Why crypto-currencies create new opportunities in customer experience.

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What’s going on with the rise of branded coins and NFT?

Most of you have been following the evolution of ‘traditional’ crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. In the past few weeks and months two new trends have started to emerge.

  1. The rise of branded coins. In the past few weeks, different people in the digital content creation world have launched their own crypto-currency. Rally.io is a new platform that facilitates this process. These coins are not the same type of investment tool as Bitcoin but an instrument to create a higher level of fan engagement. Content creators can reward their fans with coins – they represent a real financial value – or they can sell exclusive content via their own coins. In the next few months, more and more artists, sport teams, YouTube stars and brands will create their own branded coin.
  2. NFT. NFT stands for ‘Non-Fungible Token’. First, let me briefly explain what this means. With Bitcoins there is no difference between bitcoin A and bitcoin B. It’s like exchanging a bar of gold. It doesn’t really matter which bar of gold you have as long as it’s gold. The same goes for Bitcoin but NFTs are exclusive, non-interchangeable digital tokens, which means that the digital asset you bought has a unique code, like a unique bar code, that acts as a kind of certificate of authentication. This gives you the exclusive ownership rights to this digital asset. In the past month, many digital artists have started to NFT their art and sell it online. Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for millions. The tweet will still be available online but someone will be the owner. See it as buying a collector’s item or a unique piece of art. Even though there is one owner of the Mona Lisa, everyone can still see the painting in the Louvre. You can even buy replicas in every souvenir shop but the real Mona Lisa only has one owner. The same is true of Dorsey’s tweet or any other NFT.

 

Branded economies.

These new evolutions in the world of crypto-currency gives everyone the opportunity to start their own branded economy. In addition to sharing their content online, content creators, artists, athletes and many others can easily use it to generate revenue. To start your own economy you need a currency and something to sell.

 

Concrete examples of these branded economies

These branded economies are not just a way to generate money; their main strength is to create a completely new form of fan engagement, involvement and loyalty. Fans can become more involved with certain brands as they become part of their branded economy. Here are some concrete examples:

  • Exclusive content: brands and content creators can make exclusive content available in return for some of their branded coins. Think of a band that releases a new album. By paying a fixed number of coins fans can discover the new material several days before the other fans.
  • Get exclusive collectibles: with the release of their new album, Kings of Leon NFTd a couple of albums. These are exclusive collectibles. Only a limited number of these digital assets is available. As a fan, you can buy them and exclusively own them. If your favorite soccer team wins the cup, your team can NFT the video of the winning goal and you can become the owner of that exclusive moment in the history of your team.
  • Get premium services/products: if an author releases a new book, maybe you can get access to signed copies via their personal coins. If you’re willing to invest a few coins there may be a WhatsApp information group you can join.
  • Get rewards for your word-of-mouth. Brands may reward their fans when they share online content. Rewarding fans who actively promote you will motivate more people to share your content.

 

$CXM and $NEXX coin

A couple of weeks ago, Peter Hinssen and I were invited by our good friend Jeremiah Owyang to join the Rally.io platform. Rally is one of the platforms that offers content creators and brands the opportunity to create their own branded coin. Rally is funded by famous VC Andreessen Horowitz. Peter and I have visited their HQ in Silicon Valley on many occasions. They are also the VC behind companies like Facebook, Clubhouse and Coinbase.

Rally selected 100 content creators to try out their platform as early users. Peter and I are very excited to be part of this group.

In the meantime we have created our own coin. We decided not to name our respective coins after ourselves. These are the two coins we created to experiment with:

 

$CXM: This is the coin I created. CXM stands for ‘customer experience management’. I would love to introduce this coin in the global customer experience community. While I created the coin, everyone in the community can use it: they can buy and send coins or use them to create events or motivate people to share CXM-related content. This is a live experiment and I invite everyone from the CXM community to check it out and experiment with the coin. Join the movement, as it were.

$NEXX: This is the coin Peter created. As you know, Peter and I are the founders of Nexxworks. It has always been our dream to create a Nexxworks currency and now we have it. In the future we will use the Nexxworks coin to give our fans and clients access to premium services. In the next few weeks we will sharpen our $NEXX strategy. More news to follow soon. Again, this is a live experiment to see what opportunities this field has to offer. There is no firm plan yet but we do believe that this is new field of customer engagement that we just have to explore.