NFTs will not help your brand unless you can answer this simple question
Are you a marketer tempted by launching an NFT to promote your brand? Then what is your strategy to avoid looking exactly like Gap, Barbie, Coca-Cola, Taco Bell and countless others who have already done so? Mano has a simple question to guide you.
Photo: Tezos
In 2022, it can be tempting to jump on the latest brand activation craze of creating NFTs - and by this most actually mean making a juicy PR announcement-. After all, many brands have already invested into social media newsrooms to be able to piggyback on the latest internet memes, so why stop at color-changing dresses or the last TikTok dance move when it is possible to dive into crypto conversations and their attractive engagement rates? Although how can you ensure a strong differentiation and tear through a sea of sameness when a lot of brands from multiple industries - including your competitors - have already launched theirs?
Activation principles must be brand specific
If the question is current for NFTs, it is also applicable to any brand activation. Fortunately at Mano, we are experts in helping brands build activation principles: building rules to guide the behavior of the brand. These rules help marketers evaluate the opportunity of a brand activation like NFTs, and to orient it for the benefit of their own specific strategic objectives. Activation principles are very useful to guide discussions with creative agencies and with internal channels. So, how to activate NFTs in a differentiative way? Well, it depends on your brand and spoiler, unless you are the Major League in the US or Panini Football cards in Europe, this is less about collecting nice little images, and more about what it allows the brand to create.
The most important question to ask yourself is:
How does the NFT concretely help you prove your brand values to your target audience?
From your brand activation principles to NFTs
Example 1: Your brand is built on a strong commitment to supporting local communities (you could be Budweiser).
Possible activation principle: to create a sense of friendly support tied to real world groups.
NFT activation: you could rely on NFTs to assemble your customers to fund and promote a new generation of musicians.This is what Budweiser* just did to build on its existing brand objectives: https://us.budweiser.com/nft/
Example 2: Your brand is built on the exclusivity of being a well travelled person (you could be Rimowa*)
Possible activation principle: anywhere they are, creating rare and looked-after customer experiences
NFT activation: Sounds like launching a DAO (a community built on NFT where members take decisions of the objective with a majority rule). It could allow you to give access to exclusive events co-constructed with your niche audience. Think about Friends with Benefits member-only events online and in multiple cities.
These were just examples, based on some of the work that Mano does to define its clients' brand activation guidelines and allow them to create or to choose activations that are differentiated and truly help reaching their strategic objectives.
Interested? We are always happy to hear from you. In the meantime, anyone selling a Bored Ape for cheap?
*Disclaimer: the brands quoted in this article are not working with Mano and serve an illustration purpose only.
TAGS: Budweiser, Friends with Benefits, Tezos
Contact us to learn how Mano can help you to approach your brand activism plans.
By Thibaut Thomas, Strategy Director
Coming from Paris, Thibaut brings 14 years of experience as a strategist for the likes of L'Oréal, American Express, Netflix and the Cannes Film Festival. He was trained in humanities and semiotics, and teaches at the Sorbonne University.
