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Monday’s Marketing Minute: a16z’s Can’t Be Evil NFT License, NCAA Prez Embraces Brand Ambassadors, Starbucks Adds Web3 to Loyalty Program

Happy Fall, y’all! Temps are still a bit warm but calendar says September so I’m calling it Fall.  Hope everyone has an amazing week, here’s a few marketing and business stories I read over the last week that caught my eye:

 

Investment firm a16z is pushing it’s Can’t Be Evil license as a way for NFT holders to allow others to use its token and build upon it’s image and properties.  The license is free to use and apply to NFTs, and the hope is that it will become a standard license for NFTs to help holders protect their IP rights, as well as more easily allow others to build upon and remix and share that IP within the confines of the license.

 

Kristi Dosh had an interesting sit-down recently with NCAA President Mark Emmert on a variety of topics. Obviously, NIL was a big focus of the conversation. Emmert lamented the fact that paying student athletes could change their role in the eyes of the law to being employees of a university.  Which opens up the SA and university to a lot of legal issues that neither side may want to entangle themselves in.

Emmert suggested that a better alternative may be to explore the idea of universities employing more Brand Ambassadors.  Emmert suggested that universities focus on quantifying the amount of brand value that its SAs are creating, and then compensate SAs from that ‘fund’ based on each SAs contributions, which could be measured using some formula or criteria.  Colleges have used ambassadors for years, but the idea of treating student athletes as ambassadors is a new untouched, so it will be interesting to see how this idea could play out as the NIL era emerges.

 

Starbucks is looking to incorporate NFT technology into its existing loyalty program.  This idea of brands incorporating NFTs into loyalty or ambassador programs is something I’ve talked about here before. In general, the Starbucks Odessey program will leverage the additional functionality that NFTs can provide into the structure of the loyalty programs it has used in the past.

This is a good start, but as more brands begin to incorporate NFTs and blockchain technologies into ambassador and loyalty programs, members will begin to want more.  As more web3 savvy customers become involved in these programs, they will expect their NFTs to grant more than digital perks and discounts.  They will expect their tokens to grant ownership and even governance over the programs.  Watch for this to become more common in the coming years.

 

So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute, I hope everyone has a fantabulous week!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Reddit’s NFT Marketplace, Creator Economy Research, NIL Marketplaces

Happy Monday, y’all!  Welcome to Monday’s Marketing Minute for this week! Each Monday I share three marketing/business/web3 news items I found over the last week that caught my interest.  Let’s dive in!

 

Reddit has launched a marketplace that allows users to buy a blockchain-based profile picture as an NFT. The NFTs will come with a licensing agreement that allows the users to use the avatars on other sites. However it appears the user will not be able to use it to create merchandise based off the avatar design as you can with some NFT collections like BAYC.

This is an interesting monetization move by Reddit.  I think you will see more of web 2..0 social platforms introducing new purchase options such as this. However, this will also create an opportunity for web3 competitors to offer similar offerings for free or tie the offering to activity on the site. For instance, lets say such avatar marketplaces become the norm over the last couple of years.  If a web3 version of say Twitter launches in 2024, it could offer the avatars that users are accustomed to paying for, for free.  Or offer them for free if a certain level of activity is achieved.  It feels like this is a story worth watching and see how other social platforms respond with similar moves.

 

Very interesting research into the Creator Economy by The Tilt, which is a great site and newsletter, BTW.  A key takeaway for me: It takes 6 months for the average content creator to earn their first dollar, 17 months to become self-suficient, and 25 months to reach a point where they need to start hiring outside help.  The rise of web3 technologies will greatly enhance the ability of content creators to make a living off their work, so this research is very important to give us an understanding of what’s coming for content creation and the creator economy.

 

Love how simple and clean this NIL marketplace is that the Miami Hurricanes have for their student athletes. It let’s you see who the athletes are, their sports, interests, social media accounts, everything. You will start to see most colleges having a marketplace such as this to highlight their student athletes and connect them with potential sponsors and brands to execute NIL deals.

 

So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I hope you have a lovely week, try to stay cool and remember to drink LOTS of water!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Yuga Labs Acquires CryptoPunks, Massive NIL Deal, Social Media Engagement Rates By Platform

Happy Monday! Hope you had a wonderful week as we (hopefully) begin to tip-toe into Spring like weather over the coming weeks! Here’s a few business and marketing stories I read over the last few days that I wanted to share:

 

Yuga Labs, which previously acquired the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club brands, has now acquired CryptoPunks and Meebits. As you can see from the tweet, and article here, Yuga will be granting the same commercial rights to the NFT owners as BAYC and MAYC owners enjoy. I want to do some more digging into this ownership issue, because it almost seems like we have a licensor/licensee arrangement happening here. Which isn’t true ownership, and a bit contrary to the intended web3 ethos. But still very cool move by Yuga Labs, regardless! Either way, it will be interesting to see what develops commercially from this, either with individual NFT owners, or as a collective.

 

So last Summer, I wrote a post on NIL laws going into affect in multiple states. When it happened, I immediately knew this was the story of the year, because of the huge impact it would have on the business, sports, and branding worlds in the future. Well now the future has arrived. As my friend Kristi writes, there is an offer on the table to an unnamed Class of 2023 football recruit that would pay him $8 Million for the exclusive rights to his Name, Image and Likeness for 4 years.

Read those numbers again: A high school junior football player is being offered $8 Million dollars over 4 years.  Not to play football, but to post on social media, make public appearances, etc. Kristi talked to the NCAA about this deal and it would likely be a violation of its rules on pay to play. Still, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before similar deals become commonplace, and if that happens, the worlds of collegiate and amateur athletics will effectively be over.

 

Marketing Charts has a very interesting analysis of engagement rates for content posted to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Before reading, which platform do you think has the highest engagement rates?  Instagram, and it’s not even close. Visual content drives engagement, it’s just a fact of digital life. But what industry on Instagram drives the most engagement? Would you believe Higher Education? I found that very surprising. The 3 percent engagement rate for content about higher ed was almost double the engagement for the 2nd place industry: Sports teams.

 

So that’s all I have for this week, hope all of you have a wonderful and productive week, and I will see you here next Monday!

 

SPONSORED: If you’ve noticed, the content here over the past several months has moved more to covering the emerging web3 space and technologies. A big reason why is the emerging opportunities these technologies will create for content creators to build engagement and monetization opportunities around their content. My friend Joe Pulizzi has been one of the content marketing and creation leaders for well over a decade. He’s teamed up with Brian Clark (of CopyBlogger fame) to create an event just for content creators, CEX. CEX is the Creator Economy Expo. If you are a content creator who is looking to build engagement, a larger platform and maybe even an INCOME from your content, then CEX is your tribe. The event will be held in May in Phoenix, and features a who’s-who list of content speakers, including Joe and Brian, along with Ann Handley, Dan Pink, Jeremiah Oywang, Pam Slim and many more!

If you want to build a business around your content, CEX is where you need to be! You can register here, and when you do, use code Collier to get a $200 discount! And please note that the Early Bird rate ends on April 1st. Hope to see you there!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: OpenSea’s Big Funding, Where NIL Dollars Are Going, Samsung’s NFT TV

Welcome to 2022! Tomorrow is my birthday, and you’ve already given me the best present, your attention.  Thanks for taking the time to read this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute. Please share it with your network if you want to give me a 2nd present!

 

NFTs are all the rage, and no one is riding the NFT wave higher than OpenSea. OpenSea is a marketplace for NFTs. Think of it as eBay for NFTs. And it just raised $300M in Series C funding, at a 13.3 Billion valuation. Big numbers! What I find a bit ironic about this news is that OpenSea, being a CENTRALIZED marketplace, is one of the early darlings of the Web3 space, which is supposed to be an era of decentralization. I think it goes to show that whatever Web3 becomes may not be as dramatic of a departure from what we already have, and if it is, it might take a while to arrive.

 

I wrote last Summer about the huge impact NIL laws would have on marketing and branding. The folks at Opendorse have a breakdown on what types of NIL deals athletes are signing. Licensing, as well as content creation seem to be the most popular structures for deals. 2021 was the first year where we saw NIL deals happen at scale, since several states passed laws allowing athletes to begin to monetize their Name, Image and Likeness. This space and the structure of deals will continue to evolve in the coming years. As will it’s impact on college athletics.

 

Samsung has been flirting a bit with NFTs, and now the electronics company is preparing to launch a line of smart TVs which will allow you to view, display and even buy NFTs, right from the TV. Samsung will offer a ‘marketplace aggregator’ and it’s unclear which NFT marketplaces will be made available to owners. This smells like it could be Samsung testing demand for NFTs and possibly launching its own NFT marketplace in the future.

And one more cause this is awesome:


Well done, Slack, being human wins advocacy!

So that’s it for the first Monday’s Marketing Minute of 2022, thanks for reading! Look for a new post later this week on what two spaces are poised to breakout in the NFT landscape in 2022. Hope you have a great and productive week!