Keys to your Uncles Cab
Now you’re back home, you’re gonna be needing a new ride. That’s where Uncle Bailey comes in. After an illustrious career as one of Blockston’s taxi drivers, Bart Bailey went on to star as a driving trivia show host for the cities only cable network provider, Version.
That’s a small backstory for our players’ collective Uncle, Bart Bailey. Returning home and picking up the keys to your uncles cab was a part of the story line that I wrote when we first migrated to Ethereum and I first got a taste for how the project could develop.
How a game isn’t a chart, how it needs a life and a story. A beating heart, a history. So for the past couple of weeks I’ve been writing alot more of that story, and building parts of it into the game in hopes to bring a more cohesive experience — something a little more immersive, a goal beyond “earn crypto”.
So anyway, what are we doing?
I first got the idea when our Discord server had new members asking about the scam NFTs that unscrupulous shitters were airdropping out to the wider Ethereum community.
“If they are coming asking about the project, that’s a good thing, let’s airdrop NFTS.”
It didn’t take much thinking, I’ll be honest. We needed a large run of NFTs that could be airdropped out and they shouldn’t interfere with the value of the existing NFTs (visually or monetarily).
So naturally the idea for an access-pass style NFT clicked in perfectly with the Uncle’s Cab scenario. A line of 10,000 yellow cabs, each indistinguishable from the last. They’ll be free to mint, required to access the game, and we’ll airdrop out over 80% of the supply.
Who gets the airdrop?
Well they’re free to mint, so don’t worry about it all that much — but every one of our $Blocks token holders, and every one that holds an Ethereum Season One NFT will receive a set of keys to their Uncle’s Cab — and be able to drive the cab at launch.
The remaining portion of airdropped supply will be sent to Ethereum wallets that;
a) are active
2) have bought a game-related NFT in the last 3 months
We can extract those wallets using a boolean search with a Phantom on Zapper.fi, I’ll post a guide for this in a twitter thread.
What’s the marketing approach?
We’ll be relying heavily on the airdrop, and marketing the free mint through social media. It’s an approach that other gaming projects have had mixed success with, but on a Venn diagram — we’re right in the sweet spot between effort vs cost vs result.
Since we’re more guerrilla than a rag-tag band of 14 year old's with AK47’s, we’ll market the free mint using our existing social media channels and influencer reach — and pair that with a couple of sneaky Google Ads tricks.
- Branded Keyword Ads
- Retargeting Ads
Both are ridiculously cheap ways to run ads to a laser focused audience.
Crypto brands almost never bid on their own brand name because their marketers are 17 year old Twitter influencers, so that means we’re able to tap into their audiences for less than a cent. Audiences specifically searching for an NFT racing game.
The second strategy is more of a claw back. Data shows that only 2–4% of website visits result in completed transactions, so Retargeting gives us a way to chase after people that have already visited our website, socials or YouTube — at a fraction of the cost.
When will it happen?
We’re looking to start rolling it out midway through January, with the mass airdrop, socials and Google Ads kicking things off before enable the mint.
Tidbits?
Well, there is another idea — the cab, being the same model for all 10,000 — can very easily have it’s textures swapped out.
Which leaves an opportunity for branding, advertising. Drive around in the Uniswap cab.
I’ll be writing Twitter threads on how to do both Retargeting and Branded Keyword strategies.
Check out what we’re building at https://www.blockriders.com and follow our Twitter for the latest updates!
