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In boardrooms across corporations, a quiet revolution is underway as executives and creative teams find new ways to utilize unique blockchain-based tokens in their marketing strategies. Dubbed digital collectibles—a term aimed at simplifying the concept for consumers—non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are being seamlessly integrated into products of major corporations to breathe new life into both virtual and physical customer experiences.
Long gone are the days when digital images inscribed onto blockchains were at the center of pop culture; now that the market has crashed, NFTs have found themselves a new home—the marketing departments of companies, relegated to cash grabs for loyalty programs and digital collectibles displayed as public trophies in blockchain wallets.
Take Mastercard’s partnership with crypto neobank Hi or Coca-Cola’s inclusion of NFTs in global advertising campaigns, for instance. While these collectibles primarily aim to foster customer loyalty and engagement, coupled with the fact that trading is discouraged, they’ve inadvertently pigeonholed NFTs as mere marketing tools in the eyes of many.
However, suggesting that this is the extent of NFT utility is a disservice to the technology and its potential—and perhaps to human ingenuity. We have barely scratched the surface of NFT utility. To reduce NFTs to mere marketing tools is to overlook the implications and versatility they can offer beyond their current applications.
The big question is whether NFTs are only destined to become mere souvenirs and trophies. To appreciate the value of any technology, it is important to appreciate how it adds to the way we create, consume, and exchange value in the digital age. For instance, one could have argued that AI would only be limited to chatbots before ChatGPT exploded on the scene and took conversational AI to a whole new…