#247: Engaging the Community with Azuki

🙋 Active and passive engagement with Mind of Gus, We never left, and SATOSHI NAKAMOTO

Do you feel it, folks?

There’s a little more energy on the timeline, in the chat, and in person. Maybe it’s the very early stages of the next cycle, maybe we’re just psyching ourselves out because we’ve been deprived of a positive market catalyst for so long.

And because of that, I’ll just say we’re in a ‘pre-bull’ market which will last an undefined amount of time 😉

That said, we have quite a week for IRL events:

• Solana Breakpoint in Amsterdam

• The first Network State Conference hosted by Balaji Srinivasan, also in Amsterdam

• Yuga’s annual Ape Fest in Hong Kong

Speaking of IRL events, NFT San Francisco is next week! If you’re interested in attending for free ($200 value), reply to this email and I’ll send you the promo code. I plan to be there for the first day. Anyway…

Azuki recently launched several activations that caught my eye and are worth highlighting.

Mind of Gus

Last week, the Azuki team made an announcement to their community, introducing a new collectible figurine featuring one of their main BEANZ characters: Gus. Gus is the troublemaker among the bunch, as you can tell with the can of spray paint and the tough-guy look.

What’s the deal with the Gus figurine?

• The team took a snapshot of qualified holders prior to the announcement

• There will be 530 Gus vinyl figurines that will be raffled off

• The raffle is free to enter, winners will need to pay for shipping

• The figurine will be linked to a PBT (physical backed token, which has similar mechanics to RTFKT’s world-merging chips).

• There will be more opportunities to get a vinyl Gus in the future. Unclear if it will be paid or through additional raffles.

This is what the opt-in experience looked like in Azuki’s Collector Profile:

When entering the raffle, this is what pops up:

A couple additional notes from the raffle entry modal:

• All BEANZ holders are eligible to enter, but the raffle is ‘weighted by various factors’ which aren’t disclosed. I imagine some of the possible factors determining the weight of your entry could be related to your holdings, how long you’ve held, rarity, other emblems you have, and social activity.

• Hoarder (hold 12+ BEANZ) emblem holders are guaranteed to win

Putting this all together, Azuki has created a simple surprise and delight moment on the surface and added some complexity under the hood:

Ok, so it’s still pretty simple 😂. It’s nice to see it laid out though!

‘We Never Left’ Badge

One interesting thing about Azuki Collector Profiles is how Badges and Emblems are separate concepts.

Badges - These are achievements that are community-oriented and are earned by taking specific actions. Some examples below, greyed out because…I’m not active 😅

Emblems - Achievements that are based on the Azuki NFTs you hold passively.

The qualifications to earn an Emblem are more binary. Do you hold an Azuki NFT that qualifies or not?

The qualifications to earn a Badge are more flexible and dynamic, and we saw that in action last week.

It started with a meme

Dem (Azuki’s Head of Community) provided a great breakdown of how ‘We never left ⛩️’ began, which started with a post from Azuki community member SireDontPlay on October 22.

When we think of the term ‘meme’, we typically think of something humorous. However, memes can be serious as well, and this one proliferated across the community and X.

As a result, the team took notice and created a badge to commemorate this community moment on October 27, rewarding those who took part.

But I just got here!

As the ‘We never left ⛩️’ meme spread, a sub-meme appeared as well, coming from newer members of the community: ‘I just got here ⛩️’:

In Dem’s explanation, he gave recognition to the OGs and the newcomers, with both memes qualifying for the badge if they posted before the cutoff time.

Due to popular demand and community feedback for the new Badge that popped up, the team opened up the window to earn the badge until October 30 and allowed community members to request the badge at any time if they’re able to prove they’ve been with the garden.

The ‘We never left ⛩️’ badge was a great organic initiative that engaged the community, with old and new members participating. On a deeper level, this was a way for the team to say ‘We hear you and recognize you’:

• Observing the meme

• Recognizing the variations of the meme

• Hearing the feedback from those that didn’t have a chance to participate at the initial cutoff

• Leaving the door open for future community members

It’s examples like these that show where the future of community engagement and co-creation is headed. The digital world allows for the proliferation of trends to occur faster and allows for the core team to respond faster as well. In this case, the Badge system allows for that speed of response and flexibility, while protecting the core purpose of Emblems which are based on holdings.

The two-tiered ‘badge’ system that Azuki implements can capture the upside of both the active and passive components of engagement.

Azuki x SATOSHI NAKAMOTO

The Bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto celebrates its 15th(!!) birthday today.

And the Azuki team celebrated it by partnering with…SATOSHI NAKAMOTO?!

In this case, SATOSHI NAKAMOTO is a high-end streetwear brand with bull market prices.

The special edition hoodie is available to claim for Spirit Azuki collectors in the Collector Profile.

This is yet another example of how Azuki is using their Emblem system to enable surprise and delight moments with specific segments of their community.

Surprise and delight moments are hard to execute. Surprise and delight moments for demanding communities are even harder. Blockchain technology and NFTs can help facilitate those experiences to make them more manageable and scalable, and Azuki is showing how that can be possible.

One more thing

As an effort to reduce scams and liability, the top web3 brands have posts that conclude a thread or indicate the end of a post. Example from Yuga:

Example from Doodles:

Azuki does the same but uses an image with a theme that compliments the content in the thread.

Mind of Gus announcement:

Azuki x SATOSHI NAKAMOTO announcement:

Nice touch 😊

See you Thursday!