Considerations for creating a ‘fan-first’ NFT campaign
Over the course of the last several years, NFTs — Non-Fungible Tokens — have taken the internet by storm. What started as a trend has transformed into a movement, fuelled by enthusiasts across the globe. NFTs are rarified collectables that have unique digital identifiers that cannot be copied, substituted, or replicated, and are recorded on the blockchain to authenticate their ownership.
A rapidly growing space within the market is sports NFTs. Fantastec, a long-standing client of Interstate, is a pioneer in this area. This article focuses on the significance and potential of American college sports NFTs. College sport as a sphere of entertainment is a massive generator of revenue in the US and is a multi-billion dollar industry. In 2019, the athletics departments of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) member colleges generated $18.9 billion in revenue.
Fantastec recently moved into the US college sports NFT market, with an initial focus on American Football. This followed a much-needed regulatory change that came into effect as of July 2021. College athletes received direct control over the sale of their NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) — something which was previously controlled by their colleges. By the following July college athletes across the US had already made an estimated $917 million as a result, according to new data from Opendorse.
Interstate was briefed by Fantastec to build a fan-first campaign for the platform ‘Fantastec SWAP,’ an NFT trading card-style, collection app. Fantastec recently gained a licence from the NCAA to create NFTs through SWAP for any of the 804 colleges across the US. This facilitated Fantastec SWAP’s ‘We Together’ campaign, designed by Interstate. ‘We Together’ constitutes player and college-specific digital collectibles with the key audience being students, players, friends and family of the colleges. The ‘We Together’ campaign introduces a human touch to the robotic NFT market — a space traditionally dominated by AI scaled, algorithmically run, ‘art.’
In the following Q&A, Interstate’s Harry Chapman and Will Campbell offer their insights into the undertaking of such a project, with a discussion as to how the ‘We Together’ campaign and the Fantastec SWAP brand could be designed as both scalable but importantly also humanistic.
QNFTs, a global market, the passion of college sport… Where do you start on a project like ‘Fantastec SWAP’?
Understanding the sports NFT market
Harry: For us, it was very key to look into college sports and the phenomenon within the USA. It’s not that sport here is not a big deal at a university level but it’s nowhere near the size and scale of the US. These fans have a lifelong, much of the time family-wide feeling of belonging. This attachment leads to college sport creating events which transcend plays made on the pitch and produces an atmosphere larger than the sport. It’s the tailgating, the pep rallies, it’s so much more than just the sport.
Like all sport, the outcome of a single game day affects the fans’ emotions on a weekly basis — emphasising the importance of getting this project’s narrative correct.
Will: As with most projects we’ll start with an audit of the market. So figuring out the competition and what the primary audience is. The NFT market is huge; it’s quite difficult to track what’s trending, it could be anything. We try to immerse ourselves in that atmosphere.
Harry: There are not just individual athlete-led projects, but there are some very organised projects put together by large companies. Lead examples we looked at were Sorare (fantasy gambling) and NBA Topshot which have different fan bases within their respective sports — their campaign aesthetics fit the brief they’re going for. We also aimed to dig into the fan attachment with the college athletes themselves. The fans are not just fans but a lot of the time their friends, family and coaches who will be attached to these teams for decades.
“It’s the tailgating, the pep rallies, it’s so much more than just the sport.”
QSo this research must have flagged some areas to focus on when in the concept stage — what challenges did they create?
A human touch
Will: We are very accustomed to seeing incredibly replicable robotic projects within the NFT sphere, many of which can be a copycat style cash grab or at least perceived to be. Fantastec wanted to stay away from that and embrace the college mentality; the platform is designed for the fans rather than speculators. So that was definitely something that we had to stay very focused on in terms of conceptual challenges.
Harry: AI churning out hundreds, sometimes thousands of variations of the same asset is so far detached from the soul of college sport. We needed to create an unquestionably human aspect to the college sports NFT space, something that we felt was not only beneficial but fundamental to the nature of the project. We are working with college sport from its grassroots — a very raw, sporting prowess.
We wanted to really bring in some character — giving the players a platform to show the world who they are and get their name and personality out there. The team had to work out how we could create that space for them whilst also leaving the ceiling open for potential scalability across gender and other sports in the college set-up like basketball, swimming and lacrosse…
“We needed to create an unquestionably human aspect to the college sports NFT space, something that we felt was not only beneficial but fundamental to the nature of the project.”
QAnd it was this identification process that led to the ‘We Together’ campaign?
Will: Yes, we tried to embed lots of colloquial language within the ‘We Together,’ campaign. It’s all about bringing everyone together. Whether you’re the fan, the player, a parent, or the person who’s buying the cards, it’s all about being ‘one of the team’.
People have their team colours, mantras and mascots— all of which adds to creating their ‘tribe mentality.’ The use of handwriting was our way to make the campaign feel more humanist and connected to the individual athletes; so when it came to crafting the campaign’s typography we knew we wanted something that was less clinical. We first looked into graffiti styling, but we figured that was a little bit too old school and undynamic . We also wanted to pull on the idea of the iconic coach’s playbook allowing the user to feel like they are making the next move.
“It’s all about being ‘one of the team’”
Harry: So for American football, words like ‘Blitz’ and ‘Charge,’ were football orientated. For each college we used the ‘We Together’ campaign lockup to house college signifiers. Within the campaign, there is a key phrase linked for example with Syracuse, also known as ‘The Orange’. The lock-up becomes ‘WE ARE ORANGE TOGETHER’, and the Michigan State University team has a phrase that they use in their sporting setup — ‘Relentless’ — which translates to ‘WE ARE RELENTLESS TOGETHER’. These lockups also take on the famous colourations of the individual colleges which reinforces for fans that it’s for them and their team. This is not just another project that hasn’t thought of a fan’s connection to its colours, its mascot, and the individual players with their personalities.
QCreating a fan-first NFT market proposition is unprecedented. What was the biggest learning process for you individually? What have you learned from working in the market?
Harry: Knowing Fantastec SWAP is a fan-first NFT campaign, a key consideration for us was balancing this priority with the globalised and interconnected nature of the NFT market, something that became apparent throughout the research phase and the project itself. Especially at this stage, the ‘We Together’ campaign was targeted to the devoted followers therefore it had a colloquial nature so that fans felt understood within the campaign. On the other hand, the app is downloadable all across the globe so we needed to make sure that the campaign catered to all audiences. Achieving this balance was one of our biggest challenges.
Harry Chapman, Client Services Team
Will Campbell, Creative Team
