New Book – The Non Fungible Customer, Marketing in the age of blockchain, web3 and the metaverse.
It’s time we talked about how the customer fits into the future of digital! Not a day goes by without a new ‘Crypto’ startup announces a complicated, opaque scheme to manipulate a market in such a way to reward early adopters at the expense of customers, without providing any utility or value past the launch date.
In 2021, a new TLA (Three Letter Acronym) rose to the top of the hype chart. NFT. And despite the conversation being moved into the scripts of prime-time TV shows, the adoption of this technology is limited tiny percentage of the world’s population. The biggest reason for this – the customer experience is baffling, even for tech-savvy users.
Added to the complicated customer journey is a conflation of ideas and technologies, each of which is complicated enough without lumping them all in together.
The Non Fungible Customer
While NFT has become a buzzword (The acronym itself shows that no branding people were consulted before pushing the product to the market), few people know what it actually means. Fewer still know what the properties of an NFT are that make it disruptive or suggest it might have any longevity.
In short, an NFT has become a unique asset on the blockchain. Think of one of Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets, but digital (speaking of bad customer journeys, try finding the original book on Amazon). Many NFTs are arbitrarily made scarce, but they don’t have to be. Most NFTs leverage or enforce an unequal power relationship between a celebrity or a small set of creators and the buyers. There seems to be a culture of the final buyer being a sucker rather than a valued customer.
What if we flipped it? What if the customer was the unique asset that was desired to be acquired? How would the product or service offer change? Would there still be a business model at all?
The Non Fungible Customer is an idea that has been the promise of digital marketing for over 20 years. Most marketing people would know it as personalisation.
Marketing in the Age of Blockchain, W3 and the Metaverse
In an upcoming book – I will look at the impact on marketing of three ideas – in particular, blockchain, web3 and the metaverse. They all different and mutually exclusive. There is a version of the future where all of these things work together, but they don’t have to. For example, the metaverse could (will) exist without decentralisation and without blockchain.
Each one of these ideas has the power to be disruptive, but for the most part it’s all about Fintech and they are currently being implemented by techies and engineers who are searching for a problem to solve rather than being driven by a customer need. In many, if not most cases it’s worse than that – it’s a cynical manipulation of markets to reward an in-crowd and take advantage of those who see the benefits later – the opposite of the behaviour that technologies like blockchain were supposed to encourage.
So the book aims to answer the questions being asked by consumers and marketing people alike… What is it? Why should I care about it? What are the opportunities? What is the reality versus the hype?
Join the Conversation
I’m putting the final touches to the book, but there is still time to get involved. If you have some strong opinions on the subject and want to get involved – let me know through your favourite messaging app or social platform… @dmfreedom