Despite the best efforts of the NFT community and builders leading the space into the future, the term “NFT” remains controversial for most of the internet. The mere pronunciation of NFT has been enough to send fans of deceased creators into a frenzy upon learning of the impending drops related to the bodies of work of these deceased creators.

Regardless, some brands find the appeal of launching an NFT project too big to ignore. After all, NFTs are just one part of what is often a multifaceted strategy to prepare for the widespread arrival of Web3, the Internet’s next big leap. So what have they done? Just skip using the word NFT altogether when talking about your forays into Web3. And it has been surprisingly effective.

When Reddit announced the upcoming launch of its Collectible Avatars initiative in July 2022, its success was enough to convince Reddit leaders to further explore the idea of ​​selling NFTs to its vast user base. With millions of people regularly hitting “the front page of the internet,” this move seemed poised to serve as one of the biggest NFT onboarding events we’ve seen yet.

That’s how it went? Not quite, but not for the reason you might think. For starters, Reddit deliberately avoided using the term when announcing the upcoming release. “What if we could help these artists showcase their art to the entire Reddit community and make it easy for them to earn money for their work? Our new Collectible Avatar Store does just that,” he said in his initial announcement regarding his first series of Collectible Avatars.

Reddit’s subsequent CryptoSnoos NFT drop did it incredibly well, holding the top spot on the OpenSea volume chart for some time. But this time, the term “NFT” was all over the page and its marketing. It seems that their release of Collectible Avatars did what it set out to do after all: serve as the culmination of years of slowly ingratiating themselves with the concept of digital currency and assets to their vast user base.

Digital collectibles have long been a mainstay in the NFT market. One of the most popular formats of NFT digital collectibles are already beloved IP-based collections. These are the kind of NFTs that Candy Digital has been bringing to the market for a long time, which includes collections based on Major League Baseball, among others.

One of Candy Digital’s most notable initiatives was its July 2022 Mystery Box, released as a tie-in to the latest season of the Netflix smash hit. Strange things. So what was the catch? It also avoided mentioning NFT anywhere in its marketing, even though its format bears the NFT trademark of thousands and thousands of pieces available within.

In a previous interview with nft now, Candy Digital CEO Andre Llewellyn said: “The idea is to focus more on the product than the format. If you look at the music, I’m not selling the format of a CD or a stream of music; I sell you the artist’s single. He then went on to say that since NFTs and Web3 as a whole were still in their early stages, it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to establish this early-stage nomenclature. Think about it: Can you imagine if we used the term “phygital” forever?

Of course, this wouldn’t be Candy’s last dance with digital collectibles, nor her last spin on Strange things-themed drops. In November 2022, the company released another set of IP-related collectibles: digitized versions of props used in the show’s final season. And again, without the term “NFT” in sight.

This one is a bit different. WeChat, China’s super app for communication, commerce and more, has issued an update to its terms of service stating that NFTs, cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies are prohibited on the platform. The move came in the wake of China’s 2021 crackdown on cryptocurrency trading and mining.

So how exactly does this ban fit on this list? The term “NFT” is not found anywhere in their terms of service, but is instead called “digital collections.” Although the document was Translated from Chinese, the terminology was broadly consistent with how China has regularly referred to blockchain-centric technologies.

Given China’s enormous ability to influence the course of public thought within its borders, there is reason to believe that this phrase may have something to do with censorship. For most Chinese citizens, WeChat is The internet, and refusing to call NFTs and crypto by their internationally agreed names, even after their bans, could be China’s way of ensuring that it is even more difficult for its citizens to learn about them.

In August 2022, English rock band Muse made another attempt to match Radiohead’s legacy. Fourteen years after the unconventional release of Radiohead’s opus in rainbowMuse worked with music marketplace NFT Serenade to release their latest album will of the people under a novel format: Digital Pressing.

NFT music sold out almost instantly, showing that, for at least a subset of the Muse fanbase, some were thrilled at the chance to receive all sorts of extras and freebies commonly associated with purchasing a physical release. . To go along with Muse’s latest album, buyers at the time also received bonus tracks, access to chain royalties, and a collector’s module.

Notably, this Digital Pressing, along with all other music collections released under this format, will be chart-eligible in certain territories. That’s great and all, but what constitutes the need call this format Digital Pressing? As Candy Digital demonstrated, it can be a way for artists and companies to work to bring NFTs to the mass market and avoid the utterance of an acronym that, for many, has earned a disappointing reputation in the public eye.