How NFT packaging and high quality reveals, create intrigue, and potential for additional revenue.
Firstly, this discussion is one of opinion. I’ve not worked actively on any nft project, however over the last few years I have experienced many licenced nft projects and how they approach their collections and whether those collections have been successful or otherwise. This discussion is not finanical or business advice.
This article is first in a series called ‘The power of’ in which I unpack various emerging areas in licenced nft products and considerations that many projects have not fully implemented for best effect.
Photo by Brando Makes Branding on Unsplash
In this article, I discuss some ideas about how packaging in the delivery of nfts can add to the quality and adoption of a new NFT collection. This primarily relates to licenced nfts released by major platforms.
TLDR; Best understand the consumer and their previous experiences, Design of the experience to promote sharing and multiple levels of reveal, allow unopened pack resales for multiple reasons.
A pack could be otherwise referred to as the NFT reveal. These are interchangeable.
Packaging a digital product may seem somewhat foreign but it is important for a few reasons. At a high level these include obscuring products, allowing speculation/gambling, and increasing perceived quality.
Why is a High Quality NFT pack experience important?
- Affinity: It can give them a greater affinity to the product, locking in their real world experience of a similar product.
- Comfort: It gives new and existing customers some comfort that the product they bought is similar to something that exists in physical form. For example if the item simply appears after they buy a pack and they don’t unpack it, then the customer can be confused and have a negative experience of the process.
- Sharabilty: It is more likely that collectors with influence, are going to share that experience and with those two things combined it could give a longer life to the product overall.
- Quality and professionalism: Bad experiences in revealing nft products can seem unprofessional, give a sense of immaturity of the project, implore influencers to talk negatively or not at all about a product and collectors of the traditional product if it exists in physical form are less inclined to gain an affinity with the product in its digital form. This correlates with traditional packaging, it is important, even when the product can’t be physically damaged.
So how does a project create the best unpacking experience?
Accurate or tasteful real world replication
The designer should firstly think about how the product is experienced in a physical form. Is there a parallel that can be made with the digital product compared to the physical product that may already be available? For example digital trading cards services will create foil packs in which the nfts are housed and when you click to unpack there may be a sound related to an unpacking, it may have an animation revealing the different items inside.
Create multiple reveal levels
The best examples I have seen, allow the buyer to click on each collectible to then reveal it post the pack opening. Additionally showing some as to the rarity of the item before it is ultimately revealed. The reason why this might be worth the effort is that it allows YouTube creators or creators on other platforms to do short videos effectively promoting the product in their opening experience. Both parties are generally motivated to do this as if you’re a creator these are very easy to film they have some excitement in what you may get, if they get something exceptional then that gives them a very positive video to put out and for the licencee once they’ve made the initial investment in making the experience a complete one, they can often reuse that experience in subsequent drops.
Just changing small elements each time. If the experience is reused but it’s intriguing to begin with, then it doesn’t necessarily need to be changed each time. Ideally a system should be developed for the releases and the schedule that incorporates this positive and shareable highly shareable process.
Dapper Labs across their offerings give a quite satisfying opening experience and they even provide a feature on their website where customers can actually record their pack experience through the browser for broader sharing.
Copyright clearance to not inhibit pack opening recordings
It is important to note that if any copyright content is used within these Pack Opening experiences, that it is cleared with various platforms such as YouTube as I’ve had experienced in the past where I created a video and it got instantly flagged by YouTube because the company creating the experience hadn’t spent the time to clear the audio of the specific song they used in their pack openings. That same company had actually cleared them for other products but not this specific product and it really puts creators off and they may never create for that particular product again.
Of course, if the nft product itself and its potential utility is high quality and ongoing is more important, however creating a good experience for an nft reveal should be fairly cost-effective in relation to other costs. Additionally many of these reveal experiences can be reused for subsequent drops.The experience of reveal can be done quite cost effectively and even reused if you have ongoing product deliveries.
Photo by The Halal Design Studio on Unsplash
Unopened pack resale
Projects that allow customers to buy packs as opposed to knowing exactly what collectible they will own on purchase, add an element of probability gambling. This is a quite alluring prospect for resale. The ethics of this and understanding the buyers should be considered.
Caps could be set on either resale price or quantities.
To be potentially successful over a long period the probability should also be beyond simply edition numbers i.e. different assets. Opening packs in the distant future could also kick off new promotional cycles. Similar to vintage Pokemon pack openings.
One clear benefit of pack resale is the ability for late entering customers to get a feeling the same as the initial buyer if they had opened the product. The projects that don’t allow resale lose that feeling for new entrants and leaves them at some deficit. Of course new packs could be purchased but it isn’t the same. Customers would generally be appreciative of the ability to get in at the ground level even if they have to pay a premium.
The projects where I’ve seen the best outcomes for the licensee, packs that are sold initially on mint can be resold in the marketplace and can be really experienced by those that come into a project later on usually they have to pay a premium for that. Another driver for resale is a greater propensity for new customers to collect older sets. If they can buy a couple of older packs they may be more inclined to then collect sets even if these must then be purchased by individual collectible.
As with all other ideas I am putting into the ether, I would like to hear your thoughts.
This article was originally published on my medium blog.
