17 pages & 4,004 words turned over in less than 48 hours on what I would do if I we’re looking into NFTs as a megacap company

First: Think about this as a marketing expense & more of a moonshot. No expectations, only experimentation. The below just isn’t it. Although I will give Budweiser props for the beer.eth name + having the full Tom Sachs Rocket set as their PFP last summer. That certainly broke CT for a hot minute.

Second: Hire an all star team of crypto native degens. You would need at a minimum the following employees:

●     Project Lead (to interface between parent co & new div.)

●     Solidity Developer (smart contract construction & optimization)

●     Product Manager (to manage the solidity dev & UX)

●     Front End Developer (to make a great UI)

●     Token Designer (to manage pricing, roadmap & mechanism design)

●     Community Manager (someone crypto native to build community, not like the above)

Third: Get everyone together in a central location, give them 2-3 months to come up with a strategy & roadmap and a plan to execute over the next 3 years. Yes, this is a 3 year bet. And yes, some kind of IRL jam sessions are needed, if I could come up with this in less than a weekend, imagine what could be done in a couple months.       

Fourth: Give them complete autonomy and independence with some general guidelines per the brand that hires the team. For example’s sake I’ll use Audi (owned by Volkswagen) going forward as guide. The key here is to hire people that “get it” not a corporate, watered down approach to this novel experimentation.

Make a choice on how you want to operate: in stealth or out in the open? The pros and cons are as follows - but it’s generally a double edged sword either way you look at it

Operating in Stealth:

Pro: You can start from a relatively blank slate with some guidance (in the case of Audi your creative work would need to be centered around the automotive industry)

Con: You can’t directly leverage the Audi brand & social media channels

Operating in the Open:

Pro: Using the Audi Brand can help kickstart awareness for the project and has gets you instant brand recognition

Con: Trademark and brand assets aside, you face the risk of “eyeroll” from BOTH your traditional supporters and the crypto native crowd as well

For this case, I’m going to lean on operating in stealth mode, we’ll call this project ADIeU

Adieu is somewhat of a play on words. It’s essentially mashing up Audi & eTron (their electric car line).

I’m not a designer so bear with me here!

Fifth: Think about this as a marketing expense & more of a moonshot. No expectations, only experimentation.

I repeat this because often times, companies and celebs think that just because they have a “premium brand” or are a “mainstream name” in the traditional world, it gives them the entitlement to use NFTs as a way to print BAYC money. Of course, having an established brand helps, but having a brand != success in the NFT markets, these are very different market structures with totally different participants

See the below examples:

Pepsi MicDrop (2ETH over the last 14 days)

Budweiser Budverse Cans (5ETH over the last 14 days) - which is a tad bit better than Pepsi. Generative art aside, half the utility of an NFT is actually using it as a PFP (signaling your tribe) …who in their right mind is rocking either one of these as their profile photo and why would you want to be in the business of competing with BAYC, Azukis, Doodles, CloneX and the likes…it doesn’t make sense

The WHY TOKEN?

BAYC set the standard roadmap from genesis collection -> companion -> serum drop -> merch -> IRL events -> fungible token launch -> land sale. But those days are dead and gone so what could we do to flip the script (in the context of Audi’s Adieu)?

First of all, we would need to really understand what the aim of this tokenized economy is? Is it to drive revenue? Strengthen partnerships? Get people to recognize the Audi name? Attract sponsors?

In my view, if an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) is embarking on something to this scope, it’s to get closer to their consumers and forming something akin to a “direct to consumer strategy” - which currently OEMs don’t have.

The Roadmap: Gaming, Digital Marketing and Experiences are your Trojan Horses

Lets assume (and this is a big one) you’ve got the budget approval, hired this great team and can get the ball rolling. You’ve set the vision straight and are starting to build out brand and community momentum on discord, twitter and maybe even TikTok. Something really needs to “hit” for our secret brand “Adieu” to get into the hearts, minds and brains of both crypto natives and automotive enthusiasts. Maybe it’s a breathtaking 3D teaser on one of the billboards in times square, maybe it’s a free to download, limited car in Forza or GTA that’s roaming around the streets which gets players interested in the brand and name. Maybe it’s leveraging Augmented Reality to pretend that this “supercar” exists - beating out P100D Teslas, Hellcats, McLaren’s & even new Audi R8’s, etc. etc.

What does the end goal look like? Potentially something like this:

A digital HQ, potentially in Decentraland might be a good start. This would be the first “hub” where drops and POAPs could be initiated in and serve as a test for demand as well as a wallet gathering exercise. Why would players come and visit? Well in typical marvel movie fashion, the alpha is always in the credits. Since we started our brand awareness with AR videos that went viral, we could implement limited time showings with a QR code to scan POAPs at the end of trailers for people who attended the event.

Looks like Acura might have already beat me to the punch here in Decentraland at (-115,93). You can watch the full video (here) by YouTube account Kevin on Earth. It looks like clicking that link lets users from Decentraland reserve the next gen Acura Integra directly from the Metaverse! It would be really cool to have a special DCL seat threading if you reserved your car through this channel. You can take a read through the official Acura Press Release (here)

Furthermore, they launched a series of mini race games which start with the OG Acura NSX from the 90’s and render up through the 2000’s, 2010’s up to today’s graphics of 2022 and let users run laps in the new Integra. Kevin laid it out better than I, but this game although simple, was very well executed.

Okay, so you’ve collected a few wallet addresses, now what? Another event, this time token gated and at the center is a creator lead car design effort. Very similar to what Dan FreeBarin did with the community lead Signature Sneakers drop. This has community lead governance written all over it and Adieu could implement the same thing - this time with a community designed car, which would be at the center of the p2e game we’re launching.

Let’s assume we get 5,000 people to mint the POAP in DCL, maybe 2,000 of them register to vote on the design of the community lead car and maybe 500 actually interact and vote on the design. Those are our most active supporters and would get airdropped the final community designed car, assume 50% of them convert to play the game and boom. Those are your first 1,000 most passionate fans since day 1 without much effort and “cost” associated with it. That’s validation to keep going. For reference, Acura got 21,000+ people to mint their POAP (see here), so assuming we can get less than 25% of those numbers sounds pretty reasonable. People love their POAPs.

Maybe we strike a partnership with Nifty Tailor and coordinate a party for the apes or clones to come to our HQ in DCL. Boom, another POAP, this time making you eligible for a meta-styled race car jacket. Something like this, 3D enabled, sleek slim and ready for the Metaverse. Nifty Tailored onto your ape.

Pulse Check I

We’ve done some POAPs, a community lead design project, and airdrop and we have a HQ in Decentraland. We have traction and validation, time to open the floodgates for a mint. But a mint of what?

Certainly not a PFP…for now that is. What Pepsi and Budweiser did wrong was try and compete for the most limited digital real estate of all time: user’s twitter profile pictures. Even the best of projects struggle for the coveted “shelf space” of high reach twitter accounts and the data shows.

Its a mint for a ZED run styled racing game!

Remember all of those wallets we collected through POAPs in our Decentraland HQ? Whitelist. Remember the wallets who helped build out the community car? Whitelist x2. The mint would be for the first base pair of cars (red & blue spec). Whitelisted wallets would get a special black trait car which has 20% more of the base specs (speed, breaking, handling, resource generation).

In true Othersidemeta fashion, you could come and play as you are, with a predefined list of selected PFPs who can play as their avatars and are launch partners. This would be a huge driver of customer acquisition and would require for the cars to have open roofs. Maybe we offer a wearable jacket and helmet for the first X number of selected PFPs who join as an incentive mechanism.

These base cars would be foundation of season 0, where players would complete mini challenges on an open world concept, collecting miles, XP, power ups and traits which could be bred and forged onto the cars that were minted. Initially, the land would be one large parcel. Maybe with hidden dynamics for users to “claim” a predefined number of garages which may or may not have utility in the future? Who knows.

All of this to date would be a data collecting exercise where the economy (fueled by offline data credits similar to how Helium does it) would be analyzed, rebalanced and adjusted as needed. We would also get user data, KPIs on interest, duration of use and # races driven per user per wallet.

Season 0.1 would be open land except the world would be reorganized and noticeably re skinned to not just be an open racing concept, but include mini games, more complex challenges and different gamification offerings.

At this point, it would make sense to launch an in game token. The previous users would get an airdrop based on the number of miles they drove, XP score, # cars owned in a wallet and other KPIs. This would be a fixed supply token (1bn) with clear sinks and faucets in order to manage the economy through the vesting period (5-7 years) and long after. A really powerful partnership opportunity lies between integrating the game dev chops of Forza and the P2e mechanics from Animoca (who launched Revv Racing) + of course advisory from Horizen Labs & Fenwick :)

Then the Official Land Sale & Launch of Season 1. Remember the genesis plot? These would be fractionalized into X number of fixed plots which current wallets (not vehicles) would have access to mint for a predefined price in our in game currency in order to officially kick off Season 1. The total rewards/resource pool would be fixed per season and be randomly distributed across plots, so there would be no “rarity” that a user would be able to gain an edge from. This ensures that players explore the entirety of the map in order to extract the maximum amount of value per season. Given that all resource allocation is random, land holders would be paid 20% of the farmed resources from their land and the remaining 80% would go to the players who found said resources or XP. If you happened to find the loot on your land, you would earn 100% of the rewards.

Seasons are a very interesting concept where the land and game dynamics themselves could be modified to fit the theme of the season. For instance, there could be a snow season where traction is the key perk for winning, there could be a complete reskin of the cars into off road vehicles and the land would change into a dirt styled track with jumps, corners and obstacles similar to a Motocross event. With each ambitious goal, comes additional complexity and risks of execution.

Given that this project is secretly funded by Audi, why not open the possibility of winning a base tier Audi A4 with the completion of each season. Play to your strengths Audi, remember we have to tie this back to the OEM at hand. This might introduce the possibility of having to KYC into the whole game or selected seasons in order to be eligible for the Audi prize pool. A simple KYC process would also demonstrate how many participants are eligible to purchase a car and Audi could better understand user behavior from this data. Yuga Labs & Animoca showed us that if we built it, they will come and people will KYC if the proposition is compelling enough. Key word there is if.

Pulse Check II:

At this point, you’ve achieved a lot, you’ve proven the demand for crypto from auto enthusiasts, launched a series of successful seasons based games, dropped wearables, POAPs, rare cars and built a community around a vertical that hasn’t really been explored in crypto before. Now you need to tie this back to Audi, the OEM.

Careful, careful coordination must be done in the backend, potentially to apply and file for a patented technology for blockchain-based record tracking system directly from the OEM in tandem with the gamefi & NFT campaigns. The end goal is likely different per company but this is the most immediate use case that comes to mind for me - essentially Carfax per brand (see Alfa Romeo’s efforts at scale).

With the advent of smart contracts, maybe Audi could even take a 0.5% transaction fee which would provide recurring revenue per car sold. This would turn on essentially utility scaled revenue and a minor cost which could also be used to fuel an “ecosystem treasury” to incentivize game developers to build on their v1 gaming platform we discussed above. It looks like Ford might have filed something for blockchain based V2V communications, so directionally this is all making sense.

A modern vehicle has over 70 sensors across the vehicle to monitor different data points for mechanical issues, speed, electronics, etc.

Lets assume this is record tracking patent has a few purposes:

Record the title of ownership at time of purchase and additional sales

Record mileage per ownership

Record & maintain a complete ledger of all maintenance and repairs, especially body damage and electronics

Monitor driver behavior, especially speed, seatbelt use & engine wear

The driver behavior aspect is the most exciting for me. If drivers were able to get monthly dynamic pricing based on good driving behavior, seatbelt usage and regular vehicle maintenance this opens the door for savings on the consumer end the ability to either license or sell the IP and software to insurance companies for their own usage. Tesla has already thought about this and acquired a company in 2019 to launch their own in house insurance product.

The benefits of having all of this data on chain are innumerous. The car buying process is notoriously complex and filled with asymmetrical information. All you’re really armed with is the dealer’s “word” a somewhat vague black and white Carfax report and no information around the previous driver’s driving history or record. If you’re buying a used Subaru WRX or an M3, you know the previous owner beat on it pretty bad (they’re fun cars)! But how bad is the question. Was the car you’re looking for generally babied or was it abused its whole life. Being able to see the previous ownership history would help inform those decisions as a buyer of a car. Maybe after enough data is collected, there could be a more accurate estimate of value based on the future maintenance needed on the car depending on if there are impending repairs needed to be done. The bottom line is that more information is needed in the car buying process and having these data points on an immutable PUBLIC ledger could be a step in the right direction towards getting there.

Value accrual: Slowly at first…then all at once

Audi could launch an app called “Audi Portal” where users have a dashboard overview of their vehicle, tied to their VIN number. This would require coordination for certified Audi service centers and dealers but shouldn’t be too hard to be done. They might even be able to launch with Bitski Wallet as a white label partner to get the ball rolling on service based NFTs while not scaring their customers off by directing them to Metamask and Etherscan.

As vehicles become more complex and offer internet, Audi could use the existing infrastructure built by Brave to have them manage all aspects of search & user privacy for their in vehicle infotainment center. The console is a huge and untapped channel by web3 companies who can take market share from incumbents in. By partnering with Brave or making them a default option, you place a crypto native web browser in front of millions globally. This gives customers the ability to set up a wallet, earn BAT for search and usage of the browser and onboard to Gemini so that they could claim their rewards. All of this in gentle manner, Audi wouldn’t require users to set up a wallet, but rather guide them towards how to do it properly as a value add option that other OEMs aren’t offering.

With this distribution mechanism, an advertiser could even run location based ads, airdropped through POAPs if you pass for instance, a McDonalds or a gas or EV charging station. State and local governments could even offer POAPs for attending parks and trails if you drive by one. I think the possibilities around advertising in Web3 are endless and Jeff Kaufman Jr probably could go on all day about some of these applications. Imagine a world where people drive to a pier or a beach in order to get an NFT that grants them access to a special beach day put on by the city, or a concert on the beach. These are the applications that excite me and the car is an underserved “vehicle” for adoption.

Now for the Careful Reveal

At a certain point, the origin of the brand needs to be revealed and what better way to do it than an Audi x Adieu trimmed car. Maybe an R8, maybe an RS7 or an A4 with a special trim to commemorate the launch. Something similar to what BMW & KITH did with their M4 launch.

Tesla’s added some fun to their cars and let you play little mini games with the steering wheel. Audi could do the same and incorporate the mini P2e game we launched previously with rewards going back to the Audi Portal Wallet. Now we’ve built an ecosystem and a flywheel around the portal, data collection and the Brave / Bitski integrations. Remember slowly then all at once.

Audi also now has a legitimate opportunity to launch an official NFT pass as a monthly subscription for access to the broader Audi ecosystem for curated experiences at sports games, racing events, the PGA Tour, Soccer, Superbowl and Motocross events. Token gating experiences that Audi sponsor can cater to their most die hard fans who are willing to cough up the dough.

There’s also another sleeping giant in the room and that’s the ownership relationship with Lamborghini. By proving the concept with Audi as the mid tier brand (i.e. not Volkswagen as the mass market level and also not the supercar luxury brand Lamborghini) the team can take learnings around what works and what doesn’t and execute a digital strategy with Lamborghini. Immediate synergies could be met with the Decentraland location & a special Lambo race car in the p2e game.

In Summary

I think that about concludes it for how I would approach the NFT market if I was in Audi’s shoes. This is obviously the most ideal scenario assuming a flush budget, time on your hands and being able to use internal resources to get this through. I think the automotive industry is largely untapped when it comes to NFTs and whichever brand cracks the egg has a really interesting opportunity to do something unique because people absolutely LOVE the brands they associate with, be it “Camaro guy” a “Mustang guy” or “I only drive Beamers” type guys. The big idea here though is to execute with a consumer facing catalyst first, while building out the real blockchain use cases in tandem.

I think now that we’ve validated NFTs, a mega cap like this could take some learnings and use it to win the hearts & minds of their customers with crypto & NFTs at the core of their strategy. I think every company at it’s core *can* be an NFT company, they just have to do it right.

I also hope that we’re able to get passed the rather boring applications of blockchain and potentially mask them with the cooler aspects while utilizing public blockchains. I mean Carfax per brand is essentially what I proposed but on a public ledger. See IBM’s supply chain tracking..

OEMs face stiff competition from emerging competitors like Rivian and Tesla who have been able to appeal to higher margin customers as they offer more of a “lifestyle” vehicle rather than a simple car that gets you from A to B. These cars are now a “destination” rather than something you balk at when you need to wash. As an owner of both a Volkswagen and an Audi, there isn’t much difference between the two except that Audi is associated with the R8 and is a bit sportier. They share a lot of the same trim and parts and wouldn’t move the needle for me to push Audi in the “lifestyle” category.

I also discussed some really interesting thoughts around dynamic NFT lands. I would love to see just something different when it comes to NFT land. A fixed pool of resources randomly distributed about the land is an interesting concept where the rarity would only last through the particular season of the game. That gives everyone a chance to have “rarity” of their lands and would probably remove the post mint dump elements that all projects suffer (see Otherside Land) as a prime example. If you take the risk of minting and you get a trash plot you might have been better off just buying off secondary at a reasonable price. I think we’re still in the early days of NFT land mechanisms though so hard to say.

I also don’t think that traditional companies are taking the NFT opportunity very seriously and that’s going to hurt them in the long run. Just off the bat, companies like Netflix, Paramount, Jet Blue, Airbnb and Spotify could integrate NFTs as a part of their offering while leveraging blockchain at heart of some novel use case.

Anyways, let me know what you think! I think this was pretty good for a ~48 hour turnaround. There certainly are some really interesting aspects I could double down on to think critically about but for that Audi would probably need to pay me to go any further.  

I love cars and saw a few projects come and go over the last year which at least shows some initial interest, but of course execution is always the hardest part.