Day-to-day conversations around Web3.0 and blockchain are hard to turn a blind eye to, as they have gained widespread adoption in the current financial market.
Even India's Union Budget 2022 factored in a 30% tax on NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
In the ecosystem of blockchain networks, NFT is a crypto asset that stores data as a digital ledger. Users have the chance to sell and trade these digital assets and art pieces.
Viacom18 has entered this market with its own NFT marketplace ‘FullyFaltoo’. The marketplace is in partnership with GurdianLink.io and will be available to audiences from 14 February 2022. The first NFT drop will be priced in fiscal currency.
In conversation with Campaign India, Anshul Ailawadi, youth, music and English entertainment, cluster head, Viacom18, declared that the first NFT drop will centre around heritage artworks from brands including MTV, Vh1, and Comedy Central in India.
Edited excerpts:
Initially, what content can audiences expect on Viacom18's 'FullyFaltoo' and what is the strategy to draw audiences towards it?
The first drop will have about 3,000 pieces from our content library. This loot (an unaudited project bag that can be claimed) will include Bakra urf 'G.O.A.T', Rangu The Champ, Winging it aka 'Wing it like Wingnesh', Many Me FTWs.
The NFT drop covers our previous marketing studies, the content we have created, and marketing campaigns. Additionally, we have 13 collectables that include 'Kaisi Yeh Yaariaan' (how is this friendship) and the likes. From this batch and learnings, we will expand the offering moving forward.
With regard to our strategy, the loot will be priced competitively to make sure that many people can enter this world. The rare collectables are priced slightly aggressively due to the nature of the market.
With the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, how important was it to launch ‘FullyFaltoo’ in the current market?
We have been tracking this space for a while, and we realised that a lot of our audiences, especially the youth, are already revelling in it. It is emerging now, but it has been mainstream for many people. This is the entire world of blockchain with applications of cryptocurrency, crypto exchanges, crypto-assets like NFTs and so on. We were thinking about how to engage with our audiences through these touchpoints.
NFTs were the natural progression to achieve this. We have the marketing muscle intact and creative assets that we know resonate well with our consumers. The motivation was to follow our consumers where they are present.
While the talk of the town is about blockchains and NFTs, do you think your audience would know what it means? If not, would your first target be increasing awareness?
We realised that enthusiasts are aware and active in communities where NFTs are mainstream. We are targeting them.
Also, there are fence-sitters, hesitant to see if they should enter or not. A lot of our campaigns will centre around these fence-sitters.
The films target those who want to understand what this space means for them. We kept the creativity for these films simple. The brief to the creative team was to de-jargonise the world of NFTs.
We aim to build trust and consumer awareness through these films. Those who are enthusiasts will already know the workings of NFT, and we are creating campaigns focused on them as well.
Conceptualised by Viacom18’s youth, music and English entertainment cluster's creative team, some films have been rolled out with more to follow.
Tell us about the partnership with GurdianLink.io and the technological advancements that will help push the envelope further?
Tech advancements are not our forte, and here is where Gurdianlink.io comes in. They were introduced to us by an agency called Tulsi, which caters to writers and creative artists. Whatever we looked for in a partner, they were willing to provide us with that.
We were clear that the consumer stack will be brought in by us and the tech stack is where they would shine their expertise. They are an extremely secure platform and have done this before. They understand the space well and have advised us on aspects like quantum and the pricing of our assets.
With Viacom18's youth, music, English entertainment cluster being the right target audience adapting to this FinTech ecosystem, how do you see the cluster leveraging it?
We have initiated phase one, which may see limited monetisation. We hope to see more opportunities open up to scale FullyFaltoo's revenue in stage two or three. We are experimenting with the idea of experiences in exchange for rare NFTs. These experiences exchange will entail a meet and greet with our stars and so on.
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