Below, Chapter & Verse, Horizon media’s Web3 division, offers quick insight on trends and news from the start of 2023.

NFTs: 

Two projects worth noting: 

• Venly is a Shopify app that allows NFT creation for its merchants for sale. It’s an interesting move by Shopify to offer its platform for digital assets, beginning to bridge the digital and physical world. Partnerships continue to be one of the most preferred tactics for brands to enter the space. 
• Timex teamed up with Bored Ape Yacht Club for a collaboration offering BAYC holders a timepiece with their owned artwork on it. 

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METAVERSE: 

South Korea announced it is bringing its capital city Seoul into the metaverse, a project expected to be completed by 2026. Its initial stage invites citizens to use avatars to get their tax questions answered, access youth counseling, find support for small businesses and even read e-books. This is an example of using the metaverse as an opportunity to mitigate pain points or enable users to have easier access to necessities that might be more difficult or time consuming to get hold of IRL. An interesting exercise would be to think what pain points your brand has, and how could a digital experience help in making a more seamless user experience. 

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CHAPTER TWO: ENTERTAINMENT CASE STUDY

Diving deeper than the headlines to explain the practicality and use cases for a recent marketing execution in Web3. 

Overview: 
Tribeca Film Festival launched their VIP tickets for this year’s event, and this year, the festival decided to use NFTs to grant access to exclusive events, content, and discounts. 

Strategy: 

• Ticketing is a great use case for smart contracts and digital assets. A major problem with current event tickets is scalpers and scammers. This activity would be more difficult to achieve with blockchain technology, where each ticket would be verifiable one to one with the smart contract. 
• Tribeca Film Festival’s strategy is what we refer to as: Web2.5 
• Using NFTs is great way to offer tickets, but not everyone has a wallet or crypto, so TFF is using a custodial wallet (one housed within a centralized infrastructure) to enable credit card payments for scale. 

Why it Matters: 
While offering NFTs as tickets for events at scale is difficult with current wallet adoption, offering ancillary benefits and VIP packages to those who opt in is a way to expose the public to the tech without leaving people out of overall attendance. This activation is a proof of concept for those in entertainment or live events where tickets, or additional value, could be provided in exchange for a price and first party data.