Introduction
Baseball cards. Comic books. Cars. Dolls. Rocks. Postage stamps. Art.
It seems we humans are always collecting something. Sometimes, we do it for fun. Other times, it’s with investment and some future payoff in mind.
NFTs are the newest, hottest things on the collectible circuit. Forget your grandma’s china and your dad’s baseball cards. Digital tokens are the way to go.
Today, we’re going to explore three of the most successful and hot NFT collections to hit the cryptocurrency world. We’ll explore a bit why we think they are so successful, and we’ll give you some tips for making your own NFT marketing successful, too.
Larva Labs and the NFT Marketing of CryptoPunks
Launched in mid-2017, CryptoPunks was one of the earliest examples of NFTs ever. And it’s still one of the most successful collections ever sold.
Larva Labs was founded and is operated by two self-styled “creative technologists,” John Watkinson and Matt Hall.
They dabble in all sorts of cyber and technical stuff including:
- Apps
- A motion-tracking dance booth on a beach in southern France
- An open-source legal document library
- NFTs that set sales records
The New York Times has run not one but two stories on CryptoPunks. Mashable declared that the collection “could change how we think about digital art.”
And they were discussed by such prestigious publications and media outlets as CNBC, PBS NewsHour, The Paris Review, and Christie’s of London.
What made them so special? They are, after all, just pixelated cartoons that, by all appearances, could’ve been made by a grade school computer coding class. We’re not talking about the Mona Lisa or even one of Pollack’s “splatter” artworks here.
The collection consists of 10,000 unique characters. No two are exactly alike. To keep that “punk” appearance, some are seen smoking. Others have mohawk hairstyles. Still others wear an eyepatch or shades.
And then there’s the technical side of them. One thing that has guaranteed CryptoPunks’ place in history is that they more or less formed the inspiration for the ERC-721 standard that most NFTs and other digital artworks utilize today.
Another thing that made CryptoPunks unique at launch was that they were freely available to anyone with an Ethereum wallet. All 10,000 were quickly snatched up. After all, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to own a possible piece of digital art history?
And then the crypto traders started doing that thing they do, and CryptoPunks became one of the hottest items on the market. The highest selling Punk to date was sold in March of 2021 for 4.2KΞ (about $7 million USD at the time).
A December 2021 sale saw the fellow below go for 2.5KΞ. With the jump in Ethereum’s value since March, that sale equaled over $10 million USD.
What a return on investment!
By the way, CryptoPunks was just the first successful NFT collection for Larva Labs. You can read about their more recent success with the AutoGlyphs collection in an article here on the Crowdcreate blog, too.
Yuga Labs and the NFT Marketing Behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club
Yuga Labs launched the Bored Ape Yacht Club in April 2021. They created 10,000 unique ape avatars. And yes, those apes look really, really bored. Spoiled, rich, playboy yacht club kind of bored.
Like CryptoPunks, the BAYC is based on the Ethereum blockchain. And like CryptoPunks, the apes have taken on a life of their own once the initial 10,000 apes were claimed.
Bored Apes seem to be everywhere you look these days. You can’t doom scroll on Twitter without running into at least one or two. A rather famous one has his own account, backstory, and is having his biography published next year.
Celebrities like Post Malone, DJ Khaled, and Jimmy Fallon own and display their apes. Fallon even took to Twitter to have his fans name his Bored Ape, shown below.
Rolling Stone collaborated with Yuga Labs to be the first publication to, you guessed it, feature a Bored Ape on the cover. In November 2021, they sold a limited edition of the magazine with the BAYC cover and then did something rather inspired.
They turned the cover art into an NFT, which then sold for over $40,000. Digital art became “real” art, only to become digital art once more.
The Bored Apes aren’t just digital artworks, however. They are also your “membership card” in the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an online community and social media platform.
You can chat with members as you do on other social media platforms. They have their own YouTube channel and merch store, too. The Mutant Ape serum allows members to “breed” their apes and create new ones. The Kennel Club offers dog NFTs for the Bored Apes to “own.”
The BAYC plans to launch a play-to-earn gaming experience in 2022. These P2E games reward players with crypto coins, allowing them to earn real cash if they convert their Ether.
And just like the CryptoPunks, the Bored Apes have brought their owners serious crypto investment success. The initial buy-in to the BAYC was around $190. Apes now routinely sell for 6 figures. Buy-in costs in December 2021 were over $200,000.
The Bored Apes may be bored, but they are far from boring.
The Sandbox’s NFT Marketing Strategy
The Sandbox may be the most unique collection to hit the crypto-world since CryptoPunks was launched. It’s much more than a collection—it is a P2E game metaverse. But that isn’t the only unique thing about it.
For starters, The Sandbox is a decentralized, community-driven gaming “ecosystem.” Players become designers and artists, creating, sharing, and monetizing NFTs as they go along. They can even create parts of the game’s experiences that other players can then enjoy.
The Sandbox’s NFTs are created using the VoxEDIT NFT builder. The game experiences are fashioned website from Game Maker software. No coding is required to create either asset.
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The big, really BIG aspect of The Sandbox seems to be its virtual real estate, called LANDS. Companies like Adidas have invested in owning one or more of the 12,000 bits of The Sandbox’s virtual landscape.
No one knows where The Sandbox’s NFT collection will go. With each player capable of creating their own NFTs to add to it (unless The Sandbox decides to limit the creative aspect of the game) who knows? Perhaps millions of Sandbox NFTs might be available one day.
The Sandbox may be redefining both P2E gaming and NFT collecting. It’s still in its infancy, taking baby steps yet. It’s certainly an NFT collection to watch.
The NFT Marketing of Your Collection
What can we learn from these three successful and growing NFT collections? Here are three key takeaways we feel are most important.
Community
While The Bored Ape Yacht Club and The Sandbox come with pre-built communities, the poor guys at Larva Labs had to build theirs as they went along. But that’s what comes from being the first, apparently.
What we see is that all three now have a strong, unique community that has grown around the collection. Bored Ape members even meet in person, as they did in November 2021 in New York City on an actual yacht.
Building a community interested and excited about your NFT collection is vital to its ultimate success.
Utility
CryptoPunks are a status symbol, like a Rolls-Royce in the driveway or a Rolex on your wrist. They are the OG NFT and carry that weight. The Bored Apes are your membership in a dynamic and growing online community. And each Sandbox NFT comes with an entire world.
Adding a utility feature of some sort to your NFT collection will only increase its value and desirability.
Celebrity/Influencer Involvement
Getting “big names” involved in your project, be they crypto influencers, art world A-listers, or just well-known companies, may seem like a daunting task, but it’s an effort well worth the time and sweat equity you put into it.
We know this all too well here at Crowdcreate. It’s what we do, after all.
Summary
CryptoPunks, the Bored Ape Yacht Club, and The Sandbox are all highly successful NFT collections that have three major characteristics in common.
Adding community, utility, and influencers to your NFT collection marketing will aid in its success and future value.
Partnering NFT collection creators like you with those all-important influencers is what we do here at Crowdcreate. Contact us today to get started with your NFT marketing project.
