This Week's Digest: Feb 3

Happy Friday! It’s Kuba. Welcome to Web3 Marketer newsletter where I summarize top web3 stories across brands, loyalty, and commerce. No crypto-jargon, just exec summaries.

Top headlines this week:

1. Meta lost $13.7 billion in 2022 on Reality Labs business unit, which houses the ambitious metaverse technologies (CNBC)

2. English Premier League agrees multi-year licensing deal with Sorare, a start-up that offers trading in digital player cards (Reuters; Twitter), previously speculated at ~$35M per year

3. Amazon is launching a digital collectibles initiative this spring, involving playing crypto games and claiming free NFTs; considers selling collectibles in the future (Blockworks)

If you have any questions or feedback, you can always reach me over email, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

🔝Top Story: PORSCHΞ U-Turn

What happened: Last week, web3 community hit back against the Porsche digital collectibles mint, driven by:

1. Too high price tag (>$1,000) in the current macro setting

2. Little time to build community (between the announcement and sale)

3. Limited comms on the utility of the project

4. Few other things

How’s it going: This week, we’re watching a live case study in trying to win back the community by:

1. Publishing a utility thread (benefits for holders)

2. Sharing a roadmap (what to expect when)

3. Hosting an Ask-Me-Anything on its community Discord, and taking questions from the audience

The result: So far it’s working - the lowest price on the secondary market is 2x the primary sale price tag, which is a good proxy for community sentiment. Fingers crossed for this U turn.

📊 Chart of the Week

Stories This Week

Consumer & Mainstream

• Microsoft is shutting down its consumer metaverse to double down on the business application based on mixed-reality holograms (PCGamer)

• Meta is starting to test closed spaces called “members-only worlds” in Horizon Worlds, its social VR experience (Techcrunch)

• Apple is devising software to help anyone build AR apps, to drive headset sales (TheInformation - paywall)

• California DMV is working to digitize car titles into non-fungible tokens (NFT) and enable title transfers on blockchain (CoinTelegraph)

• Chinese version of Instagram, Little Red Book (XiaohongShu), has enabled a digital collectible integration to its 200M active monthly users (NFTNewsToday)

• In Japan, a job recruitment fair hosted 2,000 students and 179 companies in the metaverse (Asahi)

• Seoul’s citizens are now able to submit official municipal papers and petitions in the metropolitan metaverse (TravelWires)

💍 Fashion & Luxury Goods

• Nike’s digital collectibles platform .SWOOSH will reward creators for virtual sneaker designs (Coindesk)

• Yves Saint Laurent Beauty tied online shopping experience with digital collectible rewards, which enable (”token-gate”) either a gift voucher, exclusive content or the private sale (MarketingDive)

• Alo Yoga rolls out digital twins in form of 3D digital renderings to accompany its premium ski collection, allowing unlock rewards such as workouts and styling support (VogueBusiness)

• Hermès trademark violation trial against the creator of virtual Birkin bags (who copied them and sold as digital collectibles) has started in New York, and could be precedent-setting (WSJ - paywalled)

• Bobby Kim, co-Founder of streetwear brand The Hundreds, signed with UTA to help expand his business (The Hollywood Reporter)

• Louis Vuitton used Snap’s ‘Landmark’ AR lenses to decorate popular world landmarks with Yayoi Kusama’s iconic dots (HypeBeast)

• Fashion weeks x metaverse:

  • SPIN, which tokenizes pre-owned clothes, showcased designer collections using digital collectibles tied to physical items (phigital), and AR/VR during Paris Couture Week (Jing)

  • South Korea’s gov’t-backed Metaverse Fashion Festival (KMFF) showcased domestic fashion brands in the metaverse (TrendHunter)

  • Digital Fashion Week New York reveals three-day schedule on Feb 9-11 alongside the original New York Fashion Week (FashionUnited)

🎬️ Entertainment & Media

• South Korea’s K-pop bands are becoming a testing ground for metaverse-based entertainment (NYT - paywall)

• Cameo and Rally creator platforms shutter digital collectible products due to low demand and creators’ difficulty to “balance running a community alongside producing content” (TheInformation - paywalled; LinkedIn)

• National Geographic failed in launching its digital collectibles, driven by persisting technical issues, poor communication, and lacking onboarding experience (NFTevening)

• Warner Music Group launched a contest for new DJs/music producers in The Sandbox metaverse (NFTevening), and announced a music-themed experience with its artists in Roblox, a massive-multiplayer gaming platform (NFTevening)

• Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) publisher reverses course on digital collectibles licensing ban amid fans backlash (Decrypt)

• Jim Henson's children series 'Fraggle Rock' released digital collectible trading cards, starting at $4.99 a pack, and an app (Coindesk)

• Calladita, a film founded by digital collectible sales ($750k) has won the top prize at the Sundance film festival (NFTPlazas)

• Blocktones, a web3 music startup founded by Grammy-winning producer Gino Borri, was acquired by Hume, a record label for virtual artists and music (Blockster)

Sports

• The International Boxing Association (IBA) will launch its Global Boxing House Metaverse with its own cryptocurrency (Inside)

• Euroleague Basketball will broadcast selected regular season games in VR (BroadcastNow)

• Six Sport, a leading global sports rights and marketing agency, has partnered with LootMogul, a metaverse builder (Yahoo)

• Australian Open admitted seven sports tech startups to incubator as a part of its strategy to boost fan engagement using digital technologies (SportsProMedia)

• [POV] The future of sports entertainment awaits in web3 and the metaverse (Medium)

🛠️ Web3 MarTech

• Holder launched tool for brands and creators to directly message the holder of a specific digital collectible

• Tropie helped boost ticket sales and increase awareness of an event by delivering promo codes as digital collectibles

• Bueno partnered with Alchemy, a web3 dev platform, to deliver more robust no code tool for digital collectible creators

• [POV] Agencies, consultancies step up metaverse investment, experiments while marketers still view implementation as challenge (MarketingDive)

💰️Deals

• Addressable raised $7.5M to match crypto wallets to Twitter accounts and give brands better data to target audiences that are more likely to try certain products/services (Techcrunch)

• Gemba raised $18M for executive training in the metaverse as an alternative to pricey corporate training events (Pymnts)

• ValuesCo raised $2.7M seed round to build ESG-driven rewards ecosystems for brands, creators and nonprofits and their audiences (Benzinga)

• Weedar raised $1.5M to deliver AR shopping experiences and gamified loyalty programs to cannabis brands (Benzinga)

• Emperia raised $10M series A round to develop metaverse stores for fashion brands (UKTech)

• Spatial Labs raised $10M seed round to connect clothing to metaverse by sewing in a tiny microchip (SiliconAngle)

📚️ Weekend Reads

• A step-by-step breakdown of Starbucks’ Odyssey web3 loyalty initiative (Medium)

• A glimpse into Mark Zuckerberg’s thought process on Meta’s VR / AR bet back in 2015 (InternalTechEmails)

• How EA plans to compete with Fortnite and Roblox in the metaverse (Digiday)

• Digital collectibles and AR are catalyzing digital fashion (Newsweek), and so fashion school are adapting curriculums to the metaverse (Fashionista)

• A free course for newcomers on how to use and stay safe in web3, including digital collectibles chapter and interactive transaction simulations (MetaMask)

Meme of the Week