[00:00:00] Donny: Brands are navigating the new Web three world, and with it comes an opportunity for experimentation, innovation, and engaging consumers in entirely new ways. But where do you start and when? In this new season of the Brave Marketer Podcast, we’re talking Web three marketing and how to market in the metaverse.

[00:00:19] You hear from marketers, from top brands and agencies will help us leverage this exciting moment in. And take our brave marketing moments to the next level. Hosted by Brave Software in me, Donnie Devo. You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast, and this one features two guests from Densu.

[00:00:38] We’ve actually had never had two guests at the same time, so I think you’re gonna enjoy this one. We have Michael Lou, and he’s the SVP Head of Innovations for Densu Media and Kevin Viro, who’s the director of Partnerships at 10. As far as their background’s concerns. Recently Michael has been focused on exploring new forms of incentive structures, consumer connection [00:01:00] points, and new business models for brands via Web three concepts and applications.

[00:01:03] And Kevin works closely with other agencies to drive awareness of gaming Web three and other future looking media channels. And as spare time, he actually founded Satoshi’s Index and has sold hundreds of nf. we talk about the types of brands who are leaning into Web three channels and experimenting with early activations.

[00:01:23] We talk about why Web three isn’t the channel to fight for attention, but rather engage consumers in a meaningful way and how to onboard the masses to whip three. And what’s being built now to increase mainstream adoption of blockchain technologies. And then we also talk about future predictions of the metaverse and how this will impact marketers.

[00:01:41] But before we hop into today’s episode, I wanna highlight Braves Pick of the week. Every, episode, we highlight a pick. And today we’re talking about lido.fi. that’s the website Lido. F and then I, and it’s really a liquidity for staked assets. they talk about on their websites how they’re simplified and secure staking [00:02:00] for digital assets, and they’ve been a client of ours.

[00:02:02] But with no further ado, here’s this week’s episode of the Brave Marketer. Michael, Kevin, good to see you guys and chat with you again. Welcome to the Brave Marketer Podcast, how you both doing today?

[00:02:19] Michael: Hey, thanks for having us doing well,

[00:02:20] Kevin: Donnie. Thanks for having us.

[00:02:22] Donny: Yeah, good to see you. We’re excited to have you on today.

[00:02:24] We’ve been talking a lot about Web Three and Metaverse over the past couple years, probably since others have, been talking about it so much. So, Michael, why don’t we start with you, if you don’t mind just telling the audience a little bit about Densu. Just for those that don’t know it, that’d be a good

[00:02:38] Michael: place to.

[00:02:39] Cool. Yeah, so Densu is actually one of the largest agency holding company groups in the world. And we service brands, fortune 100 500 and service the brands to help with creative media, data, content, social innovation. And Kev and I work within Densu, but just in, in different departments. So, you know, I’ll let Kev do his intro, but I, work at the innovation side of things and I lead [00:03:00] our innovation department for Densu Media, which is a collection of media agencies within the.

[00:03:05] Got

[00:03:06] Donny: it. And for you, Kevin, your role and what are some of the things that you’re working on right now?

[00:03:10] Kevin: Yeah. Hey everyone, my name is Kevin Viatoro. I work at Densu on the global partnership team, specifically in the us. And yeah, our job is, is really, to drive innovation across densu, make sure our clients are getting as much value as possible from our partners.

[00:03:25] And there’s actually quite a bit of overlap, with Mike and his team. so we work together a lot in that capacity.

[00:03:30] Donny: So, you know, I’ll start with the brave marketing moment. So really the genesis of this whole podcast is somebody talking about a story and their career, something that they did at work where they really had to take a risk and they had to be brave.

[00:03:44] And so what I’d like to start, maybe with you, . Michael, is can you share your brief marketing moment and the story there?

[00:03:50] Michael: Yeah, thanks for this question. it’s interesting cuz the role that I’m. Innovation, like I think sort of inherently I’m blessed to have a role within innovation and [00:04:00] everything.

[00:04:00] You sort of have to have this conviction of, this new thing, whether it’s a technology or a platform or a trend to try to follow and go after, at least utilize for the betterment of a brand or a client. So, you know, moving into this role from having like a mobile role, from having a strategy role, from having a comms planning role, that was sort of like a leap of faith.

[00:04:17] I’d say primarily the brave moments that I work on is with our clients. And you know, I’d say that I’d credit many of our clients who I work with are brave. You know, given the nature of the department I work on, committing to stepping outside of the tried and true and dedicating resources to test and learn new things takes a level of bravery.

[00:04:35] Right. And you know, I’m proud to say that my role is to help those brands take that step. You know, whether it’s through education or building frameworks. We have a ton of brave clients. You know, are looking to do that next thing that are hungry for the new ready to discover different ways of telling their brand story or promoting their product.

[00:04:53] So there’s like a few things that, I’ve learned that’s greatly helped our teams make these projects successful. And a lot of the times [00:05:00] when we’re going to these clients with whether it’s a, a new partner to work with or a new beta opportunity with a new technology. That in itself is kind of daunting to sort of like try to put it in front of ’em and say, Hey, take the money that you would be using for this tried and true linear or programmatic or some other buy that, you know, you’re getting this constant row as on and sort of try to experiment with somewhere else.

[00:05:20] And so, you know, there’s a lot of different ways to sort of make that successful. I found this in, a few different ways that make a project successful. Right. how to do this properly requires, number one level setting and having an extremely open mind on and being decisive about what you want to accomplish, right?

[00:05:37] So a big part of being brave is really just kind of being convicted that what you’re doing is right for the brand and what you’re doing is right for the company, right? So setting that, that objective and having a clear, decisive way on what you want to accomplish, what you’re testing, why you’re testing, and the outcomes you’re wanting to.

[00:05:56] That really sets a solid foundation for the entire project and everybody [00:06:00] actually involved. So having that North Star to kind of go back to all the time and gut check decisions that really helps us really ground ourselves in this. And so you, are we doing this for press or for coverage or are we doing it for business growth?

[00:06:11] Right. Those are a lot of the questions that we’re asking ourselves and our clients and helping them through that process because it could be a completely different things for sales. Or having brand affiliation or even just to te the hypothesis. that right there in itself is a really big, quality to have, or at least a process to have in place to actually take

[00:06:29] Donny: that step.

[00:06:30] Yeah. And are you finding that it’s harder to get innovation dollars right now with, I mean, your clients aren’t really affected by the crypto markets, per se, but they are affected by the potential recession, the potential market downturn innovation dollars. is that

[00:06:44] Michael: budget smaller? Yeah, it ebbs and flows.

[00:06:46] It’s always a small budget to begin with. I’m always used to being the first one on the chopping block. Right. You know, it’s, it’s easy for a brand to kind of go back and say, Hey, we need to hit this goal. We need to hit this number. So, let’s move some of that budget that we had allocated the ready to [00:07:00] these sort of experimental different ways of doing things back into tried and true.

[00:07:04] And that’s always difficult. So, I guess basing it off that those clients who are a little. You know, risk averse might be scared or skittish to sort of take that leap, but it’s understandable. You know, businesses have their goals, businesses have their bottom line, but I think those who are future forward thinking and thinking ahead of time for their future consumers as well as the future state of their business.

[00:07:26] Should be keeping true to those dollars and dedicating it to those things that they want to test, because you can grab a lot of learnings from that and weave it into your full campaign. Our industry moves so fast. I mean, cookie deprecation, chasing the algorithm changes from every single PLA social platform out there.

[00:07:44] That’s sort of moving your brand up or down, usually down in people’s feeds, you know, just the changes in behaviors and trends overall. So, so many things are changing that I think clients need to have a pulse on what’s happening and to be able to be able to pivot. And you’re not gonna do that if you’re only [00:08:00] doing the same thing over and over again.

[00:08:02] Donny: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that. good answer Kevin. So I’m gonna throw the same question to you. If you had to pick one brave marketing moment, what would

[00:08:10] Kevin: that be for? Yeah, I mean, Mike said a lot of things that resonate strongly with me. Moving away from the fixation on ROEs and experimenting with new marketing strategies was a big one that popped out for me simply because I have a performance media background.

[00:08:25] a few years ago I started this partnership’s role and I came from a very different place. But one of the first things that I did and actually had the opportunity to do at Densu was start the blockchain council. and I think that’s how we initially met Donny. Yeah. way back in 2019. So, at the time, I, I felt like that was a brave moment because we were creating a group of, dedicated individuals that were evaluating media partners that were dabbling in the web three space.

[00:08:53] And at the time, the crypto market hadn’t yet rebounded. I think Bitcoin was only at like eight. So there was a lot of [00:09:00] skepticism internally from folks who thought Web three was only synonymous with the price of Bitcoin. So we had to do like a lot of education around. It wasn’t just cryptocurrency. There, there was, there was opportunities on the back end that our teams and our clients could take advantage of and really start testing.

[00:09:18] And, and one of the, the partners we actually advocated at the time was brave. So I think at the time it felt like a very brave moment because there was so much pushback. But now we’ve got several folks, including Mike, myself, and a handful of other. Whose job is to talk about these things with clients.

[00:09:35] We are the subject matter experts. So it’s cool to see it come full circle in that regard. Yeah.

[00:09:41] Donny: So let me ask you a question. So like, if you go back to 2019, I was really kind of heavily, I was another job and had like a side hustle where I was doing research on how blockchain technology itself would affect the advertising industry.

[00:09:55] I was going into agencies and I was doing these kind of. [00:10:00] Seminars, if you will, on how you could reduce fraud, how you could have supply chain transparency within media. I mean, there were like five or six things that we had outlined that the technology could help, and there were so many startups in that space, jumping in on that.

[00:10:18] Many of those companies, no longer exist. I would say that the reason I moved over to Brave was because I always saw like brave and then like everybody else. And so I wanted to be like, kind of at the top of the pyramid, if you will. I’m curious to get your viewpoint on like how things have evolved over the past three years, those media companies then, and like where are they now and how you’ve evolved with your team since.

[00:10:44] Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. We’re seeing this in like a lot of different spaces, not just web three. So gaming is is another space that Mike and I are pretty close to. We treat it as its own channel at this point. You know, you’ve got your social channels, you’ve got your search channels, you’ve got your gaming channels.

[00:10:59] you [00:11:00] need a different strategy to be there, but there’s a lot of people that you can reach playing games and, they may not even consider themselves gamers either. they may be very casual gamers. so the audience is huge and what we’ve seen in that space and also the web three space.

[00:11:14] Yeah, it starts with a lot of the companies kind of doing the same. And then over time, you know, they start cannibalizing each other. Sometimes they buy each other out, sometimes they just can’t get any sales and, and clients to test their products. So, they. And they lose funding. I think over time, as they, they figure, you know what’s working for them and, and they figure out where they fall within each, marketing niche that they’re trying to tackle, they figure out what’s, not only what’s working, but also how to improve what they’re doing and offer something that’s, that’s very unique to brands.

[00:11:46] Right, because at the end of the day, we’re fighting over attention. We’re fighting over so many different impressions out there. So how can we stand out and how can we engage consumers in a meaningful way? the companies and the partners who find a good way to do that and and can help guide [00:12:00] agencies like Densu and the brands we work with to do that as best as possible.

[00:12:05] Are the ones that make it out? so there’s a lot of steps, but I think there are a lot of, a lot of big winners that come out of each one of these phases that we’re talking about, right? Every time there’s a, a new explosion, a different, vertical opens up, there’s gonna be people fighting over it.

[00:12:20] Yeah.

[00:12:20] Donny: So Michael, you had said like you always start with like the objective in mind. So let’s say a brand, it’s hard to be like, oh, one of the objectives is to get into web three, because that’s not really like a business goal, but that’s kind of in the back of like the CMOs mind, like they’re reading a ton of articles, they’re going to conferences.

[00:12:39] Everybody’s talking about web three. So in a way it’s more of a. A political type of career goal, like I need to get into web three. I need to do something in it from a marketing perspective, let’s say the goal is I want to reach people in this new world. I wanna do something that’s, impactful, that’s [00:13:00] memorable.

[00:13:00] Obviously I wanna increase, you know, awareness of my brand with these, you know, in the web three world, and I wanna get sales. You know, let’s just say that there’s a, a branding component of it and a performance component for it. Well, how do you instruct a brand? But more importantly, where the question I’m getting at is like, where are you even telling brands to go? And I’ll kind of lead the witness in saying that. Like, is it Roblox to Central Land Upland? Is it, is it like one of those gaming, it’s like, let’s do a concert in one of these areas. Like I’m just kind of really curious, how do you navigate a brand through that and, and what do you end up recommending as usually like as like the

[00:13:35] Michael: table stakes?

[00:13:37] Yeah, it’s a really good question and, and one that has a lot of layers, right? So to start off, a lot of our clients throughout the whole spectrum, their web three journey, where they’re at is just so different, right? We’ve got a lot of clients who are just looking for education, and that’s where Kevin, myself, a bunch of other folks on our teams are doing, like, we’re just out there.

[00:13:58] Kind of doing road shows on here, [00:14:00] educating what the prospects or the potential of these concepts of Web three or Metaverse and NFTs are. Right. Just helping them explain it. Cuz as you said, they’re reading all these news articles and the CMOs that we speak to are just like, Well, what’s, what’s our strategy?

[00:14:13] What are we doing here? Like, what is our role? And I, I think essentially we’re trying to get them to a place where they can be comfortable knowing what the concept is and not have it be so daunting and sort of making it and synthesizing it down for them to understand. Cause it’s a highly technical area as we all know, but also having them understand that their brand will have a role or might not have a very native role there.

[00:14:35] Because a lot of our clients are looking at it from a, a marketing avenue. Let’s use this for marketing. Let’s build a digital experiential type of experience within decent land or Roblox, right? Something like that. Or some of our clients who are, might be financial institutions or might have loyalty cards and, and have a lot of data on their customers are using it and looking at it from a customer end point as well as a business [00:15:00] transformation area.

[00:15:01] So it runs the gamut. How they want to use it, where the role will be. And it will really greatly depend on, you know, do they have something to add value to that? Because if, if it’s about eyeballs and numbers right now, this is not the place for it. Right? You have many other channels to do that.

[00:15:16] This is a place where you have a really engaged community, a lot of different structures and incentive dynamics here that are, that are quite unique to this space. And we’d want to be there for those reasons. And if you’re just looking for eyeballs, there’s like TV and, and social for that too. So. I think how we get this across the line is, number one, educating our clients, doing all the foundational things.

[00:15:38] Similar to early.com or even social media, getting your handles or getting your domains or, or wallet address, like getting your wallet set up. Having to go through So many conversations with legal to my liking is just far beyond where I wanted to, like I did not expect how many calls we would be on with.

[00:15:54] Lawyers just trying to figure out what we can and can’t do as number one, as an agency, but [00:16:00] also our clients. So helping our clients go through that whole process based off what we’ve done. Governance is a huge, huge part of this. You know, we have to get our CFO involved, our chief council involved. The most important people to getting the stuff actually across the line is actually having your finance and legal teams on board, cuz they can be the first ones to Kibo and just, and just not even proceed.

[00:16:21] So having them understand the foundational things that need to be done. I’ve seen a lot of our clients just go out there and say, Hey, let’s just trademark our names. Let’s just, let’s just go out there and maybe buy in an ft. let’s just open a wallet and, join a discord or something like, just very small steps to some of our clients.

[00:16:38] Their first step was actually let’s buy land and build on it. Or let’s rent land and build on and build a, a multi-month experience for, you know, a community that we support and that we love. In every year we, we do something il, but let’s actually flip that in the virtual space where they can attend, even if they’re not in New York or Brazil or something like that.

[00:16:58] And so, it varies by [00:17:00] client and also the appetite that that client might have. But it always starts off. Again, objective setting. Know what you want to get out of this. What are the benefits? What are our goals? What do we want to learn from this? What is our learning agenda? And then the foundational knowledge of what do we need to do as an organization to make sure that we’re abiding by local laws.

[00:17:20] making sure our finances are are in check. we’re being very secure of the partners we’re working with and things like that. So, this answer could actually be strung out for 30 more minutes, but I would say just succinctly, that’s essentially how we’re approaching it, case by case with every client, and the outcome is always different.

[00:17:37] However, we’re continually gaining learnings throughout all of these processes to pass on to the next client in terms of our experience.

[00:17:44] Donny: Yeah, that’s a great answer. Do you think that sometimes the PR that they’re getting from it audience wise is bigger than what they’re actually doing? Let me tell you what I mean by that.

[00:17:55] It’s like you read in these like trade journals or even, it could be as big [00:18:00] as the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. It’s like, whatever it is, Louis Vuitton or Visa partners with, you know, this Web three metaverse company with this, you know, concert and it’s in it and it’s featuring, you know, this, you know this artist, and everyone’s like reading those articles and sharing those articles and it’s like, oh, that’s cool.

[00:18:19] That’s how they’re getting. And it’s almost like the number of people seeing and reading those articles and sharing those articles is bigger than the number of people that are actually like attending

[00:18:29] Michael: the Metaverse. 100% concert. 100%. Yeah. I totally agree. And I think we’re even beyond that at this point.

[00:18:35] I think there, there is a relationship between how soon you act on something. And the PR ability of that and the impact of just doing it to be there, right? When Metaverse first became like the biggest buzzword over the past couple of years, any brand that did something in there would automatically capture headlines, right?

[00:18:57] Oh, they’re, they’re so brave, or they’re so pioneering in X, [00:19:00] Y, and z. But if you’re a second follower, third follower, you’re not gonna get that same impact. So it’s definitely not gonna be, as valuable or actually interesting just to do something there. And so, this next wave of NFTs, this next wave of metaverse experiences, this next wave of, blockchain interaction, within brands and marketing.

[00:19:18] We’re seeing this and we’re actually pressing our clients to make sure that whatever we do there has value and is a really 360 approach beyond just let’s do something, let’s do something right that actually matches what our brand should be and test this out. I’m sure, you know, we, we’ve seen like NF coming NFT 2.0 where it’s no longer like PFPs and, and just imagery and art that are going for millions of dollars.

[00:19:42] Like I think there’s. To see this crypto winter really take a hit on some of the NFTs is actually a good thing to really scrape out some of the things that were not necessarily sustainable for the market and actually not realistic for the market and for even the mass adoption of this type of technology or, or culture.

[00:19:57] So when we see more projects that say [00:20:00] utility baked into it, having a purpose to do X, Y, and Z, that is what we want to make sure our, our clients have in mind when we build these types of experiences for them and not just doing it for the sake of we want to be first or for the sake. Innovation. You know, it’s easy to get quote unquote distracted by innovation cuz it’s so sexy.

[00:20:19] But at the same time, you have to have a purpose there and you have to have a learning agenda for a big brand to be able to make it worth it. Again, you’re making a trade off from taking something that’s tried and true and putting into something that you wanna learn. And so if you do that, you have to be really open-minded with what you want, but also decisive, right?

[00:20:37] I think that’s the key word of being decisive and knowing what you want to get out of. Yep.

[00:20:41] Donny: That’s good. So Kevin, you’re speaking to a lot of brands along with Michael here, and if you were to have like percentage of brands that are actually like jumping in headfirst and that’s doing this versus, versus wait and see what’s the split and you know, what’s really [00:21:00] the reason why, like what’s the difference between the brands, the ones that are going ahead first versus the ones that are like, no, let’s just

[00:21:05] Kevin: wait and.

[00:21:06] I think it comes down to their level of risk tolerance. I think we’ve, we’ve mentioned risk tolerance a few times during this conversation already. Yeah. You’re gonna have those brands that are just more risky to begin with. their activations are bigger and bolder and.

[00:21:20] You know, they joke around and, they’re less serious and they might not have as much regulation on the back end either holding them back, right. You’re not gonna see a, a financial client, you know, jump head first into some of these activations without some education, without, you know, a lot of passing, a lot of illegal tape along the way.

[00:21:38] But we do have several clients who have jumped in first, but I would say the percentage to, to those who are actually you, Investing money in the space and, and trying new things and experimenting. It’s quite low compared to the ones who are, who are generally curious and who are generally interested in what’s coming up.

[00:21:56] They wanna make sure they’re on top of trends. But they’re not ready [00:22:00] to release a bunch of budget and activate on that. like Mike was saying, they, they know they’re not gonna be first. They’re probably not gonna be second either. So at that point, is that a diminishing return? Probably. And, you know, even more important here, I think is, the perception of audiences, how they view that brand.

[00:22:18] Do they, do they view that brand as being genuine, as genuinely trying to try something new in this growing space? Or do they perceive that brand as just another follow. Like a poer, right? Mm-hmm. . So timing is so important here, but we, we’ve had a, a few clients who, who have really jumped in head first. And, I think we like talking about, those clients, although I’m not sure how much we’re able to talk about some of those clients , but certainly there’s things you can look up online like.

[00:22:44] You know, Heineken, one of our global clients, we help them make this really cool tongue in cheek digital brewery in, uh, decent land, which was a fun project to work with and really great to see a brand, kind of poke fun at what a digital brewery actually means, right? Since you [00:23:00] can’t actually drink the beer.

[00:23:01] You know, so the whole experience was quite tongue in cheek and we got some pretty good press from that. But overall, I think a lot of brands were not as quick to move as them. So now at this point, if, if they do wanna do something, it needs to be original, needs to be unique, but most importantly it needs to add value to their audience and, and their, and their customers in a way that would not be possible outside of web three.

[00:23:24] Donny: So is the split 50 50, or like, if you had to put a percent,

[00:23:27] Kevin: where is it at? What would you say?

[00:23:29] Michael: it’s not even 50 50, it’s not even 70 30.

[00:23:31] It’s every brand wants to talk to us about it and learn it, which is great. We encourage that and sometimes it’s not even the right time for that particular brand to get in. You know, some brands want to be a little bit more safeguarded with it and, Pay attention to it and analyze it first before they jump in.

[00:23:46] Some of s actually, you know, more risky and they, they actually want to be pioneering in this space. overall, I’d say less than 10%. You know, maybe Got it. 10%, you know, are, are, Hey, let’s, let’s do this. And I’m excited [00:24:00] for it. I’m, I’m ready to do it. But it also depends on how you define it, right?

[00:24:04] There are many web two things, like a lot of gaming environments that a lot of our brands are sort of grouping into a web three umbrella, right? Roblox, for example, a web two company, web two experience that pretty much most of the press out there within marketing has been, X brand does something with Roblox Metaverse, right?

[00:24:23] It just depends on how you define Metaverse and how the brand wants to define it themselves. So we have working definitions for each of the clients, depending how comfortable they are. Obviously we have our, our densu definition and our perspective on it, but we’ll, sort of move it a little bit for our clients, depending on their comfort level and expanded it out to be maybe more inclusive to like the web two world as well.

[00:24:45] Donny: Got it. where do you see this world going is either you can answer like, what is it looking like next year in five years, in 10 years? What does this world look like? This web through Metaverse world,

[00:24:57] Kevin: Well, I can speak from some of the research [00:25:00] that I’ve been reading about this lately because I can only see so much from my point of view.

[00:25:04] But what are the big consultancy shops like McKenzie and and other research firms have to say about things like VC investment in the space? Right. I mean, that’s a pretty big growth factor that can impact where this thing’s heading. I just read an article from McKenzie released last month and they were saying that investment in this space is, is expected to outpace 2020 ones.

[00:25:30] Investment levels in 2022. So in 2021 there was around 32 billion invested in the web three space. So it’s looking at like, that will be a larger figure this year. we’ll have to see what happens in 2023. But they suspect that this area will keep on growing based on the projections of that they’ve accumulated and, and come up with from previous booming industries and the likes of that.

[00:25:57] And even from my perspective, right? if [00:26:00] I’m looking at specific use cases of web three, they’re growing every day, read articles, talking about different new developments, different areas. A lot of these companies are treating this bear market as a build market, right? Historically, if you looked at web three and blockchain technologies, huge amounts of growth have been happening during bear markets.

[00:26:23] So I can certainly see that from here. And I mean, even the blockchain gaming space is becoming more serious. I’ve. Numerous articles of actual big name game developers, devoting resources to create blockchain games, not just you. NFC creators claiming that they want to create a blockchain game and it falling on its face.

[00:26:44] But actually, you know, veteran game developers looking to devote resource time energy to create something that people will actually enjoy and play. So what they come up with, I guess we’ll see. But yeah, I think the space has a lot more movement to [00:27:00] grow and, and potential to grow.

[00:27:01] Michael: Got it. I’d agree with that.

[00:27:02] probably the number one issue with the scalability of web three is the onboarding and how do we get more people to be comfortable with Web three?

[00:27:12] And so a lot of that is building custodial services, easier ways to connect web two to web three, fiat to crypto rails, like all these types of things that are being built right now to enable an everyday person to utilize blockchain technology without. Care or know about blockchain technology? Right. So like a key thing that everybody was talking about when, when Starbucks announced their NF or venture into NFT strategy and the Web three world was that their whole announcement last month was, was all about their loyalty play and their program and how they’re gonna enhance it with digital assets.

[00:27:47] But they did not once mention the word NFT or blockchain. And so that’s like a key indicator here to say that like many brands are looking at this as a technology rail that could help. Enhance sort of what they’re doing. And again, [00:28:00] we talk about incentive structures and that a big benefit of ownership for, for web three.

[00:28:04] But the consumer and and consumer doesn’t need to know that, hey, this is actually an nft, this is a blockchain, this is a wallet. They just need to be able to put their email address, load up their credit card, and have everything connected to be able to interact with that. So I think that’s a really powerful way that we’ll see this, this space move in the.

[00:28:21] One to three years. It’s just the, the normalcy of being able to interact with blockchain without having to know that it is or having to care about that. It is. And I think that’s a big benefit and plus,

[00:28:31] Donny: Yeah. There’ll be more and more companies entering the space and I think that we’ll see a convergence of like established companies building and then newer startups kind of coming up and.

[00:28:43] Kind of like the Facebook model. It’s like, let’s build the user base and then there’s gonna be more like advertising and opportunities for brands to get involved. There’s a little bit of that now, but like as we were discussing, it’s just like not enough audience, not enough to turn the needle. It’s just more [00:29:00] experimental.

[00:29:01] for the 90% that. Not now. What are the main reasons why they just don’t wanna do it now?

[00:29:06] Michael: I mean, a lot of it is has to do with the organization itself. most of our clients are, are, quite large organizations.

[00:29:14] And again, having to go through legal and making sure that if we min at nft, are we creating a security. You know, I just read today, UL Labs is now being investigated by scc, right? for their NFTs and many others will. So I think that type of news, regardless if it leads to anything or not positive or negative, will always make a brand or CMO or CEO have some pause, right?

[00:29:41] Let’s understand this first, let’s not just jump in, just cuz everybody else is, and I think that’s the right approach. Think about it. If it’s right for you, then we can explore. But I, you know, we will never force it down our client’s throat. We will always recommend what’s best for the client and and their consumers.

[00:29:57] And if we find a way that this will benefit through [00:30:00] marketing, through their, through their business, processes, then we will definitely make that recommendation and, and build something great for them. But if they’re uneasy, our job is to make sure that they’ve got all the right information and can see the potential of it.

[00:30:13] And if they, if they wanna make that decision again, that’s, Way for them to be brave. Like even in the gaming space, we’ve had clients that were hesitant to get into gaming because they were really afraid of the nature of the gaming culture and how their brand would be perceived. And it takes a really brave client to really go in there and make sure that they can actually build something that’s that’s native and and genuine.

[00:30:33] And you can only do that once you’re convicted in, in your purpose of being there and what you wanna learn.

[00:30:39] Donny: Got it. Kevin, how can people get in touch with.

[00:30:41] Kevin: Yeah. Hey guys, you can find me on Twitter. I’m not so active as I used to be at the beginning of the year, back when I was starting my own NFC project, which successfully launched Mike’s an owner, but I won’t show any of my, my personal stuff, but I’m on Twitter at Bull via, and I’m sure there’s [00:31:00] description info that you guys can reference.

[00:31:02] If you’re interested in working with Densu, feel free to hit up our comms team and, and we can make something happen. Good.

[00:31:08] Michael: And how about you? Yeah, you can find me on Twitter as well, underscore. M L I U I post random things, so just be forewarned. ? Yeah. That or LinkedIn. You can find me. Got it.

[00:31:20] Donny: Well, thank you guys for both being on the show.

[00:31:22] We really, really appreciate it, and

[00:31:24] Michael: we’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. Donnie.

[00:31:28] Donny: Thanks so much for listening to another episode of The Brave Marketer Podcast. Four quick things before you go. Number one, if you like what you’ve heard, it’d be really awesome if you’d rate us or write us a review on your podcast player.

[00:31:42] And if you didn’t like what you’ve heard, then don’t worry about. Number two. If you would like to advertise to Braves 60 million users and have a budget of $10,000 or more, simply email us@asalesbrave.com. That’s AD S A L e s brave.com, [00:32:00] and let us know you’re our podcast listener for 25% discount. Number three musical credits.

[00:32:06] Go to my brother Ari Devor, and finally, number four. Go use brave@brave.com and we will see you next time on The Brave Marketer.