Porsche: uncontrolled slippage in NFTs

All the brands launching NFTs in the last few months are doing so successfully. Included in the vehicle; For example, Renault sold 1,972 of its “R5” in 48 hours. So when a great label like Porsche starts out, which is doing everything now, it has every chance to believe that it will do well. But the operation was a failure. And in the case of school.

It started well. The Stuttgart brand chose Art Basel in Miami, at the beginning of December, to present its first collection of tokens on the blockchain, 7,500 images of its legendary 911 that the buyer can personalize, at the end of the day, 150,000 possible variants .

Porsche halts its NFTs in disaster

Here we are again a few weeks later, on January 24, with the issuance of NFTs and the official opening of sales. Like its acronym “P911” on the stock market, Porsche couldn’t resist a new nod to its iconic racing car, and set the price of its tokens at 0.911 ether, just over 1,300 euros. While the firm envisions a craze for this limited collection, volumes are not increasing. NFTs are sold cheaper on the secondary market.

The trend goes against the usual Porsche aura, as the “non-fungible token” is meant to be a good barometer of the appeal of a brand or personality. Quickly, Porsche announced on Twitter to stop issuing NFTs, capping the counter at 2,363 tokens. Many Internet users ridiculed the brand and let it know about its first bad buzz 3.0.

Legacy brands trying to enter the web3 space pic.twitter.com/E7ZV7dQjvy

— Bryan Brinkman (@bryanbrinkman) January 24, 2023

As soon as the sale of new tokens stopped, their price began to rise, tripling the initial value, eventually stabilizing at 1.911 ether – an accidental wink this time. But that’s not the question anymore, social networks and special media are just maintaining Porsche’s bad Web3 strategy. What did he do wrong?

Goodies to attract customers

To ensure its community, Porsche then announced that it would add rewards to its NFTs: meetings with drivers, designers, circuit laps, access to events… In other words, everything where the brand NFT acquirers (like Renault), and everything the German forgot to do! Revealed at an artistic event, these NFTs were presented as digital works and the images had to be self-sufficient. mistake

While the era of NFTs as speculative products has been over since mid-2022 – except for a few unique pieces of art – Porsche “made the mistake of considering its tokens as investments, you have to stop -thinking that we can develop a new line of income with NFTs”, pointed out a very good connoisseur. When asked, the manufacturer acknowledges that “many customers from the Web3 community have obviously held back because direct resale seems unprofitable due to NFT customization. [rendus moins liquide, NDLR] “.

Confusion between art and marketing

“If Porsche immediately offered experiences in addition to its NFTs, they would all be sold. However, they want to reach the Web3 community and cut themselves off from their fan base, which needs rewards this,” says Séraphie de Tracy, founder of Cohort, a start-up that helps companies create their NFTs. “Brands should not seek to reach the crypto community, which is only interested in NFTs for speculation,” he said.

By targeting two communities at the same time (its fans and cryptoenthusiasts), Porsche has emphasized that NFTs for marketing purposes cannot be sold very expensively, and moreover without anything in return except image in “jpeg”, though customizable. In fact, more and more people are seeing these NFTs as welcome gifts to attract customers.

As for Porsche and its small collection of tokens, he confessed that “the size of the community doesn’t matter”. Still, Web3’s clumsy entry has little chance of damaging the company’s reputation, beyond its solid share price, up 10% since the start of the year, and 27% since the start of trading in September.