The Care Bears have entered Web3.
So has Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks extravaganza.
The Care Bears Forever line of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) “will build an active and inclusive community that encourages members to band together and discover Web3 through the lens of Care Bears,” the multicolored stars of the ’80s Saturday morning cartoon series announced on Thursday (July 7).
By that, the company meant it has launched an NFT collection. Specifically, it is dropping 10,000 NFTs featuring 10 of its original characters, like Funshine Bear and Love-a-Lot Bear.
Macy’s announced last month that “Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks, the nation’s largest party, will take the revelry to the Web3 frontier.”
It was doing this by launching “a new series of free NFTs celebrating the brand’s iconic pyrotechnic event.”
Are you starting to sense a pattern?
What Else Is There?
There is some real technology and ideology behind Web3, which is pitched as a new internet built on a blockchain backbone that is uncensorable, designed around privacy and free from the clutches of the tech giants that control the web now.
See also: Web3: Is There Any ‘There’ There? And if so, Where Is It?
But having a Web3 strategy is also starting to be as de rigueur in marketing circles as a metaverse presence, and brands are starting to jump on both bandwagons by hopping aboard the last one: NFTs, which have fallen on decidedly hard times.
Read more: Would a Seismic NFT Shakeout Really Be All Bad? Some Say No
As Web3 moves from a pipe dream of privacy-focused blockchain developers into a movement that tech and finance giants claim will reshape the way we browse, socialize and shop — in the immersive world of the metaverse — it’s also becoming a buzzword that corporate marketers are grabbing with both hands.
And the easiest way to get a piece of that buzz is to produce an NFT collection with adorable, fuzzy, collectable avatars or eye-widening clips of fireworks wowing a crowd.
Care Bears NFTs are specifically designed to be “PFPs,” or profile pictures.
That may be why Tesla CEO and Web3 skeptic Elon Musk said on Twitter that Web3 “seems more marketing buzzword than reality.”
I’m not suggesting web3 is real – seems more marketing buzzword than reality right now – just wondering what the future will be like in 10, 20 or 30 years. 2051 sounds crazy futuristic!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021
Dogecoin creator Billy Markus replied: “Yeah Web3 right now is just something like ‘web2 except every single thing that is digital is now part of the open market and truly owned by users rather than centralized’ and all the promise and issues that come with that.”
yeah web3 right now is just something like “web2 except every single thing that is digital is now part of the open market and truly owned by users rather than centralized” and all the promise and issues that come with that
personally i just hope people keep getting smarter
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) December 20, 2021
Markus, who jokingly designed the now No. 10 cryptocurrency by market capitalization — currently at $9.3 billion — specifically to be so unusable as a digital asset that he didn’t keep any, added: “personally I just hope people keep getting smarter.”
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NEW PYMNTS DATA: HOW UTILITIES AND CONSUMER FINANCE COMPANIES CAN ENHANCE THE BILL PAYMENTS EXPERIENCE
About: More than half of utilities and consumer finance companies have the capability to process all monthly bill payments digitally. The kicker? Just 12% of them do. The Digital Payments Edge, a PYMNTS and ACI Worldwide collaboration, surveyed 207 billing and collections professionals at these companies to learn why going totally digital remains elusive.
