Welcoming Web3: When Top Brands Enter the NFT Market
NFT technology gained notoriety through its use in the selling and transfer of digital art, but much like a baby taking its first steps, the market is still young and developing every day. Today let’s take a look at some big name brands who have entered the NFT space, to see how NFT tech is forever changing the way traditional businesses brand and sell their products.
Most people still assume NFT are mass-generated art sold by influencers and B-list celebrities. Truth is, NFT are not a product, but a technology, the use of unique non-fungible tokens that each store unique digital information. This information can be anything from art, music, video, contracts or photos, and can represent both digital and physical items. Now that the industry has taken its first steps, let’s check out the biggest names taking NFT to the next level, showing that this is a market not only ready to walk, but is ready to sprint into the future!
✨ Adidas:
Leading sportswear giant Adidas has been a leading fashion brand meshing fashion and NFT. In 2021 they partnered with top NFT collections Bored Ape Yacht Club, Gmoney, and Punks Comic for a limited release of both virtual and physical wearables. The collection “Into the Metaverse” included virtual clothing items that could be worn inside the famous blockchain metaverse The Sandbox, as well as a physical hoodie, tracksuit and beanie. In 2022, Adidas partnered with Prada to launch a new NFT project that would allow fans to create and contribute their own designs. The brand embraced the NFT scene so much, they even decided to buy a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT for themselves!
✨ Coca-Cola:
The leading soft drink brand in the world, Coca-Cola hasn’t been shy about entering the NFT market. In 2021 they initiated various NFT related campaigns. For International Friendship Day, they released a limited series of NFT. These one of a kind artworks unlocked surprise items for first time owners including a virtual Coca-Cola Bubbler Jacket that could be worn in virtual reality platform Decentraland. Later that year, they released another set of 4 branded NFT in a blind offering, meaning the rarity of each NFT wasn’t known until it was successfully purchased.
✨ Lamborghini:
Italian luxury car manufacturer Lamborghini has launched a few NFT collections to date. One unique collection featured actual physical keys cut from a piece of carbon fiber sent to space by the company. These physical keys have a QR code that owners can scan to access their digital art NFT. The collection featured 5 exclusive space-themed artworks. In a very different application of NFT being used for the physical verification of products, a Lamborghini-backed GT racing team has started to use NFT to authenticate car parts. The team decided to use NFT to “ensure that we can securely authenticate and audit every part of our racing fleet to monitor performance and ensure provenance,” stated Vincenzo Sospiri of Vincenzo Sospiri Racing.
✨ Louis Vuitton:
Another company who has mentioned using NFT to verify physical products is Louis Vuitton, a leading French fashion house, and one of the most counterfeit brands in the world. Outside of using NFT for security purposes, the design house has fully embraced the metaverse, creating Louis The Game, an NFT game on iOs and Android where players can travel an exciting virtual world collecting historical postcards and learning about the history of the brand. In the game, players can customize their characters with different Louis Vuitton prints and colorways.
✨ Samsung:
In 2021, Korean tech giant Samsung revealed the Samsung Frame TV. Designed to look more like a piece of art than a TV, the Frame TV is meant for people who want the option of having a TV be the focus of a room when it’s on, but fade into the room when it isn’t being watched. Frame owners can then subscribe to the Samsung Art Store to use the screen to display digital art. As part of the rebranding towards fine art, Samsung partnered with Nifty Gateway to develop the industry’s first smart NFT TV platform, allowing users to view, display and interact with NFT on Samsung’s premium 2022 TV’s. This includes an NFT explorer and market aggregator where users can browse, purchase and display their favorite NFT. Artists afraid of poor TV display settings ruining their creations need not worry. Samsung even noted a ‘smart calibration feature’ that would allow digital creators to make a preset display setting that the TV’s would automatically adjust to so buyers would see the NFT in its true to original image quality.
✨ Starbucks:
Coffee giant Starbucks is entering the NFT scene with Odyssey, this new loyalty program rewards customers in a variety of unique ways. The Web3 program allows customers to purchase and trade NFT, as well as play interactive games. Each NFT is based on rarity, with limited edition stamps available for purchase. Users can use credit cards to purchase the NFT as cryptocurrency or a digital wallet are not necessary to participate in the program. NFT owners will then be included in a variety of rewards including unique merchandise, event invites, and even a trip to the coffee fields of Costa Rica!
💥 Conclusion
One thing is certain, NFT are here to stay. So far we’ve seen that many major corporate brands are interested in applying this technology to their marketing purposes, and there are numerous other corporate giants (Nike, McDonalds, Ray-Ban, Gamestop, Burger King) who weren’t mentioned in this article. The success of NFT implementation within larger consumer bases has so far been hit and miss, with some extremely successful campaigns, and others who have failed. In just these few examples we can see the multitude of ways NFT can be used to promote a brand and offer unique experiences to consumers, and that ultimately the success of NFT within consumer marketing will be more about the creative marketing strategy of each company, and less about the technology itself.
About Pikasso
Pikasso is a firebase infrastructure for NFT apps and games, creating an easier way for projects to create NFT, all on low-cost layer-2 ecosystems. Pikasso saves users the time needed by using a no-code platform to create NFT, with an improved UX/UI, and marketplace generator for each NFT project, all while bridging the gap between web2 and web3 content.
