When Wawa announced on social media on Friday that they were launching their own NFTs as part of the annual marketing campaign Hoagiefest, some avid fans of the convenience store chain took it very personally.
The Twitter responses to the announcement included “This is the worst day of my life Wawa please, do not do this” to “there is really nothing sacred left to live for” and “can not see wawa in the face anymore after this.”
A fan who tweeted under the handle @BefishProd even wrote a free verse for the grocery chain:
“MY HEART IS BROKEN NO
MY NIGHT IS DESTROYED
MY LIFE IS DESTROYED
I CRY EVERY DAY AND EVERY HOUR
WAWA HOW CAN YOU
I’ve never been so betrayed. “
Others compared the company’s decision to go into NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, with Anakin Skywalker’s trip to the dark side of the Force in Star Wars. A few people sent Wawa a GIF of Obi-Wan Kenobi and shouted “It was said you wanted to destroy Sith, do not join them.”
One person even lobbed the line “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” from the 2008 Batman movie, The Dark Knightat Wawa.
And of course, Sheetz fans did not waste a minute declaring that the announcement meant that their team had secured victory in the long-running convenience store battle in Pennsylvania.
“I see that Sheetz has finally won the war and they did not even do anything,” wrote a Twitter user.
Although Wawa is giving away and not selling its 5000+ NFTs – which the company describes as “one-of-a-kind digital collectible artwork” by Hoagiefest – “characters, backgrounds, hoagies and accessories” – the negative reaction to the announcement is on social media illustrated how controversial NFTs still are.
According to Mike DiPietro, an assistant professor of marketing at La Salle University, an NFT is a “unique, irreplaceable, verifiable, digital piece of work” whose authenticity is tracked by blockchain technology.
NFTs are often bought and sold online with cryptocurrency and allow artists to sell their digital work for thousands, or sometimes, millions of dollars. The works can be anything from videos to digital photos, from autographs to avatars. In 2021 alone, the NFT market reached a value of $ 41 billion, according to Business Insider.
But the NFT market is also considered volatile and risky, vulnerable to fraudsters and bad for the environment, since the blockchain technology needed to execute transactions and verify NFTs requires a large network of high-energy computers, according to Forbes and Wired.
Nevertheless, many companies and celebrities, from Adidas to Madonna, have entered the NFT world. Even Major League Baseball announced that they entered the NFT game this year, with digital baseball cards.
DiPietro said that Wawa NFTs could be the company’s entry into the meta-verse, a theoretical 3D world that users will interact with through a virtual reality headset (think OASIS in Ready Player One). Referring to a 2022 paper from the consulting group McKinsey & Company, DiPietro said that private equity financing in the meta-verse is already over $ 120 billion this year (compared to $ 13 billion last year), and 59% of consumers surveyed were excited for the transition to the metaverse.
“With the digital resource, Wawa may want to drive its customers to the metaverse, to digital content for any future strategy they may have,” he said. “Maybe these people can form a meta-worst community, and obviously they got people talking.”
Even if you do not want to be able to eat a hoagie in the metaverse, you may one day earn points against a free hoagie by playing a game there, or you may visit the Wawa room of an art museum to see a bunch of Hoagiefest NFTs on display, DiPietro said.
“This could be a way for Wawa to look at NFTs and do more research so that they have the skill level when this becomes something more common,” he said. “When you take a look at analytics companies that evaluate what growth looks like in this arena, and you see a statistic that 59% of consumers are willing to have a meta-relationship with companies they do business with, it’s hard to ignore if you are the marketing manager. ”
Despite the setback Wawa received on social media, Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce said the response to the campaign has been “overwhelming”. The company received more than 40,000 entries for the competition, which runs until July 24, in just the first two days, she said.
“While we do not expect everyone to be fascinated by the NFT world, we are delighted to see such excitement with so many entries received only in the first days of the competition,” she said.
Bruce stressed that Wawa does not sell its NFTs, nor will it receive a profit if they are eventually sold, but the chain’s charitable partners could benefit from a possible future sale of them, she said.
According to a press release, 11 winners will receive a “rare” animated Wawa NFT with a personalized shirt that matches their NFT, as well as a Hoagiefest social swag package. A winner will receive a rarely animated Wawa NFT co-branded with Reese’s, a personalized shirt that matches their NFT, and swag packs from Wawa and Reese’s. Fifty people will receive an NFT, a shirt and a swag package, and 3950 will receive an NFT.
Everyone else just has to settle for the memes.
