Trend to Watch
🏗️ The winners of Web3 tomorrow are quietly building today
The Web3/NFT/Crypto bubble may have burst, but these massive technological and economic shifts always come in cycles. And during the down cycles (the "trough of disillusionment" phase) is when the future winners claim their territory and build their foundations.
Nike is one of the few brands that’s moved early but also moved well in the NFT/web3 space, and will likely be one of those winners of tomorrow. We’ve covered what they’ve done and why it’s been effective before, but the TLDR is that they’ve focused on using the new tech to add value to consumers, not just to do something “cool”.
.SWOOSH is basically the home Nike is trying to build for all its virtual/Web3 activities - developing and owning virtual products, ties into gaming, etc. If you want to get involved, you have to create a .SWOOSH ID. Since launching in November, almost 300k .SWOOSH NFT IDs have been minted. You can read more about it from some of the launch PR here.
They’re constantly launching new initiatives in and for .SWOOSH. The latest is .SWOOSH STUDIO where they’re running a competition for community members to submit Instagram mood boards and be chosen to collaborate on a new Air Force 1 design.
It’s still early and it’s not exactly at scale, but the focus seems to be on the right things:
🤝Value
🫶Community
💡Constant Innovation
It’s worth keeping an eye on what they and other builders in this space are up to when the hype cycle is down.
Brand To Study
🥤 The 3 principles driving Olipop’s success in the drinks category
Olipop is a challenger soda brand that launched in 2019. Their brand and business is booming, and they’ve (rightly) received a lot of attention for the design and effectiveness of their marketing strategy.
If you’re in the CPG or e-commerce sector, it’s worth having a look through some of the tear downs and case studies on what they’ve done. We’ve pulled together a few of our favorites here along with the key takeaways we can all learn from.
First, they have a highly differentiated brand. They have a “gut health” soda brand where “healthy meets delicious”. They’ve even trademarked the slogan “a new kind of soda”. This point of differentiation is core to everything they do, from new product development, to brand positioning, even to how they built and engaged a community around the brand in the early days.
Second, they leveraged underpriced attention through influencers. They invested in influencer partnerships as both a distribution and content production channel, and ramped up heavily on TikTok in an authentic, contextual way before other brands were there.
Third, they were highly data-driven in their approach. Olipop is both e-comm and retail (about 50/50 from what we can tell), but data drives a ton of their investments and decisions across channels. Here’s a (very) deep dive into their e-comm, email, and SEO strategy if you’re into that kind of thing.
There is of, course, so much more to what they’re doing, and they’re a brand we will certainly be keeping an eye on. But those three principles have been key to their success so far.
