7 Jewelry Brands Using NFTs in Marketing

Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:08
Welcome to the Joy Joy Podcast, where jewelry is joy, and everyone is encouraged to add more polish and sparkle to the world. With topics ranging from marketing tips to business development, best practices and beyond. This is the go to podcast for ambitious jewelry industry dreamers like you.

0:31
Hi, I’m your host Laryssa Wirstiuk. Through this podcast I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and professionals, so they can thrive while adding more beauty to the world. I’m passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands. And I’m excited to share my passion with you. As we all know, “jewelry is joy”, so I’ll gladly seize any opportunity to talk about it. This is episode 182, and it’s a follow up episode to build upon last week’s interview that I did with Oliver Maroney about NFTs. If you haven’t already listened to or watched that episode, I highly recommend you check out that one first before you continue with this one.

1:16
In this episode, I’m going to be sharing examples of jewelry businesses currently experimenting with NFTs. So if you’re curious about them, or you want to know more, you can check out what each business is doing and kind of do a little bit more of a deep dive on your own time. I’ll also put links with more information about each example in the show notes, so you can do further exploration and research. But before we get to the solid gold of this episode, I’d like to remind you that this podcast has both in audio and video version. So you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform, or watch on YouTube by searching Joy Joya, I love creating this content as my act of service to you my awesome listeners, and you can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe, but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, which helps other jewelry dreamers find it too. Moving forward I would love to read some of my favorite reviews, and even create new episodes based on the recommendations and topic suggestions that Joy Joya podcast fans like you leave in the reviews. So please leave a review and let me know what you want to see more of in the future.

2:35
In this segment of the podcast, I give out my Sparkle Award for the week. During this segment I highlight a jewelry brand that’s impressing me with their marketing. The Sparkle Award is also interactive so you can visit sparkleaward.com to nominate a jewelry brand that’s inspiring you these days, and I might feature your submission on a future podcast episode. This week’s Sparkle Award goes to Maejean Vintage who is a brand that simply rocking it on TikTok. I’ve been highlighting a lot of jewelry brands that are doing well on TikTok because I think not enough brands are doing it or trying new and innovative things. So I really want to show you examples of brands that are doing a great job. So Mayjean Vintage, that’s M-A-E-J-E-A-N is owned by a team of sisters out of their studio in the heart of downtown Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The online shop offers genuine vintage antique and estate jewelry and they specialize in heirlooms from the Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco, and mid century eras. While their jewelry is vintage, they really take a fun and modern approach to their marketing through social media, especially their presence on TikTok. Maejean Vintage has 161,000 followers and more than 3 million likes on TikTok. The sisters mentioned “We are unafraid to be ourselves and relate to our customers through our social media and reach them on a personal level that becomes vital when one’s business is conducted almost entirely online.”

4:14
There were two favorite examples that I just loved. One is pick a box. So this was a TikTok where they had three different little closed like jewelry cases or yeah little jewelry boxes, and then invited the user to pick 1, 2, 3 to kind of guess what was inside. And then they did like a little bit of an unboxing. It was just really fun and cute and invited engagement and created a little bit of mystery and surprise. And then another one I really liked was “guess the gem”, where they showed a ring with a really interesting orange colored gemstone and kind of showcase that in the TikTok and then invited commenters to guess what the gem was. So I really liked both those examples. As I mentioned, you can visit sparkleaward.com to nominate a jewelry brand that’s inspiring you these days, and I might feature your submission on a future podcast episode.

5:14
Let’s discuss some recent news related to jewelry or marketing. Each week I share my thoughts about three relevant articles, and you can get those links by visiting joyjoya.com/signup. Once you’re on the VIP list, you’ll receive our weekly digest filled with new episode announcements. The first one comes from digiday.com and the title of the article is “Why a DTC jewelry brand is doing everything we can not to be heavily heavily reliant on paid social media ads”. This was super interesting to me. And I agree with it a lot. So I want to share it with you. The nine year old New York City based company Ring Concierge was kind of the spotlight of this article. And Ring Concierge Founder and CEO Nicole Wegman says “because of all the iOs changes and privacy, a lot of companies can’t afford to compete in the paid space the way they used to. I don’t think there’s going to be much of a choice but to lean in on the organic aspects of the social media platforms.” 100% agree, I have brands coming to me asking me about paid social advertising. And it’s just becoming very cost prohibitive for smaller businesses. It used to be very accessible. And people could kind of jump in on a lower monthly ad spend budget. But right now, it’s like such a sophisticated thing to get around some of these privacy changes. You really have to hire a social media ad agency that like specializes in really advanced tactics, and it’s super expensive. And perhaps well, as Nicole said, probably not worth it, or at least focusing more on the places where you have more control, like on your organic presence. So Ring Concierge is doing, “everything we can to not be heavily reliant on paid. Because we don’t feel like we can control it in the way we can control organic.” Agreed. It was really interesting. And I wanted to point this out a lot of small business owners in the jewelry space, wondering how much of like their total revenue in a year should be dedicated toward marketing. And just to give you perspective, this article said that Ring Concierge’s total marketing budget is earmarked at 6% of revenue this year. It’s the same percentage as last year, according to Wegman. But the company’s revenue has doubled year over year. So actually, that marketing budget has also doubled and really interesting to know that at least 70% of their current revenue comes from organic posts on Instagram, including Reels and Stories, which link to products via Instagram shopping. So anyone in the jewelry space that says Instagram is dead or that there aren’t opportunities to grow your business via Instagram, Ring Concierge is an example of a brand that is simply killing it. They have a daily social media posting schedule. They do work with influencers, and they opt to gift products in exchange for promotion as opposed to explicitly paid agreements with those influencers. And Wegman says, “it’s really a matter of just trying to touch as many platforms as possible. I don’t think that in at least in the foreseeable future, any of those things or will become close to the impact that Instagram has had on our business.”

9:08
The next article comes from Morning Brew. And it’s why some marketers are shifting their focus from inboxes to mailboxes. Brands have been getting feedback that even younger people of millennial and Gen Z generations may be itching for more things in their mailbox, not their email inbox, but the actual physical mailbox. Given growing data privacy concerns, clutter in online advertising, and demand from these generations for more brand authenticity, direct mail may be one of the best ways to reach your target customers today. 62% of millennials tend to read through the advertising mail they receive rather than discarding it without reading it. It can feel nostalgic, and in that way, almost something new. And it definitely has due to the nostalgia, an emotional element to it. And we all know from listening to this podcast, that marketing is all about creating that emotional connection with your target customers. Polly Wong, the president of Belardi Wong, which is an agency that specializes in direct marketing says in the article, “the huge resurgence in the mail is being definitely led by the millennial consumer.” More than 90% of Belardi Wong’s 400 clients are direct to consumer companies, many of them millennial focused like All Birds, for example. And they’re, they’re planning to help more than 80 brands work on their first direct mail campaigns this year. So there’s a lot of potential in direct mail if it’s something that your brand hasn’t yet explored.

10:58
And the last article comes from Social Media Today, it’s about yet another feature that Instagram has launched; they have launched an initial test of their new creator marketplace influencer discovery platform. So just a couple of weeks ago, Instagram launched this test of this creator marketplace, and it will enable advertisers to search for potential creators to partner with on campaigns. I’m just gonna read you the official explanation from Instagram. It’s a new destination that allows brands to find creators they may want to connect with. They can use the desktop experience within Meta Business Suite to filter creators by gender, age, number of followers and interests. They’ll also be able to filter for creators based on the demographics of their engaged audience using filters including gender, age, interest, country and city. See creators who have expressed interest in working with them have tagged or followed them, see similar creators to those found and filters and add creators to save lists. If you’re thinking about working with creators, aka dabbling in influencer marketing, this could make managing and starting those influencer marketing campaigns much easier than they have been in the past. So I’m, I’m actually really excited about this feature, and I can’t wait to explore it, I think it’s going to be a really great tool. As I mentioned, if you want to get the links to the articles I share in this segment of the podcast, you can become a Joy Joya VIP by visiting joyjoya.com/signup.

12:35
Without further delay, I’m going to talk about seven jewelry businesses that are currently experimenting with NFTs. Again, if you want some background information, or just need a little bit more context, please go back to Episode 181 first, my interview with Oliver Maroney and then come back to this episode. It will probably make a lot more sense. This list that I’m about to share is not exhaustive by any means. And as I mentioned, if you want to do a little bit more exploration and research on your own, look at the show notes. I’ll put the links to all of these so you can do more of a deep dive if you’re curious about them. Okay, the first one. If you’re watching this episode on YouTube, you may have noticed, I’m wearing earrings. And you may be wondering, are those real? Or are they digital? I’m wearing some virtual earrings right now that I purchased as an NFT through an online marketplace for digital wearables. And through the Snapchat camera, I’m able to wear these earrings on this video. And I can also wear them for Zoom calls, for Google Meets, any sort of video correspondence that I’m doing. And at first, I was wondering about how how they might look. Would it look cheesy? But I’m actually super into them. So if you are listening to this podcast on audio, go to my YouTube channel so you can go see these virtual earrings that I’m wearing very cool. This company that I purchased it from. I don’t know if I’m saying it correctly. It’s jewels, but instead of a W it’s a V. So Jevels, jewels with a V. I’m not totally sure I need to confirm on that. But it’s jevels.com. It’s an online marketplace for digital wearables specifically jewelry, and you can use your unique purchase digital wearable like I said on video calls such as Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Skype, YouTube, or Discord, in pictures on social media or in the metaverse. So quote from the owners, “We want to bring more people to the community of digital fashion, we want to put another stone to the path of building a more sustainable fashion industry.” So, founder Zuzana Bostian, discovered digital fashion in 2020, started talking to designers, and considered the possibilities of blockchain, the metaverse and the advantages they could offer. She said, she began working on the concept of a platform or a marketplace where you can find virtual jewelry and fashion accessories that can be worn in augmented reality, mixed reality and virtual space. Listen, if you’re a fan of this podcast, or you’ve ever met me in person or watched me on YouTube, you know, I love my real jewelry, okay, I love wearing jewelry in real life. So when I heard about digital wearables, and I even saw pictures of them, I was like, I don’t know about this, but I’m actually having a lot of fun with it. And I think there is potential here, and I’m really interested to see what the future holds for digital wearables now that I’ve kind of dip my toe in them.

16:26
The next example of a jewelry company using NFTs is Greenland Ruby. This was one I had mentioned before in a Sparkle Award on a previous episode. I think I may have mentioned them in more than one episode, because also when I was at JCK, this year, I saw their booth display, and I actually saw the painting of which this NFT is based. So if you didn’t hear about that, to celebrate their fifth anniversary, Greenland Ruby collaborated with artist Reena Ahluwalia, to showcase their singular gems in a new light by entering the metaverse with Ruby NFT. So through now, starting in May, I believe, through September 26. Anyone who’s interested can go to this website and I’ll link it in the show notes. You can purchase a $150 ticket and be entered to win the rubies from Greenland Fire Under Ice original artwork by Reena all the while yeah, and get a free limited edition animated NFT and then all proceeds are actually going to a nonprofit called the Pink Polar Bear Foundation. I love that Greenland Ruby is taking advantage of a new and exciting moment by stepping into the metaverse and encouraging fans to start their digital journey and enjoy this unique immersive experience. You can also see the NFT on the marketplace Open Sea.

17:59
The next example is I just mentioned her name in the previous one artist Reena Ahluwalia, who I’m really excited she will be a guest on the podcast soon, so you can look forward to that. She also in addition to her collab with Greenland Ruby has her own collection of NFTs for sale on OpenSea. She has a number of her diamond paintings, most are limited editions, a 10 of 10. And then one is actually a one of a kind. So the Diamondverse NFT collection extends Reena’s diamond paintings and artifacts into a 3d digital realm as in immersive luxury experience that builds on the language of diamonds. These are central in Reena’s artifacts. Proceeds from this Diamondverse collection will be benefiting charities that Rena supports. She launched her NFTs in December 2021, making them one of the earliest in the diamond and jewelry timeline. I chatted with her very recently. She’s so cool and innovative and always looking to the next thing that she can do, and very much an outspoken supporter of being more innovative in the jewelry space.

19:17
My next example is Ice Cap Collectibles. And they say you can safely add diamonds to your investment portfolio via blockchain technology. So they use Ethereum based NFT tokens to represent ownership of individual diamonds creating a marketplace for diamonds. So with Ice Cap, you can trade the tokens without any friction while the diamonds that you’re investing in are vaulted and insured. Ice Cap is buying newly cut diamonds from manufacturers, storing them in an insured vault and then making them available for sale as NFTs with prices in Ether that achieve a 10% margin. So quote from one of the founders, “it creates a level of security, a level of authentication that makes it easy for buyers and sellers to trade that back and forth.” An investor can choose to keep the NFT to trade or redeem it for the actual diamond.

20:20
The next example is Neil Lane. So this wedding jewelry brand recently collaborated with Collab Bears on NFT jewelry art. The co founder of Ring Concierge, David Borish, said, “it’s a collection of 10,000 2d unique randomly generated NFTs initially hand drawn by veteran fashion illustrator, Audrey Schilt, who started her career with the New York based couturier, Halston, and then worked at Ralph Lauren for 23 years. Upon her 2007 retirement, Audrey held the position of VP and creative director of the Ralph Lauren women’s collection. This NFT project Collab Bears embody, Audrey’s hand drawn versions of a teddy bear. So Collab Bears and the LA based jewelry designer Neil Lane are offering several artworks including more than five of his jewelry designs which are coming into the series, and Audrey will be sketching those designs on this signature teddy bear that’s the center of the NFT art collection. The Neil Lane collaboration will really be a rare piece of art in this series. When people join this Collab Bears community and buy into these NFTs it signifies an appreciation for fine arts, meaningful relationships, respect for society and just a general appreciation for the finer things in life.

21:51
Next is Bulgari. In March luxury jewelry brand Bulgari launched an exclusive watch limited to just 10 editions. Each watch has a QR code engraved on it, that when it gets scanned will yield access to a unique NFT that represents digital art. This watch is called maybe I’m gonna say it wrong, Octo finissimo Octo Finissimo Ultra, and it claims to be the thinnest mechanical watch in the world measuring only 1.8 millimeters in thickness. The NFT that’s associated with the watch, not only does it have this cool art, but what makes it more practical and useful is that it also serves as a method of authentication for this watch, so that it can’t easily be counterfeited. So besides the NFT artwork, the QR code also gives access to information regarding the history, concept, design and manufacturing process that underpin the watch’s production. This watch is in partnership with the LVMH founded AURA blockchain consortium, which focuses on initiatives that use blockchain technology to fight counterfeiting in the luxury goods market, as well as proof of sustainability.

23:12
And then this last example that I want to share is similar to Bulgari. It’s from Jacob & Co. In March the collection Astronomia Metaverso was created in partnership with UNXD NFT marketplace for luxury and culture. It’s inspired by and named after the planets of the solar system, with the exception of Pluto. And the first three watches in this series are Venus and Mars, which are being released as one of a kind physical timepieces that have accompanying NFTs, and then Saturn, which will only be released as 30 distinct NFTs. So it has all these three different components of the digital, the physical, and the experience. So digital, each NFT includes high resolution renders that capture the artistry of these unique watch pieces. The three most distinct planets Saturn, Uranus and Neptune feature multiple variant designs creating greater scarcity within the collection. The physical so owners of NFT’s from the five closest planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter will claim the physical watch. And then finally, the experience part which I think really brings together the marketing aspect. Membership via the NFT includes access to an exclusive slate of events and activities for fans of the product and the brand.

24:47
Those are my seven examples. What did you think? Do you like my digital wearable earrings? Did I forget some examples that you think should really be shared? You can always email me Laryssa, that’s laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. To purchase a signed copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy, visit joyjoya.com/book for more information. Thanks for listening. Remember to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. For more information about working with Joy Joya, visit joyjoya.com where you can sign up to download our free eBooks about various topics in jewelry marketing.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai