Brands & NFTs: Success, Fails & How to Connect | Jessica Urgo - Infinity Keys

[Music] all right hi my name is Jessica Urgo and I'm probably not the normal person that you would expect to see here uh I am an experiential creative director in advertising and if you don't know what that is uh when I started in 2008 it was a lot like Mad Men um I didn't sever someone's foot by riding a mower at the office party like was in the show but uh a lot of crazy things happen and uh they're not necessarily appropriate so if you buy me a beer I will gladly tell you some stories that said uh I've worked on a lot of different brands HBO David Bowie Netflix and what I really love about experiential is that it's about connection it's not like watching a commercial or getting an ad on Instagram it's a two-way conversation and this is where web three and experiential can really help each other through that connection so why would experiential matter right well depending on whatever you're working on it could increase uh audience engagement it could help create content uh it creates memorable emotional connections and all of that really leads to what is most important brand Advocates it's not somebody who just likes your brand or interacts with it it's somebody that truly beli leaves that shares it that talks about it that's ultimately what we want to create with a lot of products and companies and uh and web 3 is right now is a place where a lot of that is happening there is a lot of growth so it's important to be able to differentiate yourself so I'm on Discord like a lot of you and uh there's there's lots of shared experiences that we're having there but we're not building it Beyond Discord we're not growing and bonding those communities offline is more impactful I mean that's why we're here right otherwise we could just do Zoom meetings and not have e dber at all but we want to experience this together we want to learn and grow together especially with everyone being really remote now living on uh line um in-person communities are just starting to get harder and harder to find so let's start at the very beginning what is an experiential Activation so I have three different examples for you the first is uh is a bigger one it's something that might be around for months it might be in a building it's going to be something bigger that you walk through it might have multiple rooms uh and one of the ones that I did was for David Bowie it was for his 75th birthday and uh retail stores are generally not that interesting right but we changed that we made it so people were coming back again and again each nook and cranny in it had an immersive moment you could send a message to space to say thank you to Bowie you could learn about his songwriting method and try it yourself another one of a PO pop up you've probably seen these before they're in parks and on streets one we did for Instagram was about highlighting small businesses for their shops uh we really wanted to come in and again create that emotional connection so for each small business that we were highlighting there was a story to bring you in something to learn about we built specific displays for each item to make it special and there were QR codes that mailed it straight to your house lastly those are the simple ones that you walk by you do the quick interaction and you leave the Oreo Vault you walk by you get a little treat there was a free floating door for Reese's on Halloween and another one that had a bunch of door frames for each different movie and if you used AR you could step through it to a different world now when I come to a lot of these events everybody gets really excited and they when they hear what I do and they're like oh can you do that for me can you do that for my brand like we could have so much fun at e th next year and what nobody realizes is there's budget that's important and there's also a massive group of people there's producers fabricators creative directors multiple people working on these projects so I want to play a little game with you guys just shout out what you think and we're going to play what does this cost I promise we're going to get to web 3 after this so this was at a conference it was a little booth um there's some products in it what do you think building this cost 50,000 the carpet was 15 this was at Sundance it was for lift it was at the place where you got picked up and dropped off so you could uh you could do something while you waited um there were throwback games a hot cocoa bar there were opportunities to win prizes and discount codes what do you think this cost 100 anybody else 250 for the guy in the Hat you win greatness now we're clearly going up so this one was for Amazon Prime hunters we took over one block in LA and turned it into 1977 New York uh we created the sign on this we turned it into a Grindhouse when you went in you got to watch the premiere there were 70s candy there was a comic book shop we had 40 immersive actors on the streets uh when you walked across the street you went into a bowling alley where we had three experiences parties swag um what do you think this cost four and a half million yeah yep so these are really cool so people love them you get a lot of experiences out them you create connections you want to go see the show or whatever it is so let's now start bringing in web 3 right and we're going to talk about n nfts and we need to start from the beginning because there's a lot of misunderstood potential that everybody here is going to know right we're going to talk about two different examples Porsche for example they released 7500 nfts for about 1,500 bucks a piece um the next day it was dead they turned it off after the release the next one was outside magaz azine they had 10,000 nfts and an additional 3,000 that were free that was dead within a few months if the main functionality of an nft is the nft that does not carry utility the price is not really the biggest issue but the value that's associated with it so imagine Porsche those people got money to drop right 1,500 bucks nothing but it did not offer value there was no utility beyond what the nft was offering these are a lot of ways that when you look at the Gen one right it was seen as a ticket a piece of art it was mostly online there wasn't a lot of things beyond that to give value beyond that utility so here's where we get back to connection right we want to create something like that's a relatable experience these are what creates community and builds Bridges from your IP to your IP from other communities that's how you bring people in build those connections get those brand Advocates so let's talk about some of the unique aspect ects that are going to be able to bring these two worlds together um and one of the reasons why we can think about this too is you're going to be at e Denver next week so how many of these things are you going to see how many of these booths are going to have these types of interactions so the first big thing is brand storytelling this is where you get those uh emotional connections right because you're diving deeper you're learning about it you're learning about the brand and why they exist and that is how you create the brand advocates so here's a fun way of something you could do a scavenger hunt it promotes exploration engagement it gamifies the experience which we know works really well and it can export local economies so it's fun to talk about this but I've done it so the first example is for the par Olympics and in the Olympics you might not give a about the country that you're looking for but you might care about the athletes right like Phelps people turned tuned in to watch Michael Phelps but people really don't care about the par Olympics and they don't really know any of the paralympians so we aim to change that we wanted to teach people about their Journeys right they're very real stories so we created paths in the city that mirrored this the different pins represented milestones in their life and as as you went and you collected these nfts you unlocked interactive murals if one of them was a kayaker you got a discount at a kayak rental spot that was on the water you might get a workout session at the park and at the end when the Paralympics were on you could use these nfts to play along with in the par Olympics I brought two examples for this just because I think that the brand storytelling is so great at can's everybody's there to just get drunk on a boat right but France they want people to know about France so we created something that was about the authors in southern France it was a da Vinci Code style esque Quest that was inspired by these writers we had keys all over the cities and um each one unlocked a different thing so there was a unique game our URL there were instruction s Clues and then nft was a key to unlock another clue after everything was solved those nfts combined into one F and you were gotten an invite to a party and it also became the first edition of a book then there was continued contact after this where it was like do you want to do this while you're in cans here's something you could do next year it continued that connection through that nft now everybody wants a personalized experience you want something different than what's next to you right nobody wants to be doing the exact same thing one of the things that these nfts allow for is making profiles and customization so festivals Sports concerts these are all places where third parties can come and you could integrate yourself into the story that is happening there right um it provides a tangible value along with the memories that you're making so one example is uh an EV car that had wanted to do something at a soccer match they had these ignition buttons that they kept on talking about because these Electric ify the moment right they like level up your moment so hiding these little uh like uh ignition um buttons all over the the arena and when you scanned it it could unlock something you would get an nft and then you could use that to do other things it might open you up to a meet and greet a door that gave you a really great view of the field discounts memorabilia some of them just started raining confetti down upon you and you got a picture and then that became the nft it also was able to drive CRM data capture and leads for this car brand now integration this is a really important one we have physical and digital worlds colliding Apple's doing that right this is the future the with the new headset right this like hybrid era so ar ar galleries is one way to think about this right you're Bridging the Gap between these different worlds you are engaging in techsavvy people but also people who might be really new to the space that are just walking around or into this um and it also encourages Direct interaction and transactions with artists so this is what happened at eth Paris last year and uh we created this map that people could consult and you could view the regional artwork in real time as it was being constructed you could also go there add your own work SL block uh to the cor correlating to one of the three marketplaces like the Eiffel Tower and then the final pieces were all bound to a 3D model the last one privacy protection we know that this is something people are starting to get really concerned about so this is really good for places that are festivals or places that have a lot of spirits and interactions you're drinking you need to be able to check that year 21 so these are also places where you could get VIP access exclusive experiences other things like that so one way to think about that was there was a tequila brand that wanted to do a big activation with multiple areas so people getting to drink different things having different experiences say so why not just get the um the bracelet right that says you're 21 well instead we can do an nft and we can customize your experience so using RFID bracelets you attach your nft that you bought and it not only like gets you in and it reduces the lines because now you just have to tap that bracelet you walk around the experience and it will give you say custom drinks depending on whatever that profile is it keeps track of the experiences that you do as you tap the bracelet and this all gets put into that data and then the company at the end was able to get all of this data about things that you like what you do without linking it to you directly it doesn't know how old you are it doesn't know if you're a boy it doesn't know if you like cats it just has this data of the things that you did while you were there so that's a lot of opportunity but what about the challenges you want to have like the techn technological complexity is pretty high there right the process of creating buying and using the nft and you might say East Denver everybody knows how to do this two years ago at smartcon there were a lot of Bankers there they were sent there to learn about defi but they knew absolutely nothing they were there by their Banks and yet there were all these things that were happening that they didn't really understand so you really need to have a userfriendly platform that is going to offer that straightforward minting and purchasing you want clear guides and you want brand ambassadors there that are going to support them an example of this is uh I don't know if anybody saw the Renfield movie but when it was released in theaters while everybody was waiting during the preview they released a game on the preview you got the game you were able to play it you earned nfts and then once the movie was over they continued this you could keep playing you could earn stuff there was I think like 8,000 prizes and the more you played and more you earned the more things that you got value beyond the event you don't want attendees to question the value of it after the event is over so you need to design them for that long-term utility Kings of Leon is a really great example of this because they released their album as an nft and then you could get buyer perks and VI VIP concerts to the next show inclusivity accessibility the cost of nfts the necessity of the wallet so offering that range at different price points using different chains to affect that pricing and most people don't think about this but using email Infinity Keys is a web 3 gaming platform and they offer the use of email you can see it on here you can get collect it to your wallet or get the nft sent straight to your email email where it will stay until you want to put it in that wallet last year if you were here raid brood uh had beer and each beer had a nft on it you pulled off the sticker you got an nft that related or that I think gives you um part ownership in in the beer um and so what they did was they combined forces with infinity Keys you got these nfts they could be in your email but at the end if you caught all three of them then you got invited to an exclusive Ive party the last one is integrating meaningfully and we've talked about this quite a bit so far but you don't want to risk feeling like a gimmick you want to integrate to enhance the experience exclusive access interactive experiences part of this storytelling element so a really great example of that is the Australian Open tennis of all things right so what they did was they created all of these art balls and you could buy one and pick a plot on a court per game if the ball landed on that plot it would record like your match results but on top of that you would win tickets to a corresponding match the next year this ended up raising over $7 million and then on top of it uh 15% of them were people who are entirely new to nfts which is actually a really large number considering people that didn't even know how to to get a wallet so now let's create your event together I have a list of questions for you to ask your yourself the first one is who is your audience right is it that Banker that's coming to smartcon is it a developer is it somebody who's into sports because what you're doing is a sports piece what is your goal is it brand awareness do you want to continue having these connections with these people is it data capture what is the thing that you want to walk away with this is my favorite is it dumb or is it fun you always have to ask yourself this this is important if it's dumb it's something that you're probably not going to do your friends aren't going to do if it's fun even if it's hard they might do it and then the happy place is dumb and fun it is where silliness and the fun resides right that's what I like next one is is a little bit less of a question it's more of uh a tactic but you want to go crazy first right you want to go and push be nuts don't think about anything with any sort of limitations and then bring it back ask yourself is this necessary does this tell my story does this Happ talk to my audience the last thing how are you going to educate and support right you don't want to just give away free crap you just don't want people to come interact with you leave that's like coming and getting a tote bag and never ever coming back right you want them to walk away with something what is it like what is um and that goes back a little bit to like what your goal is do you want them to think that you're really cool do you want them to follow you on Twitter and start interacting you sorry X um that all depends on what you want out of it and what you want them to get out of it so that is my presentation um I have created one of the booths that you're going to be seeing at eth Ember next week uh for chain link and then also uh I'm the creative director uh experiential creative director leading everything for a new company launching called last and if you follow them on Twitter x uh we're going to be giving away stuff we're going to be bringing some cool things places so if you follow them you might get some cool swag and come to to our party um that's about it uh I have one minute so I don't know if anybody has any questions yeah is that what is that what that's that's the full cost including paying for me and anybody else who's building it so it includes for his question was $4 million what is that included um I mean includes renting the space for six days right um it included paying the actors it included renting the cars um we built the sign um we had uh cocktails that we gave out that were spec themed towards the show so each thing uh each thing has a cost um even rugs rugs have a cost lighting has a cost all of those little things start to really build up thank you [Applause]