Once you understand your market, designing a memorable brand for your NFT project is critical, but also easy with all the tools available. Start by thinking about three components:
a. Color and Theme
b. Name and logo
c. Telling a story
a. Color and Theme
Color and a visual theme are easy ways to create a consistent “look” across all marketing channels and allow your project to be instantly recognizable without actually reading any text.
“People are scrolling quickly,” Tsuki says. If they are interested in your project, they’ll stop and read it – if they see it.”
Doodles, one super successful project, pictured above, has a simple concept that incorporates its brand: Doodles NFTs are known for decorating cats, humans, pickles, flowers, and aliens in pastel colors and rainbows.
Note that this brand is unmistakable, whether it is on Twitter, OpenSea or its own website.
For FooCuties Charitable Project Tsuki also created a unique shade of pink and made sure it was on her Twitter, website, QR code, and on the decals she plans to give to buyers.
The Japanese anime-style faces of cartoon food items like marshmallows and cookies are emotive, easy to remember – and hard to forget.
The images of food, which Tsuki draws herself, also tie in with the charitable concept: 55% of proceeds go to fund non-profits that address food insecurity. This is truly a fully executed brand.
b. Name and logo
The name of your project should also be consistent both in the NFT market and on your website. Opensea has dynamite SEO which can outperform your website, so keep them consistent.
Go for a catchy name that does not have a lot of search competition, and test by googling the name AND searching it on OpenSea. Avoid anything that has an underscore, such as Lost_Cat. That’s not how people search.
If your project is Lost Cat NFTs, you’ll quickly find that that is an over-used keyword. So you may want to use “Lucy’s Lost Kitties” or your own first name, or something that separates the brand online from every other lost cat, lost cat shelter, or lost cat found. Lucy’s Lost Kitties has no competition in search, for example. Feel free to use it!
Opt for one that is both memorable, if it rhymes or is alliterative that will help, and which will show up at the top of searches in your marketplace and on Google.
FooCuties is a memorable name that matches the cute faces on the marshmallows. However, Tsuki also calls it FooCuties Charitable NFTs to reinforce the project’s charitable nature, every time anyone searches for FooCuties.
Max of 3 syllables is easier to recall. Lucy’s Lost Kitties, uses alliteration (two l’s) and FooCuties is a slant rhyme.
*NFT*_coolart project” on the other hand is not only not specific but also hard to remember. Here are some tools to remember:
Alliteration – Repetition of first consonants (Lucy’s Lost Cats)
Rhymes – Same vowel sounds in two word combinations (TeachBeach)
Slant Rhymes – Almost exact rhyme with some variant (FooCuties)
c. Tell a story
Many people are reluctant to let family, friends, and colleagues know that they are working on an NFT project, because of all the scams in the NFT world, or because they have a “serious” career.
Still, find a way to tell the story and use real names for you and the team if possible. Buyers, influencers, and the mainstream will want to know who you are. You can also use a pseudonym, as artists often do.
The content of a great story begins with a character who had a challenge and met it with an inspiring solution. This creates an emotional connection. The character does not even have to be human. Many NFTs today have whole manifestos on their view of the world.
There are some great books out there that can help:
Primal Branding, by Patrick Hanlon; Backable, by Suneel Gupta; and Building a Story Brand, by Donald Miller. Tsuki has provided 24 more of her picks for marketing books at t.ly/a2d8
The “about” page of FooCuties tells the story of the founder, a single Mom and once worried about food for her child, and that’s why she chose food insecurity as the charitable project for her NFT. Any single Mom, or just a caring individual to relate, can connect with these details.
It may take some time to figure out how to tell your story in a way that feels authentic and which you can also support to family, friends and colleagues, but it is worth it.
Summarized from Lewna Tsuki’s presentation on promotional strategies, with use cases from Web3Collab.org