4 brands that didn’t have to say “NFT” to bring fans onto Web3

Despite the best efforts of the NFT community and developers leading the space into the future, the term “NFT” remains controversial to most of the internet. Just the utterance of NFTs has been enough to send fans of deceased creators into a frenzy after learning of impending drops related to those deceased creators’ work.

Regardless, some brands find the lure of launching an NFT project too big to ignore. After all, NFTs are just one branch of what is often a multifaceted strategy to prepare for the mainstream arrival of Web3, the Internet’s next great leap forward. So what have they done? Just avoid using the word NFT altogether when talking about their attack on Web3. And it has been surprisingly effective.

When Reddit announced the upcoming launch of its Collectible Avatars initiative in July 2022, its success was enough to convince Reddit management to explore the idea of ​​selling NFTs to its massive user base. With millions of people regularly logging on to the “front of the internet”, this looked set to be one of the most significant NFT onboarding events we’ve seen yet.

So it was? Not quite – but not for the reason you might think. First, Reddit deliberately avoided using the term when it announced the upcoming drop. “What if we could help these artists showcase their art to the entire Reddit community and make it easy for them to monetize their work? Our new Collectible Avatars storefront does just that,” reads the initial announcement of the first series of Collectible Avatars.

Reddit’s subsequent CryptoSnoo’s NFT release did incredible well, holding the top spot on OpenSea’s volume chart for a while. But this time the term “NFT” was all over the site and marketing. It looks like the launch of Collectible Avatars did what it set out to do after all: serve as a culmination of years of slowly integrating the concept of digital currency and assets into the massive user base.

Digital collectibles have long been a mainstay of the NFT market. One of the most popular formats for digital NFT collectibles is collections based on already beloved IP. These are the kinds of NFTs that Candy Digital has long pushed into the market, which includes collections based on Major League Baseball, among other things.

One of Candy Digital’s most notable initiatives was the July 2022 Mystery Box, launched as a tie-in to the latest season of the Netflix hit Stranger Things. So what was the catch? It also avoided mentioning NFTs anywhere in its marketing, despite the format bearing the trademark NFT flood of thousands upon thousands of parts available within.

In a previous interview with nft now, Candy Digital CEO Andre Llewellyn said: “The idea is to focus more on the product than the format. If we look at music, I’m not selling the format of a CD or a music stream; I’m selling you the artist’s single.” He then went on to say that given how NFTs and Web3 as a whole were still in their early stages, it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to settle on this early-stage nomenclature.Think about it: Can you imagine if we used the term “phygital” forever?

Of course, this wouldn’t be Candy’s last dance with digital collectibles, nor the last dance on Stranger Things-theme drops. In November 2022, the company launched a new set of collectibles related to the IP: digitized versions of props used in the show’s final season. And again, with the term “NFT” nowhere in sight.

This one is a little different. WeChat – China’s super app for communication, commerce and more – released an update to its terms of service declaring NFTs, crypto and other blockchain technologies banned from the platform. The move came in the wake of China’s 2021 crackdown on crypto trading and mining.

So how does this ban belong on this list, exactly? The term “NFT” is nowhere to be found in the Terms of Service, instead referred to as “digital collections.” Although the document our translated from Chinese, the terminology was largely consistent with how China has regularly referred to blockchain-focused technologies.

Given China’s outsized ability to influence public opinion within its borders, there is reason to believe that this wording may have something to do with censorship. For most Chinese citizens, WeChat is The Internet, and refusing to call NFTs and cryptos by their internationally accepted names even after their bans, may be China’s way of ensuring that its citizens have an even harder time learning about them.

In August 2022, English rock band Muse made another attempt to match Radiohead’s legacy. Fourteen years after the unconventional release of Radiohead’s opus In rainbowsMuse worked with music NFT marketplace Serenade to release their latest album The will of the people under a completely new format: Digital Pressing.

The music NFT sold out almost immediately, demonstrating that at least for a portion of Muse’s fan base, some were excited about the chance to receive all sorts of extras and goodies usually associated with purchasing a physical release. To go with Muse’s latest album, buyers at the time also received bonus tracks, access to royalties on the chain and a collector’s module.

Most notably, this Digital Pressing, along with all other compilations of music released under this format, will be eligible to chart in certain territories. That’s great and all, but what constitutes need call this format a digital pressing? As Candy Digital demonstrated, it may just be a way for artists and firms to work to bring NFTs to the mass market while avoiding the utterance of an acronym that has, for many, gained an overwhelming reputation in the public eye.