbes. To the benefit of the information-seeking public for a more robust conversation on the utility of crypto, let's quit the schadenfreude. I may have pronounced that wrong, but you know what I mean, and critically examine this ecosystem. I thought it was a really good comment because I remember the absolute barrage negativity that surrounded social media when it came on the scene, you know, especially from the business community that was like, we don't get it, we're not going to use it, it's never going to be good for our business. I was, I was there in the thick of it when we were trying to do some progressive things. So I feel the same kind of negative energy around crypto, and that keeps me actually optimistic about what's going on in the world.

I couldn't agree more. I mean, to your point about social media, um, if you think back, uh, you know, even as recently as 4 or 5 years ago, employers actively discouraging employees from posting on social media, from engaging with social media, and they've done almost a total 180. In fact, there are now platforms that will connect to your employees' social media accounts and try to harvest the best content so that the company can republish that content and become thought leaders based on their employees' contributions.

So I mean, if that's not a 180, I don't know what is. And I'm with you, you know, I'm optimistic because of the same reason.

It's like, as soon as you have that much doubt about a technology, to me it also is a signal that you have that much interest, which is— yeah, yeah, that's great.

As I mentioned in the intro, there's really great reason, and it would have been great to have you on anyways, but you wrote an article about how marketers need to embrace this and can embrace it and some ideas on how they can embrace NFTs in particular. And so that's why we're sitting here talking today is because you're speaking to an audience that, you know, an audience of professional marketers and NFTs are directly relevant to our business. So this is why it's fun to talk about where do NFTs fit in the Web3 world? Are Are there— NFTs are an example of Web3, obviously, but can you give us probably the simplest half-step, sneaky half-step toward an NFT that you've seen recently?

In terms of the way that brands are using NFTs or— Yeah, yeah.

Or even in just consumers, is there something that's sort of reaching, because it's almost as if we're reaching a moment where NFTs are becoming a part of a larger cultural conversation and it's no longer just the, you know, the private little toy of all of the techno nerds who are into this. Now it's entering, I think it's entering a general population.

Absolutely. My barometer for this, I'm not a huge sports fan, but my barometer is sports. And so when you start seeing NFTs come into mainstream sports, to me, that's a signal that we're onto something here.

And again, out at NFT NYC, sat in on a talk about a company that is working with various NBA teams all over the country. And during games, what they're doing is they're putting up a QR code and anybody sitting at the game can scan the QR code on the jumbotron and in a very quick manner download or create and download their NFT that, you know, and it's really, it's a memento they were at the game.

But what's interesting about that from a branding and marketing perspective is that this person now has this memento in their wallet. It's something that they own, and it's the starting place to extend that conversation. So if that team, that franchise, that sports arena wants to recognize that person's—

their presence at the previous game, it's as simple as saying, hey, do you have the NFT from game 26?

Oh, right. And if—

yeah, you know, and the consumer can scan their, their NFT, and now they've unlocked some additional element to the experience, whether that's you know, a VIP experience, a discount, access to exclusive merch, all kinds of things that can be done, I think, to really enrich the customer experience in ways that aren't impossible now but would be a lot more difficult. And, you know, I think you have to do a lot more preparation because you have to remind people, well, if you were at the game, bring your ticket stub. You know, just a lot more, I think, hand-holding to make that happen.

Yeah, this is why there's so many great examples and why there's a close alliance. Sometimes in our industry, we get threatened by, uh, what we can't tell, something coming on the horizon, whether it's competitive threat or whether it's an opportunity. I think it's an opportunity. And, you know, when you made that example about baseball, um, you know, it— I get— my mind goes to collecting baseball kids— baseball cards that some people did when they were kids, and then having that rarest of rare cards. But in this case, what you're having is a collectible that no one else owns. Whatsoever. Can you back up just a little bit and explain NFT? Again, going back to me, the example of somebody running a small business, I see it on the horizon. How do you simplify NFT to somebody like me?

Yeah, so, so an NFT is simply, it's a digital item that is owned, provably owned by an individual. And so by digital item, this could be a collectible. So to your point, something like a card or something rare, this could be a piece of artwork. This could be the title to some real-world asset, say a car, a house. Yeah, this could also be something like a ticket, right, that represents access to things. So the interesting thing about NFTs is it's this very broad bucket that can really represent ownership of anything in a very public way on the blockchain, but that anything can then be tied to various aspects of your business, your value proposition, how you're intending to delight customers. It's—

the possibilities in my view are endless.

I mentioned to you my working theory that we are in the business of branded merchandise, and celebrating special moments is one of those categories. And awards, for example, an award company in our industry can say, hey, we're going to really get into this NFT thing. Because when you think about it, the world has gone like at least half virtual, if not largely virtual. And you have to wonder What is the value of that award that used to sit in your desk where everybody walked by in the office and saw? Instead, maybe that now is an NFT that's a one of a kind that is somehow displayed on your digital property that you own. And I can see the sort of evolution of this digital and physical world coming together in a really beautiful way. And this is a great example, I think, how marketers can get ahold of something like this and do some, do some really, some good with it.

Absolutely.

Um, you know, I think maybe we'll go two directions with this.

The first is credibility.

Um, when it comes to things like awards, you know, there's, there's obviously a cred factor associated with an award. If you're an agency or you're a brand and you want to represent that you're best of industry, or maybe you're the best place to work, you know, in your region or in the country, it's one thing to put that on your website.

It's another thing to provably link that to something that can be verified.

And so that's an aspect of these NFTs that I don't think we've really realized the impact of yet, because online environments, they're tough.

And, you know, the world is going to a place where a lot of jobs will be remote-first or remote-friendly. As an employee, how do I validate that the employer is who they say they are? Did they just make that award up?

Well, if it's an NFT, I can click through and I can see that was actually issued, right?

They own that thing, and that is a real award.

So it's an interesting input into how we establish credibility with each other online. I think the other aspect of this, you asked about what can marketers do for good with this technology. I think beyond, you know, things like boosting your own reputation or, you know, things like recognizing customers, there's another element which you and I had spoken about previously, which is bringing charities and causes for good into the equation. You know, so why not? Because these NFTs, they have value that can be assigned to them.

Sometimes there's a secondary market for them where people are buying and selling them. Why not attach a transaction fee to that that then can be passed on as a royalty to a good cause, something that the organization believes in and their customers believe in? And truly, you know, it sounds a little bit cheesy, but truly helps make the world a better place with this technology.

Yeah. My aha moment was from a New York Times episode with Beeple interviewed by Kara Swisher. And Beeple, Mike Winkelmann, made history when Christie's auction house sold his digital collage. The piece spanned 13 years of his daily artworks, or "Everydays" as he called them. Online bidding started at $100 and it sold for over $69 million. Even he said it was outrageous. That's the third highest price earned by a living artist at an auction, putting Beeple just behind Jeff Koons and David Hockney. My aha moment from Beeple was also your phrase, digital property. And this is a quote from him. Somebody buys a painting, they go lock it away in their house. You never see it again. So I think that's a huge advantage of this digital art over traditional art. And I think right now you're seeing it with digital art. You're seeing it with NBA Top Shot collectibles. You're seeing with a few other things, but I really feel like it's a blank slate technology that you're going to see this with everything. You could buy a car and they give you an NFT. It's tied to the car. It's tied to some VIN number. You buy a house, here's the NFT. So I can get my mind around this a little bit better when you talk about that digital ownership that way.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, when you think about digital ownership, uh, you know, even taking digital out of it, let's talk about ownership for a second.

Yeah, most economists will agree that ownership is what actually enables a functioning market, right?

Without property rights, if you can't meaningfully own something in a society, you can't have a market.

You can't establish value on things because you don't know if that value is true, if it's maintainable, or is the government going to snatch that away? And so in a digital environment, having digital property ownership and having rights to that by verifying this on the blockchain creates a whole new opportunity to create a market of value for digital items that I don't think that— we've never had this opportunity before as citizens of the web.

Yeah.

You just came back from the largest conference on NFTs, NFT NYC, and can you tell us what's catching on culturally and mainstream with NFTs? That you weren't seeing before?

I think we'll start with the cultural side.

So just to give people a sense of this conference, so there are 15,000 people, it happens in the middle of Times Square, over 7 venues, there were, I want to say, 1,500 speakers, it's a massive event.

And it really is the epicenter of NFT culture. And so you had a large representation of people who are, you know, from the early days of NFTs.

They were early adopters, whether they were collectors or artists, and they really, I think, represent the foundation or the roots of this whole idea. And then you also have this new movement of people coming into this from more of a business angle and really looking at NFTs as the next evolution of the internet.

And, you know, how do we bring value? How do we add value?

How do we capture value? And so culturally, what we saw at NFT NYC, I was there with a couple of my team members from Polyant. What we saw culturally is this sort of collision happening between those two worlds where you have this sort of artist attachment to the way things were, and you have this progression of where things are going. And it's an interesting tension, but I think it's an important inflection point for the industry, and it's something that happens in every technological revolution.

You have the early adopters who kind of want to keep things the way they were, and then you have mainstream start to get a hold of things and they want to inject their own ideas.

But it's a healthy sign of growth. It's how we get to the next level. And so it's an important cultural maturation that's happening right now.

In terms of, you know, some of the ways that NFTs are being used to drive culture right now, it's all about the community, right?

The membership in a community of NFT owners.

There were plenty of private events where you had to have a particular NFT to get into that event. And people that were coming together for the first time IRL, right? They'd only ever spoken online and they're coming together and, you know, just really enjoying the physical presence of each other at this event because of these NFTs. So they're a connection point, which I think is interesting.

Um, and then, yeah, sorry, go ahead.

No, go ahead, please, please.

Um, in terms of the technology and where that's headed, you know, this goes hand in hand with, uh, kind of the, the injection of more of a business mindset. We're seeing the technology grow up, and so we're seeing more platforms come to the stage. We're seeing more opportunities for marketers to start using this in a much easier way.

This technology historically has been difficult to use and it requires a whole new type of developer, which is hard to justify, right?

Especially for something in the early stages.

And now we're seeing platforms, products like ours that are making it easier for marketers to start getting their hands around this technology, start experimenting with it and start getting familiar with this so that, you know, by the time we hit the next cycle in 3 to 5 years, they'll be at the forefront instead of playing catch up.

Let's talk about community for a minute. And in an article in MarketingProfs, you wrote this, quote, NFTs have spawned communities composed of creatives, collectors, and speculators. Each new successful NFT project gives rise to a new community aligned on a unique set of values, attitudes, and norms. Those communities guided by their collective compass are beginning to resemble audiences, and the creators behind the projects are starting to look and think like brands. What did you mean by that?

These projects that we're referring to, a lot of these, the industry term, if we want to call it that, is PFP, which stands for profile pic.

And these are the NFTs that they're the Bored Apes, they're the Cool Cats, they're all the cartoon characters.

They're these digital avatars that people are collecting and they range from, you know, cute cuddly kittens to, you know, extreme goblins and, you know, things that you probably wouldn't want on your Twitter profile.

But explain—

wait, explain Bored Apes first.

Why—

why you explain this? Explain Bored Apes for those of us who don't quite understand what that is.

So, so Bored Ape Yacht Club is probably the most well-known and most successful NFT project to date when it comes to community and brands and just overall recognition.

And the way that these NFT collections work is you have a limited number of items, say 10,000 items, that are up for grabs that can be minted, and that's controlled by the blockchain code.

It can't be manipulated.

So once 10,000 are gone, they're gone, and that creates this sense of digital scarcity. And when that happens, that's where you start to see the secondary buying and selling kick in.

And so Bored Apes, it's this 10,000 avatar collection of these caricatures of apes wearing all kinds of different hats, and they have different traits and different personalities., and so that's just kind of the, the quintessential example of an NFT project when we're talking about community.

So, and, and I have a really dumb question, but we're, we're in the business of design and marketing and, and all of that, and there's designers crafting these incredible one-of-a-kind icons or logos or avatars that no one else will be able to ever get again. And if you own that avatar, that's obviously cool that you have a unique one-of-a-kind piece. But keep going back to your example with Marketing Brofs.

Yeah, so getting back to the Marketing Brofs quote and how this connects to community and why these communities are starting to look like audiences and why these projects are starting to act like brands.

For whatever reason, these caricatures, these avatars, they resonate with people for different reasons.

But often these people that get into these groups, and they start just talking, they start interacting, and they start realizing, like, not only do they have a shared interest in these cartoon characters, but they also have shared life interests, or they have shared life perspectives. And especially when there's a theme to a collection, you know, Top Shots is a great example. It's all about basketball, right? So yeah, most people that are collecting basketball moments have some sort of appreciation for basketball.

And when you think about, you know, targeting audiences, as these projects start to have their own specific kind of feel and flavor to their community, there are aspects of that community that I think if you're thinking as a marketer, they're signals to you, you know, whether or not that might align with your brand. Maybe that's somebody that you want to collaborate with.

And so that's where the audience piece of this comes from. The other part, which is these projects like acting like brands, During the NFT NYC conference, there's a very popular project called Doodles, and they announced their roadmap for Doodles 2.

And so they're rolling out a bunch of features and they're introducing— you can now, the analogy is kind of like play dress up with your avatar.

And so you can add these unique traits and different aspects to your character. But what they're really doing, and they've been pretty open about this, is they're brand building.

Right? They're trying to secure their IP in a way that they can start telling great stories around.

And in fact, they brought on Pharrell as their creative director, right? And if anybody can do brand, if anybody can do culture, it's going to be Pharrell.

So, right, right.

So, you know, I think that is going to carry these projects into the future. And that's why I think that they will start to look more and more like brands.

Yeah, yeah. One of the NFTs that got my attention is being a Leon Bridges fan, which I'm from Austin. You know, I saw that Wrangler did an NFT with Leon Bridges where they built a one-of-a-kind digital outfit. And I thought, what? Shut up. I can show up and the Leon Bridges Wrangler customized digital— it was cool. It was a really cool project. Um, one of the things that you said to me was, uh, oh, let me ask you this first. How are you seeing marketers additionally use and embrace NFTs? Do you have some examples?

Yeah, so I mean, uh, you know, you shared an article that was published on Common Skew that I think outlines some of the big ones, um, things like Adidas.

Um, interestingly, I think there are brands kind of all over the map that are trying this, which, you know, maybe a little bit counterintuitive. You might think that it would be a specific vertical or a target audience that tries this first, but it's really happening all over the place.

So, you know, you got you know, sports brands like Adidas, you've got beauty brands like Clinique, you've got luxury brands. I actually don't remember the brand, but I just read that in Manhattan there will be a high-end— it may be Louis Vuitton—

high-end retailer where you can go into their showroom and you can actually mint an NFT as part of your retail experience. And so we're seeing this all over the place. I mentioned the sports examples with sports teams, right? Right.

I think You even pointed out an example in the article of a company that makes ornaments called Wendell August or August Wendell.

Yeah, yeah, they're a great supplier here in the industry.

Keep going. Yeah, yeah.

And so, you know, just seeing brands from all walks of industry sort of look at this and start to evaluate like, how can we use this as a way to really engage customers at the next level? Yeah. And I think we're just—

this is tip of the iceberg. Yeah, that article, Ksenia, my colleague, wrote that. She wrote a great article that highlights some wonderful examples. We'll link to that in the show notes. One thing that you said to me too was a marketer's first step into the world of NFTs should begin with participation. What did you mean? How does that begin?

So this goes back to the idea of community.

You know, there is an element of Web3 because it is this groundspring happening within these communities.

Authenticity is a big deal.

And I think to really approach this space in the right way, any marketer who wants to get involved, the first step should be go, go buy an NFT, go find a community, identify some projects that resonate with you, and try the technology, right?

Know, know what that experience is that you're proposing you're going to share with your customers before you go down that path.

But I think it also, it's insightful because you start to understand some of the mindset behind collectors versus creators. And these are not mutually exclusive, but it gives you a window into the way that people are thinking about these things as digital assets, as collectibles, as, you know, exclusive passes, etc. So, you know, participate first and then figure out what the strategy is after that.

Nick, you know, we're in the branded merch business. And do you see, for the branded merch business, do you see this as a competitive threat? Do you see this as an ally? Do you see as an opportunity? Opportunity? How would you view it? And listeners are— they can take it. They've been through a lot. There's a lot of resilience in this industry. I actually know many, many of our customers and in the community that are already embracing NFTs and doing those on behalf for clients. So we already see people dipping their toes in the water.

But what do you—

what is your take? Do you think this is a competitive threat to tangible product?

I think it's an opportunity. You know, that's, that's really through and through.

I think marketers that are smart about embracing NFTs are going to see this as a way—

this may be an evolution for the merchandise industry, but I think it'll be a positive evolution. This may be an opportunity to engage people at different levels.

Maybe engagement level 1 is an NFT where low environmental footprint, it's a digital collectible, lower cost to the business. Level 2 then becomes merch, but maybe that merch is more limited and higher quality.

Which actually I think delivers a better experience. You know, maybe level 3 is a combination of those things, and that's where you start unlocking things like access to thought leadership, access to celebrities that you may be aligned with. So this, I think, is a net-net—

it's, it's an opportunity for the industry.

Yeah, I would agree. Um, talk to me a little bit about rewards and community. How are you seeing NFTs used as rewards or badges or or something like that? I mean, we talked about it from a collectible standpoint a lot. Are you seeing this used from a rewards standpoint?

Yeah, so we're seeing this mainly in the communities of NFT owners.

And generally what we'll see is a project creator, whether that's, you know, an artist or a collection of people or even a brand, they're using the NFT to unlock some type of reward. And that reward could be a physical item, You know, maybe it's a hoodie.

For instance, the, the one of the Adidas NFTs that unlocks a hoodie, that's part of their customer experience. Cool. They're rolling out that NFT. So unlocking some physical item that then gets shipped to you and now you have something in the real world.

Unlocking a digital item, you know, the Leon Bridges campaign is a great example of that, you know, giving a cool outfit that you could never find in real life. Right now you've got this digital, digital way.

That's fun, right?

We're also seeing it with access.

So, you know, there's a, there's a New York-based restaurant called Flyfish Club, and they're, they're doing NFT-based access. There are some hotels that are experimenting with NFT guest experiences. Again, just so many creative ways we can approach industry with NFTs to unlock better customer experiences.

Yeah.

Do you have a favorite right now experience that you've had? And we've cited a lot, so if you don't, that's fine. I mean, you may have already covered it, but do you have a favorite cutting-edge experience that's happening that you're like, that just blows your mind?

'Cause you've seen a lot.

You know, I was at South by Southwest here in Austin a couple of months ago, and there was a pretty strong representation from NFT projects. And there's one out there called Fluff World, and that NFT, it's a, the theme is these rabbits that live in a magical world. So I went to one of the events and this was a holder event. So you had to have one of the NFTs and I went to one of the events and, you know, they completely transformed this activation and it felt like you were in the world of rabbits, in Fluff World.

They had burrows and they were serving spiked carrot juice and they had great artists and great music.

And it was just like being transformed into Fantasyland for a little while, all themed around this idea of Fluff World and these, these rabbits.

And I just, it was a really fun, engaging, and really just sort of enveloping experience. And I would love to see brands do that more often.

Yeah, that's cool. Let's get down to the last few questions here about practical tips. Now, often we'll feature a forward-thinking technology and it will scratch our curiosity and we'll think that'll be interesting someday. But I'll remind everyone that TikTok was released in 2016. 2016, only 6 short years ago, and has taken over the media world.

It's astonishing.

What tips would you share with entrepreneurs and leaders who say, I just don't have the energy for this right now? Does this go back to, you know, just go buy one, just get involved in something you're passionate about and see what the experience is like?

What else would you advise?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, participating is table stakes, so, you know, and you don't, you don't necessarily need to spend 20 hours in the world of NFTs to start to get a sense for them.

So, Go to OpenSea, which is the biggest marketplace, go browse some NFTs, see what you like, what you don't like, and then buy something. I think that's a really easy way to start understanding the culture and the significance of this.

When it comes to actually experimenting with NFTs then, I think what's really, really important is that you start with a strategy in mind.

And at this stage, our recommendation is to find a partner, a technology partner, strategy partner that can help you down this path. That, you know, has paid some of the dues, that understands some of the pitfalls, and can help you really fast forward your approach to this world in a way that makes sense for your business and also in a way that matches your budget requirements, right? We—

marketing budgets aren't unlimited. We all know that. We know that we have to start somewhere and we don't want to get left behind.

And so I think, you know, a good partner on both technology and strategy can help you really identify first steps towards using NFTs in your business, and then a meaningful and feasible path to get there that fits within your goals, within your stakeholder expectations.

Yeah, great advice. Always start with strategy. Tell us, Nick, I mentioned briefly in the introduction, but tell us what Polyient does.

So Polyient X is a platform that's basically bringing tools for creators and brands that allow them to create rewards for their NFT holders.

So earlier we talked about different reward types, whether that's physical rewards, digital items in the metaverse, additional NFTs, tickets to VIP events. So we have tools that allow marketers to put together their reward roadmap and create engaging customer experiences that all start with NFT ownership.

Very cool. Nick, thanks for taking time out of your schedule to talk with us today. This is really cool. And I loved your article Article and Marketing Profs, and I'm sure we'll be talking again, my friend.

Thank you for the time.

It's been, it's been great being on the show.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of Skucast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to Skucast on iTunes or to our blog at community.comandsku.com.

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Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.