Jeff Kauffman, Jr.

18 May 2023

Read Time: 5 minutes

Today is my last brief.

At least for the next two weeks that is. 🤠

I'll be out of commission for my wedding and honeymoon. 

But have no fear, Kolby Tracey will be filling in and shipping you insights Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next two weeks. 

Kolby is a marketing coordinating at Serotonin, one of web3's leading agencies and I'm thrilled to have her step in!

I'll be back on June 5. Don't let the world of web3 do anything too crazy while I'm away! 

Here is today's brief for marketers innovating in web3 and beyond.

• Pudgy Penguins toys launch on Amazon and pass royalties to holders
• PUMA Basketball collab with Gutter Cat Gang
• Adidas Web3 Lead Thought She ‘Could Get Fired’ for Signing Bored Ape Deal
• Zapier: Putting AI and automation to work for you
• OpenAI launches an official ChatGPT app for iOS
• Holder's marketing automation for web3 brands and creators
• Montana just banned TikTok
• Introducing ERC721-C: A New Standard for Enforceable On-Chain Programmable Royalties

Let's jump in!

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Pudgy Penguins toys launch on Amazon and pass royalties to holders

The Pudgy Penguin NFT collection launched in 2021 with 8,888 NFTs.

This week, they are launching physical toys on Amazon.

The penguin plushies are being made in collaboration with PMI, which also produces toys for Fortnite.

The initial launch will include about 100,000 toys priced from $5 to $35, which will be sold online and through retailers internationally. Each toy comes with a birth certificate and a QR code that unlocks a series of NFTs or a trait box on its online platform, Pudgy World.

Pudgy World is where you can build your character, play mini-games, and interact with other collectors.

However, that's not what caught my eye! Here's the interesting part:

1. The company has licensed 16 NFTs from the original collection. These were chosen based on a few factors, with the most interesting factor being the level of engagement of the NFT owner in the community.

2. The NFTs are being licensed from the holders to create the toys. Every time one of these toys is sold, the NFT holder collects a royalty.

3. This is one of the first use cases we're seeing where real revenue streams are being passed to holders in a regulatory-compliant manner.

Source: Pudgy Penguins

PUMA Basketball collab with Gutter Cat Gang

There isn't much information on this collaboration yet other than a teaser video released via the PUMA basketball Twitter account. 

This is something we'll be keeping an eye on though as the collaboration unfolds. It is another example of an established brand partnering with an up and coming NFT project.

Source: PUMA Basketball

Adidas Web3 Lead Thought She ‘Could Get Fired’ for Signing Bored Ape Deal

When Adidas signed a deal with the Bored Ape Yacht Club, both co-founders Greg “Gargamel” Solano and Wylie “Gordon Goner” Aronow were still fully pseudonymous. That “got me nervous,” she recalled, as did a public company like Adidas approving a purchase of Ethereum (ETH).

Fortune favors the bold. We salute you Erika Wkyes-Sneyd.

Source: Decrypt

Putting AI and automation to work for you

An open letter from co-founder and CEO of Zapier, Wade Foster.

At ZapConnect 2022, my co-founder Mike Knoop asked, "What if everyone, even if you didn't know how to code, could build software apps?" 

We are closer than ever to this being possible with AI. At Zapier, we're building AI-powered automation tools so that everyone can create and customize software to suit their specific needs. 

ChatGPT recently launched an ecosystem of plugins, and the Zapier ChatGPT plugin was one of the first. Our plugin lets you connect thousands of apps (like Google Sheets, HubSpot, or Slack) and automate tasks directly inside ChatGPT. 

Source: Zapier

OpenAI launches an official ChatGPT app for iOS

Like its desktop counterpart, the ChatGPT app allows users to interact with an AI chatbot to ask questions without running a traditional web search, plus get advice, find inspiration, learn, research, and more. Given the issues with Apple’s own voice assistant, Siri, and Apple’s own lack of AI progress, the new release could push more users to try ChatGPT on their phones as their main mobile helper. The launch could also potentially impact Google, as the search engine today benefits from being the default search engine in Safari on Apple’s iPhone.

When using the mobile version of ChatGPT, the app will sync your history across devices — meaning it will know what you’ve previously searched for via its web interface, and make that accessible to you. The app is also integrated with Whisper, OpenAI’s open source speech recognition system, to allow for voice input.

Source: TechCrunch

Holder's marketing automation for web3 brands and creators

Holder was featured on the homepage of Product Hunt, show casing its marketing automation capabilities for web3 marketers. 

Holder’s Automation Builder connects web2 & web3 data to drive personalized, automated customer journeys. Traditionally, only developers could fully leverage blockchain data, but Holder is putting that ability in the hands of marketers in a no-code builder.

Source: Product Hunt

Montana just banned TikTok

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte just signed into law the nation’s strongest restrictions on Chinese-owned social media app TikTok.

Whether that would even be feasible remains to be seen. Google and Apple are likely to push back on state-level laws that limit where apps can be downloaded within the U.S. lest they face the logistical nightmare of more state legislatures issuing their own bans against TikTok or other apps. TikTok’s users are likely to push back too, and the company has already been leveraging its enthusiastic user base to oppose the Montana law.

There are a ton of unknowns about how this will all play out, but the one certainty is that Montana’s newest law is sure to face some strong challenges in court in the coming months.

Source: TechCrunch

Introducing ERC721-C: A New Standard for Enforceable On-Chain Programmable Royalties

ERC721-C will finally eliminate workarounds and make on-chain royalties enforceable through the use of transfer security policies that allow creators to decide how permissive token transfers are for their own collections, opening the door to new forms of royalties that can reward both creators, communities, partners, and affiliates.

Built to extend and be fully backwards compatible with the existing standards, ERC721-C and ERC1155-C curb the problems of wash trading and puts the “Non-Fungible” back into NFTs by giving the creator the option to choose their distribution platforms and allow interactions from only those contracts and applications they deem safe and useful.

Source: Limit Break Dev