Introducing The Narrative Branding NFT Season

These are interesting times in the NFT space.

Top collections in Opensea are barely recognisable. The industry stalwarts that seemed invincible a few weeks ago have had their positions taken away by newer, arguably ‘degen’ projects.

I am not for or against this shift, but I do observe a shift in the overall NFT industry.

Here’s my thoughts on what I call the “Narrative Branding NFT Season”.

Branding and Narrative

It seems that the recent trends in the NFT world have started shifting towards projects with unique branding and narrative.

More attention is being given to brands that are loud, wild and with distinct narratives that people can resonate with.

Some examples are goblintown, pabloslol and pieceofshit, where their ridiculous art and narratives are perfect for the times.

How can we identify such NFTs?

Their brand elements can come in the form of:

• Unique art (being distinct and standing out is key)

• Novel narrative that the community can relate to and join in

• Storytelling through a slow release of roadmap

• Brand voice via the style of Twitter posts, fonts, to website copywriting and even Twitter spaces

The Typical NFT Project Playbook

In previous markets, most NFT projects typically had a similar playbook:

• Announce their NFT projects weeks/months before launch

• Showcase a promising roadmap with partnerships, utilities, and exciting features to come

• Hype the project up with Whitelist grinding: Giveaways, contests, games, trivias, you name it

• Launch to an excited Whitelist audience with a few public spots left for the rest to snatch

This playbook seemed to work well in bull markets, where many NFT projects were guaranteed profit makers as long as you were in the whitelist.

Many people grinded away for their spot at Whitelists, for the potential mint and flip.

This was of course, until it stopped working.

As the bear market loomed, projects started having a hard time to mint out.

People were less willing to pay relatively high mint prices for a lower chance at turning profits, even if they were in the whitelist.

In bear markets, especially, NFTs are a big, ruthless player vs player (PVP) game.

Free Mint, Degen NFT Meta

Then came the free mint ‘degen’ NFT projects.

Made popular by Goblintown.wtf, these new projects typically had mints in a short notice, with little prior hype built up.

They typically are sold as free mints, and have little to no roadmaps announced initially.

This can be seen as an advantage for such projects.

As free mint projects, there are much lower risks as you are only paying for gas fees (and the potential contract risk).

With little promise of utilities, there are no expectations. If there are new roadmaps in future, great! If not, it would also be a fun project to mint and flip.

These factors aid projects in gaining attention and volume at launch.

What’s more, such projects truly align the incentives between the team and their NFT holders.

The team is incentivised to keep building and engaging the community if they want to earn lucrative royalties in the long run.

Rather than simply paying hefty sums to invest into promised dreams, now investors like you and me can pay much smaller sums to ideas that we fancy.

But what separates the more successful projects from the others? Narrative and branding.

The Narrative + Branding NFT Season

As a marketer, this was also what stood out to me, between these projects and the other conventional NFT projects of the past.

Successful branding is essentially sharing a story of your project that audiences can resonate deeply with. Audiences would gladly be part of the story and spread the word proudly and organically.

Look at some of the descriptions of the interesting degen NFT projects of late:

• Goblintown: ₐₐₐₐₐₐₐᵤᵤᵤᵤᵤGGGₕₕₕₕₕ

• Pabloslol: ēงērฯthiຖງ ฯ໐น ¢คຖ i๓คງiຖē iŞ rēคl ·

• Piece of shit: “Your NFT is just a piece of shit. Shit on your 'bluechip' nft or whatever jpg you are holding. You are NGMI. and yes we are selling shit”

These projects have one thing in common:

They have unique narratives and tell their stories in a distinct way. They are not run off the mill ideas and art, or yet another 10k PFP project.

They are essentially using NFTs as a way to gather a community of people who believe in similar narratives.

Do you think it's a goblin town right now? You think 10k PFP NFT projects are shit? You know which NFT projects to get.

What’s more, as they have typically ditched Discord and grinding, their main communication channel is on Twitter.

Without closed communities and locked memberships, their theatrics are out in the open. Public shilling, and proud.

They are building community in public, and the best projects grab all your attention on this channel that most NFT lovers hang out in.

If newcomers resonate with the narrative and enjoy the community, they will join in the NFT project too further amplify the message.

What the future holds

Nobody knows how this meta will end.

This could be the start of a whole new trend, where NFT projects start doing free mints to first build a community, before building out the project and roadmap.

Or this could fizzle out in weeks or months to come.

Personally, I am pretty excited about this new trend.

Rather than grinding superifically for hours for whitelists, audiences can now directly purchase narratives and brands that they are in support of at affordable prices.

There are of course many low effort, copycat derivatives projects spinning out from the successful ones.

Many rug pulls will probably be in play.

But it will be up to our own research and discretion:

• How much do you believe in the brand and its narrative?

• How professional does the project seem? Is it purely a degen project, or is there more behind it?

• Is there a strong, bustling community?

• Are you investing money that you are totally willing to lose?