Meme Machines

0 cost brand

Brands need to sell things to capitalize on their brand. This could be drinks for Red Bull or Hoodies for Off White or sneakers for Nike.

There is a cost required to produce these goods. This means that there is a balance required for investment in brand versus investment in producing the thing to sell that capitalizes in the brand. Its a leaky and delicate balance to ensure long term viability. Too much brand and not enough product means the brand will die. Too much product and not enough brand also means the brand will die.

NFTs like Nouns do not have this constraint of selling things separate to the brand. They can sell the brand itself. They have a one time creation cost, and then after that point can operate for free and forever. Meaning that when an NFT is sold, all of that capital can be spent entirely toward creating brand value, driving up the value of the next NFT sold.

Given that attention is a finite resource, there is ultimately a point at which this model will cease to grow and then the loop will break. The question then becomes, how much should the brand invest in products that allows itself to capitalize on its brand, where these products can either expand maximum attention and/or require less or no attention to capture further value and continue the loop. Given NFTs offer a value capture mechanism for content, a great strategy could be to find as much content as possible: as this is a product that similarly has a one time creation cost and then can accrue value over time via distribution (something that a brand can accrue).

The systemic advantage of this new construct is that it can entirely further itself on attention alone to start, with no need to scale product. The nonobvious strategy to level this up is to run this strategy in parallel: exclusively fund things that have a one time set up cost, and then can utilize the blockchain and brand for distribution. At least two things come to ming: protocols and NFTs. That is, public infrastructure and the artsfilm, music, media, and even games.

- 