Enters the Chat: Gary, F*cking, Vee
Gary Vaynerchuk – more commonly referred to as Gary Vee – is now entering the crypto industry with his new NFT project – VeeFriends.
Gary is the chairman of VaynerX, a media and communications holding company, but is more popularly known for his motivational speaking with his often blunt, explicative rich, but candid style of engagement. Notably, not everyone is a fan of Gary Vee’s you-won’t-be-successful-unless-you-work-nights-and-weekends-in-your-20s style of advice.
Gary Vee – also infamous for his long-desired goal to become an owner of the New York Jets football team – was an early adopter of the internet, creating one of the first e-commerce sites for wine at the time. Since his early success with his family’s e-commerce wine businesses, Vaynerchuk has been an early investor in Coinbase, Facebook, Twitter, and other startups.
VeeFriends: Celebrity-Branded NFTs
VeeFriends are an experiment with brand monetization and NFTs launched on May 5, 2021, and have already surpassed $11 million in secondary sales volume.
There are 10,255 VeeFriend NFTs consisting of 9400 admission tokens, 555 gift goats, and 300 access tokens; including many one-of-ones).
More specifically, many of the tokens can be categorized based on the annual perks they offer including:
GiftGoat – a minimum of six physical gifts per year
Sorcerer – NFT given to individuals part of the Gary Vee Mentorship program which comes with one on one time with Gary Vee
One-on-One – A 5min video with Gary Vee, ability to have Gary come on your podcast, backstage passes to all Gary speeches, etc.
Group Access – 60min virtual hangouts with Gary Vee or meals with Gary and other group token holders.
Competition – Pickup sports, cards, or video games with Gary Vee and his surprise guests
Each VeeFriend can be redeemed for its’ respective perks each year for the next three years or sold at any point in time at the market rate. While each Veefriend shares its unique benefits, all are redeemable for a ticket to the promised land.
VeeFriends: Your Ticket to The Vee Land
All VeeFriends NFTs come with 3-year admission to VeeCon, an annual exclusive conference for VeeFriends holders. VeeCon will be a multi-day “superconference” in which Gary Vee will likely bring together various celebrities and influencers to perform keynote speeches, talk on panels, provide entertainment, and organize other events for VeeFriends owners.
To date, VeeFriends have performed very well, likely a direct result of the star power of Gary Vee and his extremely dedicated fan base. The success of the secondary market might be speculative or the market may be figuring out the value for specific VeeFriend NFTs. Either way, VeeFriends receives a 9% royalty from all secondary sales while 1% will be reserved for a charity of Vaynerchuk’s choice.
The two-month volume of Veefriends has already generated over $1 million in revenue for VeeFriends and $100,000 for charity.
The Future of Influencer and Celebrity NFTs
As other influencers of Gary’s stature watch VeeFriends’ initial success, they will be drawn to launch their own NFTs that produce passive income via royalties. Additionally, while Vaynerchuk’s model of providing NFTs with access is an interesting model, it’s hard to scale as Gary’s time is naturally limited. With that said, more experiments inspired by VeeFriends will occur over the coming years and potentially finalize on a standard NFT model for influencer-fan engagement.
Celebrity-fan engagement has become increasingly monetizable over the past few years. Cameo – an app that lets customers purchase video messages from influencers or celebrities – sold over $100 million in celebrity videos. The company which takes 25% of each purchase, brought in over $25 million in 2020 and claims that more than 150 celebrities were earning at least $100,000 on the platform last year.
NFTs are the natural evolution of Cameo, allowing celebrities with a large enough following to earn royalties and further monetize their star power. Additionally, one can easily imagine an NFT version of Cameo where each NFT is sold and can be redeemed for a video of a certain length. The benefit of having NFTs of Cameo-style videos is that there could be a secondary market for buying and selling these videos where similarly to VeeFriends the influencer retains a royalty on future sales. In this way, influencers could benefit from issuing NFTs, gain upside as they grow more popular, and an entire industry of star speculation may emerge.
