#270: Netflix Launches the Black Mirror Experience

PLUS: 🌏 Insights from the Asia Crypto Report, Coinbase's Mint a Penny campaign

Greetings from the future! I tried on the Apple Vision Pro yesterday 🥽

The demo was impressive. It’s not ready for mainstream yet, although I was tempted to walk out with one. If you’re interested in checking it out, schedule an appointment at your local Apple Store.

Enough with the chit chat, let’s go!

The Black Mirror Experience: Smile Club

Netflix is experimenting with NFTs again! A couple years ago, Netflix launched the Stranger Things - Upside Down Series in partnership with Candy Digital. This time, they’re back with the Black Mirror Digital Experience: Smile Club.

In order to register for a chance at an allowlist, visitors need to turn their camera on and smile for 5 seconds ‘to reach their 5 star destiny’. Creepy and creative. This interactive experience is based on the Black Mirror episode, Nosedive. In the episode, society adopts a social credit score system that rates everyone’s interactions with others.

What do we know about the project so far?

• Smile Club will be the first of a series of Black Mirror Digital Experiences

• These experiences are built by Pixelynx, a web3-focused interactive entertainment platform that is also an Animoca subsidiary

• The smiles might be recorded onchain. Not sure what this exactly means, but it will be an interesting concept if true.

• The project will be built on top of Base (Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain)

• The top 1,000 Smilers will get a guaranteed allowlist spot, and the top 50 will get their Smile Pass for free

To move up the leaderboard, users are encouraged to refer other users via social and participate in a Daily Smile Checkin, which requires you to smile for 5 seconds.

Apparently this is considered a smile lol

Other observations

X to mint reemerges

I’ve called out the ‘X to mint’ mechanic before, highlighting Hacker Haikus (text to mint) and Plz Bro (speak to mint) last year. This minting mechanic has taken a back seat for the most part, and brands may push this framework forward in other creative ways.

Smile Club doesn’t adopt X to mint in its entirety (it’s not literally ‘smile to mint’ lol), but it does incorporate smiling into its engagement loop.

Incorporating collective milestones and riddles as part of the experience

This is a simple and effective tactic (see Starbucks Odyssey Community Challenge). The Black Mirror Experience Discord incorporates this in a few places to keep the community engaged:

📣 Summon the bots!

📣 Summon the (smile) bots?!

We’ll see what the Smile Club team has in store for us. At the least, I’m now forced to smile every day. That’s good for my health, right? 😄

Asia Cryptocurrency Market Report By Kyros Ventures

Kyros Ventures recently published the Asia Cryptocurrency Market Report, providing insights into Asian consumer preferences across 5 markets.

Some highlights that caught my eye:

• Thailand and Taiwan have higher rates of web3 product usage vs. token investment

• Most investors have reduced their stablecoin holdings and are now in ‘risk-on’ mode. Thailand has the lowest rate of stablecoin holdings at 22%.

• Thailand users have the highest profit expectation levels at 10.4x

Shoutout to Tiger Research for bringing this report to my attention. The team creates great reports (in English too!) on web3 in Asia. For example, they published the Philippines Web3 Market Overview.

If your work involves understanding the Asian web3 market better, or are just curious about an ecosystem in a different continent (me), check them out.

Coinbase’s Mint a Penny campaign

Coinbase does it again with another relatable and approachable ad campaign, this time focusing on the penny.

Pennies have become worthless for the US consumer and their daily lives. However, the digital form of these pennies can become meaningful again via stablecoins.

To bring that point home, Coinbase launched Mint a Penny:

• Users could mint a penny NFT on Base

• If you held a penny NFT, you could purchase a penny hat for $0.01 plus shipping ($10 for those in the US)

• The hat costs $30, and penny holders could apply a token-gated $29.99 discount

• The site was also compatible with Farcaster as a Frame, allowing users to mint the penny in-app and in-feed

Source

Sure this is Coinbase, a public company that has a virtually limitless marketing budget compared to a scrappy web3 startup. But this is a great marketing case study for teams to reference as the gold standard of driving awareness and action while making a point:

• Video ad about the penny and the value of stablecoins

• Posting penny related stats

• Adding a cheeky slogan for the campaign: “Make it make cents”. Also used as a reply line.

• Minting a penny NFT

• The penny NFT visualization is dynamic depending on what penny # you minted.

  • I was #2923, so you can see piles of pennies creating a column-like structure

  • Compare this with #350, which is just a pile of pennies

  • Contrast that with #62412, which is one big penny with small pennies floating around it. I guess the creative team didn’t the time to think that far lol

• If you minted a penny and wanted to purchase the hat, it only cost…one digital penny (+shipping)

• The hat has a penny on it and on the back it says “Make it make cents”

Exceptionally good crypto/web3 marketing. Exceptionally good marketing in general.

And with that, here’s a penny for my thoughts. And in this case, a penny is a meme I guess 🤷‍♂️

See you Thursday!