Katy Perry’s De Soi Augments Reality via FlickPlay
De Soi, a mocktail brand co-founded by pop star Katy Perry, is partnering with metaverse social app company FlickPlay to give away beverages to consumers who collect NFTs while playing the tech company’s augmented reality game.
Billed as a web3 optimized crossover between Tik Tok and Pokémon Go, FlickPlay is an app employing augmented reality (AR) tech to allow its users to collect NFTs and other digital assets by exploring their local communities. The game features lizard-like cartoon characters called Flicks which are collected as ordinary non-NFT digital tokens or as part of the exclusive 5,555 NFT FlickyGang line.
Expanding beyond Pokémon Go’s more isolated experience that’s tailored for single person gameplay, FlickPlay also features a social platform where users can make videos featuring their Flicks and like or comment on them, a la Tik Tok.
FlickPlay CEO Pierina Merino told BevNET today that De Soi is the first of what it hopes will be an array of brand partnerships for the platform and that Perry’s involvement in the promotion will help draw more consumers to both companies.
“The reality is that so far, I would say until February of this year, the [NFT] industry was very verticalized, where every NFT project was a speculative art project,” Merino said. “And we’re seeing this transition in the market … from the one we’re operating within to a versatile ecosystem and start to see the industry get more horizontalized, where the products have some sort of real world utility as like a twin of a physical product and a digital product.”
De Soi, which launched in January, is a non-alcoholic apéritif launched by Perry and AMASS master distiller Morgan McLachlan. The brand comes in three flavors – Golden Hour (citrus and lemongrass), Champignon Dreams (strawberries and grapefruit) and Purple Lune (blackberry nectar, vanilla oak, and rose petals) — and is available exclusively online in 750ml bottles for $25 or 4-packs of 7.5 oz. cans for $25.
FlickPlay is available to play in select cities across the U.S. and soft launched in Santa Monica, California last year. Now the De Soi partnership intends to grow the userbase by offering Katy Perry fans tiered benefits for owning FlickyGang NFTs. Those with specialized NFTs featuring special items (such as a gold head scarf or a bottle) will provide bonus benefits.
Holders with a single NFT will be given access to exclusive content featuring Perry along with a 20% off coupon for a one-time purchase of De Soi. Holders with 20 NFTs will receive a signed bottle of De Soi from Perry along with the coupon. Those with 50 or more will have access to a one year supply of variety packs (one 12-pack every six weeks) plus the coupon, and 100 or more will be able to send a free variety pack to a friend once per quarter.
“Obviously, the De Soi brand not only being a lifestyle brand that ties a lot within our belief systems within the company, but also Katy Perry being such a big part of the identity of the brand from a lifestyle standpoint was something that propelled us. And we decided to pursue conversations with them; and as a traditional brand it was a process of educating [them] on the value they could create penetrating the web3 space and what it could have from not only an advertising standpoint, but from an identity standpoint for the consumers that they are trying to target.”
Starbucks Unveils NFT Plans
After interim CEO Howard Schultz teased the company’s plans to jump into the NFT space last month, Starbucks unveiled more about its plans to create a “digital third place” during its fiscal Q2 2022 earnings call this week.
According to Starbucks CMO Brady Brewer, the coffee giant is looking at web3 beyond simple marketing promotions and is instead aiming to replicate the third place cafe experience that it developed in the U.S. online via a community-based membership model.
“Starbucks is one of the most sought-after brands in the world, and by engaging deeply with our customers over 50 years, we’ve amassed a treasure trove of assets, both physical and digital,” Brewer said on the call. “Just one example being the nearly 27 million active Starbucks Rewards members in the U.S. We’re activating these unique brand assets as a catalyst to accelerate the future of Starbucks as a global brand and as a business.”
Though the company did not offer a launch timeline, Brewer said Starbucks plans to release a line of branded NFT collections which come with community membership access and “exclusive experiences and perks.” The tokens will feature collectible art and may be created through collaborations with “other innovators and like-minded brands,” he wrote in a blog post following the call.
Brewer wrote that the company’s approach to blockchain for its NFT drop is likely to be “multi-chain or chain agnostic” but it will “certainly start with collections backed by blockchains and infrastructure” that emphasize environmental sustainability. He added that Starbucks will take a phased approach to the launch and is “willing to move fast, experiment, learn and collaborate.”
In addition to Brewer’s leadership on web3 efforts, Starbucks has also enlisted Adam Brotman, the designer of its Mobile Order & Pay system and the Starbucks digital app, as a special advisor to oversee the project.
According to Schultz, web3 reflects another opportunity for Starbucks to lead the industry on technology, as Mobile Order & Pay has grown 400% over the past five years to become a $4 billion business, increasing 20% in 2021. As well, the Starbucks Card system has over 120 million members and is “alone larger than the entire gift card category” with over $1 billion currently within the card system waiting to be spent at stores. Starbucks Rewards membership rose 17% year-over-year in Q2 to 27 million members.
“Our Web 3.0 strategy is a proxy for the greater ambition we have for the company going forward,” Schultz said on the call. “Looking ahead, try to imagine thousands of vastly more productive and efficient Starbucks stores reconfigured to align with today’s customer behavior and built around technology that will deliver increased speed of service, improved labor management and reduced unit cost, an elevated partner and customer experience. Now imagine the accretive impact to our financials when we re-engineer our stores to deliver what we’re capable of in delivering and arming our people with the tools and resources they need to once again exceed our customers’ expectations.”
Starbucks’ focus on web3 is also extending into its search for a permanent CEO. Schultz, who stepped into the chief executive position on an interim basis this year after the departure of Kevin Johnson, told investors on the call that the next CEO should have a strong interest in web3 technology in order to further commit to the company’s tech interests.
“The new CEO, obviously, needs to have an understanding and a grasp and a conviction on the fact that we can play in multiple theaters that could be accretive on their own merit and complementary to our retail business,” Schultz said. “[W]e think [it] can be a bounce-back to creating incremental traffic and revenue not only in its core business in terms of retail, but a new business that’s going to create incremental revenue unto itself.”
SimulATE Summit: Off Limits CEO Discusses NFT Cereal Strategy
Speaking on a panel during The Spoon’s SimulATE Spring digital summit on web3 and the food industry yesterday, Emily Miller, CEO of cereal brand Off Limits, discussed her experience launching an NFT line and working with CPG DAO gmgn supply co. to develop a web3-themed cereal.
Earlier this year, Off Limits offered consumers an NFT cereal toy, where consumers ordering online could enter a promotional code at checkout, or shoppers at in-person events could scan QR codes, in order to receive a free NFT from their cereal box. According to Miller, the experimental promotion was successful in guiding newcomers into the web3 space and showed one path forward for brands to grow their own business while demystifying web3 for some shoppers.
“I think people, whether they were in the space or not, had heard about NFTs and were just excited to either have their first one, or see it in real life and not have to dive in on the internet and figure things out for themselves,” Miller said during the panel discussion, referring to an activation at the Art Basel fair in Miami. “It was very much like an in person walking through step by step. So that was really exciting.”
This Spring, Off Limits also introduced its NFT platform, The Best Cereal in the Metaverse, which included purchasable NFTs that allows holders to design a collaborative cereal box. The public minting of 2,250 NFTs (plus 250 reserve tokens for brand employees and friends) will begin later this year.
While Miller has taken an ambitious approach to web3 brand building for Off Limits, she admitted the space is still niche and confusing for most of the general public. But the goal for Off Limits, she said, is to be an early player in the sector when more consumers begin coming on board.
“I believe so strongly that this tech is going to catch up and everyone’s going to be dealing in NFTs and be holding all these things, they’re just not going to know it’s an NFT,” she said. “There’s a lot of triggering words in this space now, and everyone kind of shuts off when they first hear them, because they feel like there’s just this massive barrier to entry. And honestly, there is right now. So over the next six months to a year, I think we’re gonna see a lot more seamless integration for brands, for consumers, for everybody so that people don’t even know they’re dealing with all this really cool tech behind it.”