How Community Co-Creation Built a Canon DC Supervillain

0:00This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Co, a marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find, hire, vet, and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70 % less than their U.S. and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit globaltalent.co. Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening. My name is Andres Figueira, and I will be your host for today. And this show is brought to you by The Global Talent Company, a company that is connecting top remote professionals from Argentina, South Africa, and all over the world with tech companies worldwide.

0:38So if your team is looking to hire world-class South American, South African, or any type of talent, just head over to theglobaltalent.co and see how we can help. And without further ado, I would love to introduce Shea Byron. So Shea is the marketing director at Candy Digital, which is a new digital asset content company that is building an innovative NFT ecosystem that is going to change how fans and collectors engage with their favorite sports, music, art and cultural icons. So without further ado, welcome, Shea. It's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, Andres. Very nice to meet you. So glad to be here.

1:15A pleasure. I know the pleasure is all ours. We really are very happy to have you on the show. And me personally, as a crypto enthusiast, a Web3 native, if I could say, or something like that, I am so excited to hear everything about Candy Digital. So, Shay, if you'd love to put the audience a bit more in context, could you tell us a bit more about yourself, what you do at Candy Digital and what Candy Digital is? Absolutely. So I'm the marketing director at Candy Digital, as you mentioned. I've been in marketing for about close to two decades now, but my path really into marketing or web3 marketing specifically wasn't as linear as it may sound.

1:53I actually studied political science with every intention of going to law school, but an early internship exposed me to marketing. And I quickly fell in love with the creativity and psychology and problem solving behind marketing. I love it. And then from there, I, you know, pretty much taught myself everything from design and copywriting to analytics and strategy, pretty much a one person marketing department, which gave me the versatility I lean on today and probably why I'm in the position I'm in today. So, yeah, my journey here really spans, you know, a really wide range. In 2022, I made a very intentional pivot in my career to specifically go into the industry of blockchain technology.

2:34I love everything about blockchain. I just, you know, love decentralization of it. I love the of it. I love everything about it. And when I joined Palm NFT studio, within six weeks in the role, I was suddenly the only marketing team member left after a downsizing. Yeah, I was like pile by fire, but it gave me this crash course in Web3 marketing that I really needed. And I'm so, so grateful for. Okay, I know. And I can only imagine about how long ago was that when you ended up being just a one-woman team? That was in 2022. That was during after the bull market and the bear market started? Exactly.

3:11Uh-huh. And then Palm was acquired by Candy Digital. And then just finally, April of this year, Candy Digital was acquired by Futureverse, which is the whole other gamut. Futureverse is much bigger. So there's a lot that I love that I'm going to dig into and a lot that I'm excited to share with you. But, you know, I was fortunate enough to get this today and be the consistent voice for the main project that Palm originally launched, which was DC Comics and their digital collectibles. Wow. Okay. That's cool. Partnering with DC, it's amazing. Okay. I love it. My God, it's incredible. Yeah. So today I'm literally the last man standing from the original Palm team.

3:55Okay. Wow. Yeah. So like what originally started as a little bit of a curiosity for me and just like I'm such a tech nerd. I love sci-fi so that's probably part of the reason I gravitated towards blockchain technology and web3 and all this stuff that's so new and innovative. Yeah I love that stuff. I like it to lead the global marketing strategy for DC collectible comics, DC3s. Oh my goodness I can't even imagine I can only imagine the collectibles they must be thinking about or that you guys are creating and it must so fun. And there's such a big fandom behind of it that once that comes out, it's going to make some noise in the moment.

4:31Absolutely. Yes. So as I mentioned, I know you asked me about Candy Digital and Futureverse, but I went around. No, no, no worries about that. That's exactly what we wanted kind of like to hear. And I know we'll get further into what Candy Digital is in the next questions I have. And since you have been now for a while in the marketing space, Shay, what would you say your marketing philosophy is? So I would say my marketing philosophy is community comes first. Everything else builds from there. In Web 2, marketing is often measured by impressions and clicks. But in Web 3, those numbers don't mean much if your community doesn't feel valued, doesn't feel heard or included.

5:13Success really depends on whether people feel like co-owners of the journey. So when they do, they'll show up day after day, not just as customers, but as collaborators. From there, it's about crafting experiences that deepen that connection. That might look like unlockable content, gamified challenges or exclusive access. So like these aren't just perks. They're ways of weaving fans directly into the storyline. Essentially, the big difference is you're not promoting a product. People ask me, what do I sell? What do I market? I always tell them I'm not selling a product. I'm selling an experience.

5:48So in Web3, you're fueling a culture and creating a story your community actively participates in. Marketing here isn't top down like it is in Web2. It's co-created with the fans who care the most. That's what makes it sustainable and scalable. Yeah. And me being somebody that I imagine as yourself as well, that we are like blockchain enthusiasts and we really like this whole Web3 movement that's happening. Web3 is all about giving a bit more power to the user and the person who holds that digital asset. So what you're mentioning and the way you're taking this marketing philosophy, it's totally logical because it does include and gives the user or the consumer a bigger part of the whole process.

6:28And they can actually feel they chip in and that it creates a different type of community that they want to be involved in, be it the Discord channels or whatever. I felt that too. And that really is super cool when a brand is able to do that. Yeah. And Shay, how about this? In regards to the fact that you're now in the blockchain industry and all that from where you started in marketing, how has your approach evolved? Because I know you've described the philosophy that you have, and I believe this could be tied into the best practices, but how has your marketing evolved from what you started to what you are now?

6:59So as I mentioned about, you know, community first, that is really number one for me and designing experiences that excite the community and get them, you know, not just involved as consumers, but as participants. So in a space, as you know, as new and fast moving as Web3, something's changing every day, right? Education is everything. Our audience is a mix. We've got some that are deeply Web3 native like yourself that understand the technology inside out, while others are just comic fans stepping into blockchain for the very first time. So my content strategy and my marketing strategy behind it all has to speak to both at the same time.

7:44Yeah. So early on, the focus was on awareness and demystifying the basics. What are digital comics? How does blockchain ownership work? Like, why does scarcity matter? We made sure to include all of those basics on the first page of our website. And as our audience matured, the strategy evolved into layered storytelling, still welcoming newcomers with simple, accessible explanations while also giving our Web3 savvy collectors deeper dives into mechanics like crafting and token-gated experiences or collection challenges. And another critical piece is frequency and distribution. So in Web3, communication can't be a one and done.

8:25People consume information differently. Some prefer email or blog posts. Others follow us on X or Discord really closely. Others catch a live stream or rewatch it later. That means I need to repeat and reinforce messaging across multiple channels to make sure fans stay informed no matter where they're plugged in. So the through line here is education, but tailored to where each fan is, where they are on their journey. So it's not just about marketing a digital DC comic release, it's about giving people the knowledge and the context they need to feel confident and excited to participate, whether it's their first digital collectible or their hundredth.

9:06And that's my, you know, strategy is really just education first, making Web3 simple and accessible for everyone while giving Web3 natives the depth and the mechanics that they crave. It's about meeting plans where they are and guiding them along the way. Yeah, I feel there's a fine line in the fact that since blockchain is such a new concept, per se, the people who have been in it for a while, if you're not able to explain the concepts that they understand properly, they might lose a bit trust in the company. But if you over explain and make it too complex, the newcomers won't actually enter it because they feel it's too hard for them to understand.

9:42So there must be like a little dance there between how much you say and how you say it. Yep. Oh, no, I can only imagine. And Shay, what's working best in your marketing mix at the moment? Since you say you have different channels that you via email, I imagine, Instagram, Reels, whatever. What do you think is the best or that is working the most in your opinion and your experience? So I would say integrated campaigns tied to cultural moments. When you connect a drop to something happening in the larger DC universe, like a movie release or a TV show or an anniversary. It creates this wave of energy where fans feel part of a bigger story.

10:21So a great example of this was back in July. I'm sure you know. I hope you watched it. The Superman movie came out. Yes. And one of the actresses is from Venezuela. Shout out to my home country. Very nice and very well done. Was it a hot girl? Yes. I didn't know that. Wow. So, you know, When you connect a drop to something happening in the larger DC universe, it really grounds people and it connects them to something bigger. So this Superman movie, what we did was we actually ran two overlapping campaigns to maximize the moment. First, we dropped a 12-issue All-Star Superman Collected Edition, DC3, a week before the film hit theaters.

11:02Then on the day the movie came out, July 11th, we launched the All-Star Superman Overdrive crafting event where those who held one of those DC-3s, a lot of people held multiple of them, got the opportunity to unlock special foil and motion covers. So what they did was they got to transform their collectibles into an upgraded variant. I don't know if you're into comics at all. I'm getting everything you're saying and I'm very excited. I wish I had copped one of those when they came out. It sounds so cool. And by having one of the first DC-3s, then you get access to this new and actually that they're not great when the movie is out yes so they needed an older collectible that they either held in their collection or purchased from our secondary market or they could have purchased merged fuel and they combined these assets and that's how they would get the upgraded dc3 then two days after the movie premiered so the movie premiered on a friday saturday sunday happened and then the following week we had another like so two days So that was Saturday, Sunday, then Monday, two days after the movie premiered, we rolled out a whole new other campaign.

12:02It was the Daily Planet Collection Challenge. It launched Superman Unlimited, Term 25, number one, DC-3. Every single day for the five days, we dropped a different motion variant cover of that comic. And each one came with an exclusive to Candy bonus insert of the Daily Planet. It was written by one of DC's writers, Ivan Cohen. Those inserts were newspaper articles that expanded the storyline with reactions from Metropolis citizens, new twists, and a narrative that unfolded across the week. So it was very exclusive. And then... That's like the added value to the NFT that they obtained, right? It's like a little ad point.

12:40There's more. Yay. With this tiny little side quest. Love it. I love it. Okay. So in addition to that, so at the end of the challenge, those who collected all five variants of that comic, they were rewarded with a special gold foil modern homage cover of Action Comics number one, which is Superman's first appearance. Huge. Plus, they got a couple of other bonus airdrops, like tons of bonuses. So that's the kind of strategy that really differentiates us. We're not just selling digital comics. We're building layered experiences that tie into the tentpole events and invite fans to participate in the unfolding story.

13:16It's this mix of timing, narrative and community engagement that works really, really well. And right now, because since you missed out, we're gearing up for Batman Day, which is September 20th. Oh, my God. I like Batman more than Superman. Sorry, not sorry. We need another podcast for this, but we have Batcows, which are one of one collectibles. collectibles. You get to wear the actual bat cowl on social media. One of the key parts to it, and I'm going totally off script right now. This is the best part, so just go ahead. One of the major, most amazing part of this digital project was those who held a bat cowl got the chance to participate in the direction of a comic book, an official DC comic book.

14:04the writing, the artwork. Every single week, they got to put in two votes on the direction of this comic book. There were three issues. Actually, hold on. I've got a comic book. We printed it. Let's see. Oh, that looks so cool. So I have it wrapped. I don't want to open it. Oh, no, that's the best thing. That's excellent. I wouldn't open it either, even though I might be dying to. They got to vote on things like who his nemesis was, who his sidekick was, what his vehicle looked like, what his outfit looked like. They got to vote on the cover. They got to vote on the title. And then at the end of this three-part story, we ended up developing a brand new DC supervillain, which was the Legacy Cowl.

14:48The Legacy Cowl. I'm telling you about this villain. It's crazy. The way this story is forming up to be, I had no idea NFTs could take the audience through the story. Oh my God, yeah, yeah. And this isn't even marketing anymore. This is just perfect. In addition to that, so the Legacy Cowl is a scan of Batman's brain and it has everything. It knows everything about man. It knows his every move. It knows his strategy, but it did not have his moral code. So that's why it was a villain. And what it did was it hypnotized Brainiac, it hypnotized Batgirl, and then it orchestrated its escape from the Batcave and it wreaked havoc throughout Gotham City.

15:32But before it did that, I forgot to mention, it replicated itself. And then when it replicated itself, it replicated 11 ,544, which was the exact number of bat cows that there are that we've minted. And then it placed cow as its own standalone NFT afterwards. So the villain is like the NFT that the audience can acquire. It's like one of those replicas that they made of itself in the comic book. That's so cool. It gives me such a cool lore. And this villain is also AI. We actually came up with this concept way before ChatGPT came out. Yeah, we're ahead of the curve. This was all from community votes.

16:14Wow. So it's tying into world events of right now in the DC universe that the audience can also play a part in because they're a part of the story. Oh, my goodness. And all of the writing and the artwork was officially done by artists in DC. Okay. So it's canon. Okay. And this is completely on board with this. Like they are happy to go this way with their comic books and have the public maybe participate a bit more in the creation narrative and everything like that. Yeah, this is actually not the first time. Okay. In the 80s, I believe it was 1988. They put out a vote to the public as to whether or not Jason Todd, which is that Robin, died.

16:54And so it was that you had to call in an 1-800 number. And they called in, they voted. and the votes were like 75. I don't remember the discrepancy, but the votes ended up killing him. Oh my goodness, okay. It was a good result of the votes. That's one of the dangers. You might love a character, but if you let the audience choose, you might lose a name like Boaty McBoat or something like that. I remember that thing. I would die for that. Sometimes that happens. Oh, and Shay, I have a question, like a lumen question over everything you've told me about and it's on what blockchain is all this set up like what's your native blockchain where you can find the nfts and all that yes so originally it was on palm blockchain but now we are reminting everything on the root network which is future versus blockchain okay okay okay yeah so let me tell you about futureverse please do please do so futureverse is the parent company that acquired candy digital which acquired palm nft studio and And Futureverse is they're building the infrastructure for the open metaverse.

18:02Okay. Open metaverse. I know what the metaverse is. Could you elaborate on what open is? So open metaverse means that you can take your collectibles from one ecosystem to another. Your identity, your assets, everything. Yeah. Okay. That is so nice. I just went into Futureverse to like check it out properly because I hadn't heard of it. And it's looking very nice. It seems so good. I can see Warner Brothers here, Reebok, a bunch of brands are participating in it. Let me tell you about the tech stack. Okay. It is pretty impressive. So they've got the Root Network, which is a layer one blockchain.

18:39Purpose built for the open metaverse. It's designed to, like I mentioned, take your digital assets, identities, and experiences across multiple ecosystems. It's portable ecosystems. So fans can really, they just move seamlessly from one platform, one gaming to another without losing anything that they own. We've also got within the tech stack and all of this is in-house innovation. We've got FuturePass, which is a unified digital passport that makes onboarding seamless across apps and games and experiences. You can just use, you can log in with your FuturePass in every single one of the applications.

19:16You can jump to another. We've also got Silo Network and Silo Spaces, which is decentralized infrastructure for real-time communication and social engagement. There's also Think Protocol, an altered state machine. This is technology for AI-powered storytelling, character agents, and evolving digital experiences. Okay. There's UBF, which is Universal Blueprint Framework. It's a standard that allows for 3D assets to work across different platforms and experiences. Wow. And then Root Score and Root Rewards. These are like reward participation systems that really keep the community engaged. So if you just log in to the site, you earn rewards points.

19:59And then at the end of the month, you get to turn those reward points into Root Token. Okay. And Root Token is the main coin or token from the Futureverse environment, per se. Yes. Oh, my goodness. And like I'm seeing here, everything, the past, the silo spaces, altered state. And in terms of when you mentioned 3D collectibles that you can input other places that have Futureverse, I don't know, habilitated for them, what would be an example of a 3D digital asset? Would this be like a skin for a game that has DC characters in it, for example? Well, an example would be a bat cowl. That's the one that you can wear on social media, right?

20:43Yes. We have not brought the bat cows yet into UBF. Okay. We're just in the middle of reminting everything onto the root network. So baby steps. Okay. And then the next for that is self-custody, which is a huge part of blockchain. That is one of the most important things, I believe. It's the fact that you have your NXP and if you want, you can send it and sell it to a friend who really wanted that bat cow. And it's like, here you go. And it's yours. That's what marks the difference with it completely. Exactly. Exactly. Completely. And Shay, coming back to the nature of the interview, because I could stay talking about blockchain in regards to the technology all day because I'm just like an avid fan.

21:23If you mix it with comics, I'll be even more entertained. But I would love to know, how is it that you're able to measure success with your marketing campaigns and with everything you're doing with Futureverse and Candy Digital? How is it that you measure success and what metrics matter the most? So, of course, we track traditional metrics like GMV, sell-through rates, or prices, that kind of stuff. But those only tell part of the story. And Web3, as you know, success is equally about community engagement and community sentiment. So I look at how people are showing up to the live streams or how many people are showing up to my live streams and X spaces where I either host them or that I'm invited to.

22:03I also look at how much activity we see on socials and how often collectors are sharing their wins or rallying around a campaign. Like they're so excited about the Batman campaign that's coming up. Hey guys, I got one, I got one. And then they just like, oh, there's something. Yeah, yes. They post their own X spaces to speculate and discuss the drops in campaigns. And so this is like 24-7. The Bat Cal community is so, so vocal. You really should get into it. No, I'm just investigating now everything. I gotta know. And like they kind of build up their own excitement for themselves. It's crazy. So I feel like just as important as the sentiment is behind those activities, it's also important to know whether or not they're excited.

22:49Are they proud to participate? Are they feeling heard? That energy is really what keeps this community vibrant. So for me, success in Web3 marketing isn't just about sales. It's about cultural stickiness, whether the community feels connected enough to keep showing up to engage and to carry the story forward with us. I understand. It just brings back to what blockchain is, carrying the story forward with you guys. It's being a part of what you're buying into and become in a certain way a stakeholder of the company without actually having any stock. And it's like you get to say, you get to talk about it, you submit your opinion.

23:24It's beautiful. It really is beautiful. And with that mentioned of how you measure your metrics and what really matters to you, how do you think about budget allocation then, Shay? How do you manage that across channels? So my honest answer is I don't have a budget. I'm not kidding. Since day one, I have had to operate entirely on organic reach and community-driven momentum. And that might sound like a limitation. I actually see it as a strength because it has really forced me to get laser focused on what really works, building authentic connections, leveraging community channels like Discord and X and creating activations that spread because people care, not because we paid for eyeballs.

24:08So every campaign from these weekly DC three drops that we do to the crafting events and collection challenges has been designed to thrive without ad spend. That approach has really shaped our identity. Like we're not chasing vanity metrics. We're cultivating genuine engagement and cultural relevance. In Web3, where trust and authenticity are everything, organic isn't a fallback plan. It's the strategy. Yeah, it really is. Like if you have your community created 100 % organically without, I don't know, bots that also like the post or that add traffic in the impressions to the article that was admitted, if that is really 100 % real people who are interested in the product, it's worth way more than what you're mentioning, like empty metrics just for the vanity of having a lot of numbers.

24:56And that's really respectable. That's so cool, Shay. Congrats. And OK, moving forward, what are your views around AI, Shay? Like, I know it's the trending topic nowadays. I know we got the legacy cow. That's the new villain, right? That's the AI inspired villain. But in Futureverse and Candy Digital, how are you guys leveraging AI? Is it something that you have incorporated in your day to day? Oh, yes, absolutely. OK, so first of all, as you know, as I mentioned earlier, we do have our own AI tool that users can go in. You can go in and it's Altered State Machine. You can go in and sign it up for free and just test it out just like you can with Grok or any of the others.

25:37And yeah, so we incorporate it into our offerings, but we also highly, highly encourage it internally. We have, you know, our marketing weekly meetings where we talk about, what tools we're using and everyone shares what tools we're using as far as AIs because there's so many out there that it's hard to keep track. I personally, I love AI. I cannot see myself living without it. It feels like a second brain for me. It really is my secret. I use it every single day, whether it's like drafting multiple versions of copy, analyzing campaign metrics, or pulling insights way faster than I could ever do on my own.

26:23And to be honest, I don't see AI as a replacement. A lot of people fear that, but I see it as an amplifier. Like especially in Web3 where community moves at the speed of culture, AI helps me keep my human connection. It gives me the bandwidth to stay responsive and to be present with our community members. I think what really excites me about AI is where AI meets the fan experience itself. Like imagine collectibles that evolve through AI or AI powered character agents that just interact with fans in real time. So when you pair that with blockchain provenance, you're talking about dynamic ownership.

27:02Assets that aren't static, but grow and change with you. Kind of like Pokemon that evolve. Let's not talk about Pokemon. That's another very close to heart subject. Oh my God, me too. I imagine it in the fact that, I don't know, just to speculate here, if you guys were to put out an NFT where it's Batman or Superman as a baby and whoever acquires it with AI, it grows with you and it becomes into an older Batman until it's Batman old of age. That would be so cool. It's like, hey, I have this NFT from 30 years ago and it's grown into an old man now. And it's worth if that's what matters to the user or the owner.