Is NFT The 2022 Buzzword To Be Worked Into PR And Marketing?

January 10, 2022 by Dave Haynes

I really, really don’t like to write about stuff I don’t understand, and as much as I have tried, much of the NFT thing is just escaping me. My son is BIG into dabbling into crypto and NFTs in his spare time, but as much as he tries to help me get his new religion, it hasn’t stuck. At all. I just slip into rapid eye-blink mode, utterly boggled by all the jargon.

So I am making a very qualified observation, from a point of bewilderment, that it at least appears NFT may emerge as this year’s buzz phrase of choice to work into product marketing for companies – both big and small. If you have been around this industry for a while, you will recall flurries of PR through the years that have been breathless about cloud, IoT, blockchain and AI.

Samsung last week announced what is, in effect, a microsite on the UX of its 2022 smart TVs that allows people to browse digital  art pieces on their home screens. “With demand for NFTs on the rise, the need for a solution to today’s fragmented viewing and purchasing landscape has never been greater,” the company says in PR. “In 2022, Samsung is introducing the world’s first TV screen-based NFT explorer and marketplace aggregator, a groundbreaking platform that lets you browse, purchase, and display your favorite art — all in one place.”

NYC-based Crown TV has released “an app that will allow retailers and other businesses to display NFTs on digital displays in their retail locations or points of business.”

The firm says the app will enable businesses to display an NFT they own or any NFT publicly available on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace. In addition to displaying the NFT itself, users can display additional information like the price, provenance, description and even a QR code that retail shoppers can scan to purchase the NFT on their phone right from the store. Retailers that have been looking for a way to create a digital canvas and monetize NFTs they create or own will benefit greatly from this new solution.

The Japanese firm Vanten Media – which has been around the digital signage and DOOH space for about 20 years – now has something called Scramble TV and a player for NFTs. We’re ready to help you set up your custom NFT drop on the Ethereum Blockchain. Whether you are an artist putting together a selection of your work as NFTs on your website, or you’re planning a full-blown 10K PFP mint, we can help you plan and execute a flawless drop. If you are worried about gas wars and the cost of minting, let’s talk about creative solutions. Are you thinking alternate L1 chains or L2? We can do that too. Still figuring it out? No worries. Hit us up, and let’s talk.

Ummm … sure! What???

Software-driven platforms platforms and hardware like Samsung’s Frame TV product have emerged in recent years as ways to show digital art pieces on displays as fixed visuals or rotating galleries. In one respect, what’s now coming out with NFTs is just a variation on that. But marketplaces to browse and buy this kind of art go a step beyond.

However, I assume people who really known the NFT space already have preferred platforms for things like sourcing and selling NFTs, the largest of them being Open Sea (I think).

There may be elements to NFTs that are more directly applicable to digital signage – notably content creators who can assign tokens to work and others who can perhaps make their work available to networks. But I don’t, at least not yet, envision a lot of screen networks using digital art at scale. Those networks are in place to inform, guide and trigger consumer responses, not function as galleries.

On the other hand, NFT is very buzzy right now, and for marketers, buzzy can be good – even in the use-case or applicability is tenuous.