This week, Salesforce introduced its web3 Advisory Council to help guide Salesforce customers toward web3 in a “trusted, responsible, and sustainable way.”

In February, Salesforce announced plans for its NFT Cloud that allows brands to mint, manage, and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs). However, there was considerable pushback from hundreds of employees who objected to the possibility of scams and the environmental impact. Since Ethereum Merge is long behind us, the environmental aspect is less of an issue, although NFTs are struggling to shed the scam image.

Nonetheless, Salesforce launched its first NFT Cloud pilots in June. Increasingly, brands are looking to adopt web3 as part of their loyalty and rewards programs. And they’re engaging in forward-looking metaverse experiments.

Digital marketing has gone through many phases such as search engine optimization, Google Adwords, banner ads, and social media. Web3, including the metaverse, is the latest addition to the strategy toolbox.

The Salesforce State of Marketing 2023 survey found that 51% of CMOs already have a web3 strategy with virtual products and virtual reality as the most common technologies.

“Web3 opens the doors to a new era of relationships between brands and consumers. Unlocking its potential requires a new way of thinking about and approaching business problems, and we’ve assembled an incredible board to help guide us on this journey,” said Marc Mathieu, Salesforce’s senior vice president of strategic customer innovation and transformation.

The web3 Advisory Board includes:

• Erika Wykes-Sneyd, Global Vice President, adidas Web3 Studio
• Sebastian Borget, Co-Founder and COO, The Sandbox
• Keith Grossman, President, TIME
• Aaron Rajan, Global Vice President of Technology, Unilever
• Brendan Lynch. Global Executive Vice President of Enterprise & Revenue, Ticketmaster
• Sandra Ro, CEO, Global Blockchain Business Council
• Ian Rogers, CXO, General Ledger

The main brands represented on the board, Adidas, Unilever and Ticketmaster, are very active on web3.

The privacy problem

It is commendable that Salesforce has taken this step with the stated purpose of guiding trust, ethics, and knowledge. We believe this is not a complete list of members, which also includes ethics and sustainability experts. Industry outsiders are essential regarding privacy.

Public blockchain transparency is a dream for brands. A wallet address can provide a treasure trove of information about customers. Some of that can be used internally, such as allowing brands to build a better customer image across different channels, such as in-store, online, and in the metaverse. That’s fair enough.

But transparency also means they can see customer engagement with other brands and their spending habits.

Web3 wallets leak much more financial information than cookie tracking, which is being phased out. Over time, this problem is likely to be addressed in a number of ways, ultimately resulting in a person having multiple sub-portfolios that prevent their spending habits from linking across brands.

Meanwhile, there are ethical issues, particularly when wallets are associated with real-world identities.

Meanwhile, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff embraced web3 early on, especially through one of his other businesses, TIME magazine. TIME has released several NFT collections, invested in the OpenSea NFT marketplace, and a year ago collaborated with Galaxy Digital to publish metaverse content. Salesforce has made web3 investments in blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs and infrastructure provider Blockdaemon.