You Down With POAP?

For experiential marketers and brand activators, this protocol could be revolutionary.

For marketers and agency leaders who are getting deeper into the Web3 world, you’re probably inundated with a slew of quasi-familiar acronyms and abbreviations: NFT (non-fungible token), DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), P2E (play to earn), DeFi (decentralized finance), DAPP (decentralized app), POW/POS (proof of work/proof of stake), TXN (transaction), FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), HODL (hold on for dear life) and my favorite WAGMI (we are going to make it).

It’s time to add another very important acronym to the list: POAP – Proof of Attendance Protocol.

Not surprisingly, most marketers and agencies are unfamiliar with the term. My informal polling of colleagues shows the gap: whereas 13% are looking hard at POAP applications, 64% responded with “WTF is a POAP?” But now is the time to get educated.

The protocol was established in 2018 as a community-run project and developed for the preservation of memories from an experience as digital records, which are minted as ERC-721 tokens and stored on the blockchain. To be more luddite, a POAP is a certain kind of NFT minted in remembrance of an IRL or URL event. (If you have ever saved one of your ticket stubs from a concert or your favorite vacation, then you can understand the concept of POAPs.)

To qualify as being worthy of a POAP, an event needs to be:

·      Social: the event should connect members of a group

·      Memorable: the event should be something worth remembering

·      Time-Bound: POAPs exist to commemorate moments or periods in time

Any qualifying memory can be captured by an NFT issuer and distributed to collectors to mark a special moment shared by the group. Put another way, POAPs are NFTs minted in recognition of a moment that created equity in the relationship between its holders.

The definition of “event” in the POAP world can vary from participating in a seminar, joining a Discord hangout, going to a concert, attending a wedding, finishing a book or shipping a product. These are all experiences and memories that are valuable to the participants, but POAPs make these experiences valuable to others as well: they have objective value on the secondary markets. In other words, event memories can now be badged and sold.

For instance, a POAP can commemorate your attendance at an event, conference or concert. And if that event has a high cultural value -- the first crypto conference or a time when a famous band played its hit song for the first time -- that commemorative POAP becomes more valuable. And if you were lucky enough to be there for that event, the issuer of the POAP (the conference organizer or band) can now reward you with other future perks because you hold the POAP.

A consequence of the structure and intended usage of the Proof of Attendance Protocol is an ability for issuers to create utility for their collectors at any point in the future. Being able to provide value directly to people who invest energy into the community is a powerful tool for generating social cohesion.

And this is a huge development for marketers and brands. Just think how money is spent on event, experiential and sponsorship marketing every year. These memory-driving experiences can now be further activated, extended and capitalized with POAP applications. In shorthand, POAPs allow marketers to capture the range of value created by people’s social activity.

POAPs can be used to create instant and tangible rewards for engaging with interests, communities, causes and brands. They add an extra layer of positive reinforcement to an experience and can establish a shareable link between IRL events and URL identity.

Brand activation spends (experiential marketing, sponsorship spend, brand hospitality, event marketing, etc.) reached $740 billion in 2019 before the pandemic hit. That is a massive amount of value created by branded experiences that can be leveraged and unlocked by POAPs.

After all, these activations all try to create memorable experiences that are connected to brands and companies. A POAP strategy takes memorability into a Web3 ecosystem.

This protocol cannot be ignored. For any marketer or community-builder looking for an approach to expand the dimensions and possibilities of their work, a better understanding is indisputable. Don’t sleep on POAPs, the oft-ignored NFT that can truly elevate advertising, CX, BX and experiential marketing in fundamental ways.

What is a POAP?

Here’s a taxonomy of POAPs.

Learn the POAP Basics.