Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday for those who celebrated! I spent the time off eating an uncomfortable amount of food, watching the World Cup and American football, doing a little Black Friday shopping, and spending time with A’s family.
Andddd we’re back 💪
I procrastinated with booking a trip to Miami and now I am stuck at home FOMO’ing all the great industry events that will be happening ðŸ˜
Since I won’t be attending, I won’t be able to provide insights like I have at previous events. However, I’ll be following social media to gauge sentiment and thoughts around the following themes:
These conferences are all happening over the same week, some of which are directly conflicting with each other. Will all these events be packed with attendees or will there be winners and losers in terms of attendance?
How will satellite events impact the conferences? Will they be the main attraction, or will they compliment the conferences in symbiotic ways?
How many people will come for Art Basel and have their interest piqued from Web3-centric activations?
Which brands will win the war on attention, which ones will fizzle?
If anything interesting comes up, I’ll be sure to share. And if you’re in Miami, I’d love to hear your thoughts next week. I’ll be eagerly scrolling through Twitter living vicariously through all the tweets, photos, and videos!
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Vayner3’s What to Watch in Web3
Last week Vayner3 shared a report with 8 Trends for Enterprises in 2023.
Vayner3 is the Web3 agency arm for Gary Vaynerchuck’s VaynerX. Pretty impressive to see how Gary Vee has grown his family of brands over the years.
This report is great for business leaders that are new to Web3, while the frameworks are helpful mental models for more knowledgeable folks like myself. There’s something for everyone!
Here are my takeaways from the 20 page report and corresponding thoughts:
Emerging Product Archetypes
Vayner3 presents the product archetypes nicely, showing that NFTs and Web3 activations aren’t just about digital collectibles or expensive PFPs.
In addition to their points, I believe that Web3 tech will allow for consumer brands to operate more fluidly between Accessible & Free vs. Scarce & High Price.
For example, Starbuck’s loyalty program will start off as accessible and free, and can conveniently break off into tiers or experiences that are scarce and high price.
On the other hand, Nike’s digital wearables will start off as more exclusive, but can easily move downmarket with everyone having their own .SWOOSH handle and free Nike digital wearables. Digital/Virtual goods allow for parallel efforts to coexist, with some focused on the high-end consumers for monetization and others focused on mass market for awareness.
Go-to-Market Strategy
Vayner3 provides a nice visualization of how different brands are approaching Web3 GTM. There’s no right or wrong about this — It depends on risk tolerance, in-house knowledge of the space, and the brand’s historical approach to GTM.
Nitpicking, but I believe the reality looks more like a blend of the two like this:
Geez, in the spirit of Thanksgiving I have one more thing to be thankful for: Typing, since my handwriting is terrible 😂
That said, I can get behind what the team is distinguishing: GTM leans more towards one or the other. It’s possible larger companies will parallel path the two for faster learning as well.
Token ticketing is introducing new experiential models
As I’ve expanded the breadth of my knowledge across Web3, I’ve become a fan of ‘boring’ use cases of NFTs like ticketing and loyalty. With ticketing:
Everyone knows how they work (eg: Kids understand how tickets work)
They have used them before (eg: I bought a movie ticket last week)
The use cases are established (eg: Tickets for movies, concerts, flights, etc.)
So if you add a twist to the current understanding of what a ticket is and can do, there are fewer mental hoops to jump through. When applied to the above examples, tickets go from a receipt to a receipt AND:
Coachella: A lifetime membership
Universal: Access to special areas of a theme park
Top Gun Maverick: A coupon for future promotions
Organizations are building Web3 teams with a variety of approaches
Organizational design is a fascinating thing. Naturally, the larger the company is the slower things move. With Web3 moving at breakneck speed, first mover advantage can provide benefits if executed well.
As Vayner3’s framework shows there are multiple approaches. I tend to believe that the most successful organizations will incorporate the Center of Enablement or Web3 Design Studio framework, especially in the early innings of this space.
I even hypothesized how Disney might do this several months back:
It’s great to see other larger teams sharing their frameworks and mental models of how larger organizations can think about Web3 strategy. We’ll see what sticks and what doesn’t.
See you tomorrow!
