Ledger Is Setting The Bar For Web3 Marketing
User experience comes first
Marketing as we know it has changed. Web3 has created a complete paradigm shift from consumers paying with their attention to consumers getting paid for their attention.
Nobody has done this better than hardware wallet provider Ledger and their immersive experience LedgerVerse in The Sandbox.
Why the metaverse?
We all know that the elusive and futuristic idea of the metaverse has faded as it consistently fails to live up to all that it was “supposed” to be. But what if we are thinking of the metaverse all wrong? Seems like Ledger has figured it out and executed on it beautifully.
In 2022 Ledger created their first metaverse experience called “School of Block”. This was an educational experience in The Sandbox teaching people about web3 security through an interactive experience. Users would fend off hackers and crypto scammers in various quests and win exclusive NFT rewards at the end of each quest.
This turned out to be an enormous success for Ledger and should be considered a case study for other brands looking to leverage the metaverse for their web3 marketing efforts.
What can we learn from LedgerVerse?
Unlike most brands that try their hand at a metaverse experience, Ledger went all out. They understood the importance of covering every aspect such as education, user incentives, compelling storylines, mission alignment, and proof of knowledge. They covered it all.
Let’s look at some valuable lessons to pull from Ledger’s experience in The Sandbox.
Start with the mission
Ledger has centered their entire Sandbox experience around their vision as a company. They believe that everything of value will be tokenized in the future and it will all depend on blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Ledger is on a mission to help secure these assets and protect people across the internet of value.
This is where their School of Block experience was born. Building an experience that aligns with your mission is critical for authenticity and consequently, user engagement. Most companies threw themselves into the metaverse to capture the hype and forgot this crucial element. It doesn’t mean the metaverse isn’t for them. It just means they need to align their experience with their mission. Otherwise, consumers will see through it in a heartbeat.
Immersive content takes on a new meaning
“The Sandbox is an engagement layer. It is up to the brand to decide, what is the experience that you want your user base to be engaging with. From there you can start building in a variety of immersive content that you couldn’t put in a video or in an article or any other form of communication that is available to you.” — Mohsen El-Sayed, Head of Community & Education at Ledger.
Digital marketers have tunnel vision when it comes to the tools at their disposal. They view content through a very narrow lens. Ledger's metaverse experience can help us broaden this scope and view immersive and educational content from a completely new vantage point. This is the promise of the metaverse. It’s not a futuristic world we’re all going to live in like The Matrix.
Storytelling is key
Ledger’s metaverse experiences weren’t your run of the Q&A-style quizzes teaching people about web3 security. In late 2022, the team invested heavily in crafting compelling storylines for their quests where users fend off fictional hackers while learning valuable lessons about crypto security. This kept users engaged and interested throughout the experience. The result?
Over an 8-week period, while the experience was open, users completed 4.6 million quests and spent an average of 50 minutes each, actively engaged on the platform. In the words of Mohsen El-Sayed:
“It’s more valuable to us than 4.6 million passive views on YouTube or TikTok.”
He’s not wrong. This is further emphasized by the builder of the Ledger Sandbox experience, Max Vedel who says:
“What really helps to create this environment are key characters, gameplay elements that help players recall the information more easily such as enemies, easter eggs, unique NPC interactions…”
Give people a reason to stay
In the introduction to this article, I stated that web3 enables consumers to get paid for their attention, instead of the other way around. Ledger has executed beautifully on this, creating a win-win situation for the brand AND the consumer. Here’s why.
Users who completed quests in the Ledger metaverse experience received NFT rewards. These NFTs play two key roles.
- Offer users additional utility in The Sandbox ecosystem and future benefits in the Ledger ecosystem.
- Provides Ledger with pre-built user segmentation for future marketing opportunities.
From a user perspective, this is game-changing. Users get a fun and interactive experience where they learn about the fairly complicated world of crypto security. In addition, they are rewarded by Ledger for their efforts and valuable attention. If we want to capture people’s attention in a saturated world, we have to give them a reason to stay.
Ledger, on the other hand, now has a segmented list of their wider community with associated wallet addresses that they can use to fuel their future community-building strategies and strengthen their brand.
Endorse your community
Ledger’s metaverse NFTs actually do a lot more than offer users future benefits and value. They provide users with digital credentials for their web3 lives. The NFTs serve as users' proof of knowledge, something that will become ever more relevant in a tokenized and digital world.
How can you quickly prove to someone what you know? Show them your verifiable credentials.
This has further implications. Ledger is one of the most respected crypto security companies in the world with market-leading hardware wallets. By holding one of their quest NFTs from the School of Block, you’re basically holding an endorsement from a market-leading security company. Ledger set the bar, you passed it, and you can prove it.
The expanded use cases for campaigns like this are endless and the imagination runs wild thinking about it! Marketing will never be the same again.
