Takeaways from NFT London 2022

Good times were had at NFT London last week. It was the usual eclectic web3 mix of techies, gamers, fashionistas, fully-masked humans, corporate escapees, and a pleasantly surprising number of women. There were also puppies. The attendance was seemingly low, but what we could expect during a bear market I suppose.

My colleague Soren and I attended under the radar just to check out the scene, learn, and talk to people. We sat in the audience of numerous conversations in the brand and games tracks. Unfortunately, we missed all the panels on legalities, regulations, property rights, policies and compliance. While this isn’t my area of expertise, it does seem to be the thing that is holding many big, established companies back from adoption — potentially the main roadblock currently to mass adoption of NFTs. And therefore, it is worth us all knowing our way around.

There were lots of seemingly interesting topics, matching what we on the business side of a dynamic NFT SaaS company have on our minds most of the time.

Panels were themed with buzzwords like community, creators, digital identity, brand loyalty, customer engagement, mass market, tokenize, web2.5, user generated content (UGC). Nike’s acquisition of RTFKT was cited multiple times, often as the only success story a panelist could come up with on the spot, on Thursday. By Friday it was cited as an unrealistic example of a big brand moving into Web3, one that 95% of brands would not be able to pull off. Nike has serious street cred and can seamlessly merge athletes/sport, creators, culture, creativity and gaming while maintaining authenticity. For many brands, the fit or the way in is not as obvious.

The panels covered interesting topics, but most of the conversations proved to be very surface level and without detail, which might have given the conversations more of a substantive feel or lent some insights to a crowd that is largely already working in the space. Not sure if it was the format of 25 minute panels and 10 minute talks, or that speakers were hesitant to give their IP away. To be fair, we missed all the workshops, which were an hour long and likely got deeper into the topics.

It is worth noting: it is much easier to critique than to present, so forgive my “shouting from the cheap seats”, but here we go with some themes that emerged amongst the brand track panels:

• Moving from this concept of NFTs as a product to thinking about them as a deal or a contract with a customer. Ultimately, they should ideally be something that adds value to the consumer experience. Further on that: brands, don’t sell your NFTs. Give them away.
• Planning long term with web3 and NFTs. What do our brands and clients want to achieve in the longer term? What does success look like two to three years from now? It might all need to start with experimenting, but ultimately what are we working towards?
• Traditional audiences are struggling with the user interfaces of web3 projects. So far, the emphasis has been the tech, as it needed to be. But now as we move into the mainstream, we need to focus on presentation and experience design. For example, wallet sign up and that really early entry point, can we make this more obvious and seamless for starters?
• There is a huge opportunity for NFTs in Edtech, and ways forward for NFT technology to positively support higher education. No case studies or even use cases were cited in the panels I sat on. (Side note/tangent: we have one! Read it here….). Also, event ticketing, rewards programs, of course gaming. We have only really begun to scratch the surface.
• We all have the obligation of being mentors and educators in this space, without expecting returns. So many people are at the entry point, and those of us who “get it” to some degree need to pay it forward, share the knowledge. We need to unravel the confusion, so the focus needs to be on making it easier and more friendly to get people onboarded.
• There were a few discussions around whether we even want to use the word “NFTs” anymore. This word is loaded and often causes an immediate negative reaction due to the hype/speculation/crash cycles that have largely overshadowed the industry in the last year. Also, it is a very technical description, which doesn’t help the less technical ones feeling like it is something they will ever understand. The Reddit avatars are an example of this. They are ultimately NFTs but since they are called something else, an audience that is largely against them in theory, embraced them.

A couple of personal observations and opinions:

• At this conference, like most, we all want the panels and discussions but the real value comes out of the conversations and meeting people in the industry — we all advance down this path when we share our pain points, discoveries and hypotheses.
• The focus is still very much on NFTs as collectibles and investment. At least at this gathering, the conversations seemed very limited to NFTs 1.0. There is a WHOLE world of use cases that are not even being imagined in the space, in fact a whole new industry in this. The way that social media changed marketing, the way that f2p revolutionized games a few years ago, we are changing business through each and every use case.
• This shift from thinking of individual customers to thinking about customer communities was discussed a lot. And while that would be awesome, we also need to check the reality of that shift working in the mainstream, beyond sexy brands and products that can utilize the creator economy in a genuine on-brand kind of way. Guilds and communities around games are one thing and that is a natural fit. But when we discuss mainstream, household name brands, in thinking about mass adoption, customer communities just might not be a realistic goal for many of them. I heard a lot of, “People love their brands. People love engaging with brands. People love advocating for their brands.” While this is true for some, for 90% of brands out there (non-scientific stat), this just isn’t true. I am not in love with my butter brand. I always buy the same one, it’s fine. But I can’t recall the name of it. Nor am I loyal to many brands at all, honestly, simply because I love the brand. I am loyal to my tastes, preferences and lifestyle. I am focused on getting a good bargain, but I’m also willing to pay for quality. As a consumer, I want utility. I want things to work. I want it to be easy and provide me with either some function or some satisfaction. Let’s be honest, besides sports fans, sneaker heads and Apple diehards, who really thinks about brands and wants to spend their free time in community with them?
• That said, if your brand could build a customer community, if you can embrace and incentivize UGC, in a way that feels authentic and “on brand”, do it! And provide them value in return. If that doesn’t seem right for your brand, you can still focus on understanding them and how Web3 experiences could enhance their interaction with, or connection to, your brand. It is more important than ever to know your customers and your audience, and notice what they respond to. The future customers will be expecting more from brands, and will likely be more involved as a result. Ideally, your customers will do the marketing for you. But you have to give back to them.

Onwards and upwards, friends. Keep experimenting, keep it strategic and let’s think about how we can make this world a more fair place while doing it.