How Can You Improve Your CSR Campaigns Through NFTs?
Written by Jhasmin Vidal
You must have heard about non-fungible tokens (NFTs) many times by now. It is one of the latest digital trends, along with metaverse and Web 3.
It has many different use cases that you can take advantage of for your business, but in this article, we will focus more on how you can use NFTs to improve your CSR.
What is CSR?
CSR or corporate social responsibility is a self-policing business model that enables a business to be socially accountable to itself, its stakeholders, and the general public. The world was introduced to the concept of CSR as companies began to notice that consumers were looking for a deeper reason to connect with a brand.
Small businesses are trying to do this by creating a sense of uniqueness and exclusivity through product limitations rather than mass production. However, the connection between the brand and the consumer ends there because the brand was unable to provide a purpose beyond their product.
The bridge to assist their consumers in wealth generation is missing. Aside from marketing and transactions, their consumers have no connection to the secondary market or community. Despite testing different CSR programs, it became clear for many companies that there was still a disconnect between them and the actual consumer.
This is where the NFT space can excel at social responsibility and mission sustainability.
How can NFTs improve your CSR efforts?
As stated above, prior business models had companies pushing hard for a sale but it will eventually end with just a transaction and nothing beyond that regardless of what the company did philanthropically or through direct marketing of such CSR campaigns.
Big brands have attempted to entice their customers to support the brand by implementing corporate social responsibility programs, such as hosting carbon offset campaigns, sponsoring green initiative programs, etc.
On the other hand, Web 3.0 projects, specifically NFT projects, have encouraged and supported their consumers in embracing entrepreneurship by providing avenues for continued monetization via their individual digital rights of their NFTs.
When you combine NFTs with your brand’s identity and CSR efforts, you can create a new future in which the boundaries of marketing, philanthropy, and ownership merge. In that way, you can retain more customers, build a strong army of loyal supporters, and drive more sales.
For example, last June 2021, Coca-Cola raised over half a million dollars for the Special Olympics through an NFT auction on OpenSea, showing a glimpse of a wholly new way of approaching CSR.
Why should you use NFTs to improve your CSR?
Transparency is one of the key ingredients of successful CSR efforts.
Many companies say they will donate 10% of their profits from their CSR campaigns to a good cause. However, how can we know they actually did it? With NFTs, this kind of problem doesn’t exist.
Since NFTs are built on the blockchain, every transaction is by nature unchangeable, decentralized, and accessible to everyone worldwide. In other words, they do not raise questions about where the money is spent.
When you buy a brand NFT, for example, you can see exactly how much money that brand has received into their wallet and how they are spending it.
Besides transparency, NFTs could also improve your social engagement. As mentioned earlier, NFTs can take the relationship you have with your consumers to a partnership. In this way, you will have a strong army of loyal fans that will support and promote your brand everywhere.
Conclusion
NFTs represent a new approach to thinking about digital assets and communities. They give creators and brands a platform to express themselves and share their ideas with the world, while also bringing people together around shared interests and values.
However, there is still constant criticism around NFTs because of the environmental cost of transactions on some blockchains, such as Ethereum, where most NFTs are stored.
Fortunately, NDN has a green blockchain called NOIZ, which is more efficient than traditional blockchains, where you can launch your NFTs.
Kickstart your CSR campaigns by booking a free session with us here.
