When the creative minds behind the iconic music festival Bonnarroo launched a new venture this summer, they turned to NFTs to create SuperF3st, a Web3-based, year-round party committee. It’s bound together by blockchain technology, and a shared love of “music and art and culture, which essentially creates this first music and art festival of its kind,” said Tori Stevens, executive director of SuperNFT, a new branch of the festival organization SuperFly.
Artistically designed non-fungible tokens, although available for purchase, are not the point. The organizers hope to sell 3,000 “super passes”, the holders of which will become the founders of the festival. They will make decisions about when and where the main event will be held next year, and which acts will be highlighted; create stakeholders in the success. So far, SuperF3st counts 882 founders. Passes cost around $500 and can be purchased by credit card or in Ethereum, the cryptocurrency of choice for many NFT programs.
SuperF3st worked with a startup NFT loyalty and rewards platform called Hang, which just raised $16 million, and uses NFT and blockchain technology to help brands run loyalty programs to develop new ways to work directly with fans. “It encourages people to stay engaged and vote, and one of the goals is to reward people with greater utility,” Stevens said of SuperF3st’s reward-based structure.
At the festival site, a digital “founders” pass can give special access to shows, discounts on goods and other benefits. This is the basis for a new type of reward program, at a time when many brands are spinning up their own loyalty platforms. Loyalty programs are definitely having a moment, with brands from Pizza Hut to Best Western developing them. Part of the driving force is also that the landscape for data is changing. Web platforms such as Apple and Google are phasing out cookies on browsers and preventing internet tracking on devices, making it harder for marketers to reach their customers. Meanwhile, Web3 startups, developing NFTs, digital wallets, and crypto-tokens, are beginning to see the potential to bring this technology into rewards programs, and eventually into marketing.
It’s not just startups either. Long-standing players in marketing technology such as Salesforce and Adobe have built NFT functionality into their platforms, and Amazon promised to support NFT functionality “down the road.” Although some believe NFTs are just an inflated fad, characterized by flashy sales of dubious digital artwork, the technology behind them weaves itself into marketing infrastructure through rewards and loyalty programs and as vehicles for first-party data collection and management.
