When our good friends at Happy Jack got word they would be gifted with a popup gallery on the cobblestone streets of the South Street Seaport, they reached out to see how we could help them use NFTs to tell Jack’s story and to raise awareness and funds for a cause: Mental Health Awareness. Watching people walk through those shop doors and discover Jack Nathan and his art was an experience.
While we were working with the Happy Jack team to choose artwork from Jack’s body of work, produce the video that would tell Jack’s story and be projected onto the NFTs, and work through the logistics of in-store distribution, we started to realize something pretty remarkable- By enabling customers to get NFTs in Happy Jack’s NYC pop-up alongside hoodies, t-shirts, and hats, Sweet would be doing something that had yet to be done in the NFT space: distributing NFTs in a physical retail location.
And one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when distributing NFTs in a retail store is education- customers are going to come through the doors, browse around and very quickly come across a QR code that’s begging to be scanned. At that point, education and accessibility become crucial-
- When a customer makes that initial QR scan to claim an NFT, how are we going to educate them about what an NFT is and how they are going to retrieve it?
- How easily accessible are these NFTs to get…how many hoops do they have to jump through and why should they bother?
In the case of the promotional NFTs we were using to help tell Jack Nathan’s story, we knew those NFTs had the power, once claimed, to really break down the barrier to entry NFTs can have. Once customers understood how easy NFTs were to access, claim, and own, the rest of their experience as they encountered various NFTs for sale throughout the store would be a breeze.
Here at Sweet, we are always on the lookout for innovative ways to use and distribute NFTs to solve problems, serve customers and… if we can- make the world a better place, and with Happy Jack, we were able to speak to all three: NFTs can help you get your brand story out, they can engage and captivate your customers, and they can be harnessed for good in terms of raising funds, educating the public and creating awareness.
