What’s in a name? B&T was at the Right Click Save conference at Bondi Pavilion and listening to speakers talk about NFTs, metaverses, Web3, blockchains, URLs, IRL and Gen Z. It’s enough to make your head spin.

Amidst the relentless game of buzzword bingo, however, there was some clarity. And, most importantly, something for advertisers and marketers to take note of.

Michelle Grey, co-founder and CEO of NFT creator platform and Web3 creative agency, Culture Vault, explained that Web3 and NFT were the next step in building a loyal customer base.

“It’s a really good way to boost communities around membership, loyalty and rewards. Adoption isn’t here yet, but the things I’m talking about (creating loyalty and membership rewards) are still very nascent.”

In many ways, the overriding theme of Right Click Save was community building. During the conference, named for the oft-used comment about NFTs (all you need to do is right-click and save to hack a piece of digital art), speakers discussed at length how these new technologies They would be indispensable for companies in the future. .

(L-R) Patricia Haueiss, Lana Hopkins, Finn Judell, Hypno Wilder

“It’s very expensive for brands to reach their fans,” said Lana Hopkins, CEO and co-founder of some.place, a Web3-based rewards and benefits platform for brands to connect with customers.

“If you look at the cost of advertising, it’s going up and up and up…and advertising is getting more and more scrutinized and it’s much more difficult. Consumers are also realizing that they don’t want to be a product of advertising.

“The fundamental problem that exists for brands and their retailers is a lack of engagement and connection and that they are losing touch with their fans. So we’re thinking about how to solve that in the context of what blockchain can offer in terms of ownership and control and get it back to the people, rather than corporations.”

In practice, handing control back to the people can take various forms. For example, Run It Wild’s Katie Tholo explained how it worked with the Australian Open in her AO ArtBall NFT project.

“[The AO] He came to Run It Wild looking to be an innovator in this space,” he said.

“The AO has always had that as part of their brand identity and this was a really natural next step… We launched 6,776 ArtBalls and they were all connected to a 19×19 centimeter grid.”

The most interesting part of the ArtBall campaign, according to Tholo, was being able to take advantage of existing sports data and combine it with blockchain technology.

“The biggest question the community will have is how do you scale from it? We are launching a smaller collection this year that will be integrated as part of the overall collection and the concepts of match winning points that are connected to real storylines and live data will continue for many years to come.”

Perhaps the biggest problem with NFTs is that they are perceived as inextricably linked to extremely online people looking for a quick financial return. Remember when a large part of the internet was freaking out over Justin Bieber’s purchase of a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for almost A$2 million? That same token is now worth around AU$100,000, if anyone wants to buy it.

(L-R) Priscilla Koikoui, Serwah Attafuah, Michelle Grey, Katie Tholo

According to Grey, and almost everyone else at the event, this reading of the NFT market is nonsense.

“It’s a really good way to drive communities around membership, loyalty and rewards, and it’s a way to engage with customers.

NFTs can also serve a broader purpose rather than just exist as a nice digital image.

“An art token would be a beautiful piece of digital art, it doesn’t have any utility attached to it. You just buy it because you think it’s really beautiful,” she explained.

“A utility token is something that has future utility. If you’re a brand and you want to build a community and offer them membership rewards, or if they have a token, they can attend your next three events or they can have a drink. Basically, they get access to some kind of reward.”

While this will certainly appeal to marketers, the industry may need to consider the way it talks about itself. Over the course of the talks, the speakers, whether they were digital artists, worked on creating their own metaverses, worked on the agency side or other creatives, talked about the bear market they were currently operating in, and whether they were bullish on a particular coin. sign or idea

While around 46 per cent of Australians own some form of investment outside of their super or main home and around a quarter of Australians own cryptocurrency, turning these speculators into members will be a challenge. What will be even more difficult is convincing the majority of Australians that NFTs are, in fact, safe and do not necessarily represent some form of financial speculation.

Communicating this change will be up to marketers and brands. A variety of companies are already looking to get involved in the space. Nike, for example, launched its .SWOOSH digital community last month.

“One report found that 20 percent of brands have already invested ad dollars in the metaverse, while another 36 percent are considering doing so,” Hopkins said.

For agencies, the size of the task can seem daunting and insignificant at the same time.

“It’s a bit like ‘How long is a piece of string?’ question,” said Tholo.

“It depends on how big the initiative is, how big the planning is, or how comprehensive it is to the goals of the organization over the next three, five, and 10 years.”

However, Right Click Save’s advice to agencies is clear: the metaverse, NFTs and Web3 are not going anywhere.

“Within the next two years, agencies will be transformed,” he continued.

“And when we think about budget lifecycles, there may be some companies that are adding metaverse or NFT budget lines for their staff to invest. .’”