With the web3 world set ablaze by the burning popularity of NFTs, brands like Coca-cola, Cadbury, Nike, Adidas, and Supra are taking the buzz to the next level with brand-specific NFTs and metaverse projects. Pepsi has joined the race with its own music-inspired NFTs that pays homage to its love for pop stars and musical legends in collaboration with Vayner NFTs, a subsidiary of the Vayner X holding company.
Avery Akkineni, President of Vayner NFTs shared in an interview that:
“We are thrilled to partner with Pepsi for its first-ever foray into the NFT space. With this drop, Pepsi brings its fans an accessible opportunity to join the brand as it leaps to enter this space, paying homage to its renowned connection to music”.
Todd Kaplan, CMO at Pepsi said:
“We thought it was important to get in early and establish credibility in that community and drive cultural conversations with consumers who are in the space, knowing they are going to be very knowledgeable about [which brand] was in early,” he says. “We need to start getting our feet wet and try some of these new things.”
About the Project: Design, Features, and Sales
The Pepsi Mic Drop Genesis NFT project features 1,893 unique NFTs living on the Ethereum blockchain; Pepsi chose this number to pay tribute to the year they were born. The NFTs feature 50 different attributes across 6 different categories including microphones, stages, and accessories.
The design is inspired by the delicious, and unique flavors Pepsi has been offering to its customers. The design draws inspiration from flavors like classic blue Pepsi, silver Diet Pepsi, red Pepsi Wild Cherry, black Pepsi Zero Sugar, and even the buzz king Crystal Pepsi. Each NFT has a microphone as a base with additional attributes added by an AI-based algorithm to make sure each NFT is truly unique.
These NFTs were handed over to the first 1,843 people who won the whitelist spot through their Twitter post on Friday, December 10, 2021. The remaining 50 NFTs from the project were retained by Pepsi for exciting future projects. All the users needed to do was to register themselves for the project on micdrop.pepsi.com and connect their Ethereum wallets, and then register on the link shared by Pepsi on their Twitter account, and they were eligible for the mint. Users had to pay nominal gas fees to the Ethereum network for minting the NFT but it proved to be a highly lucrative bet as the Pepsi NFTs made $7 million for owners in secondary sales just 10 days after the mint went live on December 14, 2021.
Community Response
The project garnered a lot of attention and the whitelist spots were filled within minutes of going live on Twitter. The art was appreciated by web 3 enthusiasts and the fact that the barrier to entry was so low as compared to other brands like Tiffany which had an entry price of $50,000 for their Cryptopunk pendant NFTs. Pepsi nailed its entry to the Web 3 world by giving away its NFTs for free and appealing to the masses.
Gary Vaynerchuk, Serial Entrepreneur, Investor, and Web 3 enthusiast said in a statement:
“I love that Pepsi is embracing one of the most significant technology shifts of our lifetime. NFTs will change the culture of value creation forever; this is an exciting moment for the brand to build loyalty & bring immense value to its community & fans”.
Marketing Analysis
Pepsi is looking forward to its future in the world of web 3 after the initial success of its NFT project. The CMO at Pepsi, Todd Kaplan revealed that Pepsi is not looking at the NFTs through the lens of ROI, but as an equity-driven exercise. They want fans to feel connected with the brand by owning the NFT for free, instead of buying it like a customer. The unique traits of the Pepsi Mic Drop genesis project made a mark on the web 3 community. Tod Kaplan added that Pepsi is “very bullish on the web3 space and where it’s headed.”
Timeline
