The AFL Wins with Big Footy NFT Drop. Interview with Jordan Fogarty, Founder & CEO of Web3 Agency, Be Media by Animoca Brands

Transcript

Nick Abrahams:
Okie dokes. Well, welcome everyone. And I am delighted today to welcome Jordan Fogarty, who is an award winning entrepreneur and founder and CEO of Australian specialist Web3 strategy and delivery company, Be Media by Animoca Brands. Jordan is a market leading business growth strategist and was named in Business News 40 under 40 Entrepreneur of the Year. And so Jordan, welcome to the show.

Jordan Fogarty:
Thanks for having me, Nick, how are you?

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah, really well, very well. I’m excited to have you here, so it’s great. There’s actually not that many companies that really sort of rise to the top in terms of when you think about Web3 strategy and delivery, but obviously, Be Media is there. Maybe just to get a bit of a sense of things, could you give us a, how did you come to be where you are? What’s the journey?

Jordan Fogarty:
Okay. I’ll give you the succinct version, if you like.

Nick Abrahams:
We’ve got an hour and a half, let’s say.

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah, no problems. [crosstalk 00:01:18]

Nick Abrahams:
Were you a good student? Were you diligent? Let’s hear.

Jordan Fogarty:
So, yeah, I think from a perspective, I started the company about eight and a half years ago, and it was interesting moment where us at the time were very much a Web1 agency, right. Which was desktop, search, sort of this early era of the internet, if you’d like, and then we evolved into Web2, that mobile and social focus areas as a company very quickly, because we’re like, okay, this is how to get our customers and clients and their customers to the next era of the internet where things are becoming more immersive and engaging.

Jordan Fogarty:
So we scaled to that and it was an interesting point. I got a friend asked me, have lunch with this gentleman, Yat, who’s the founder of Animoca Brands globally. And at the time it was a really small company. They were just trying to raise money and going around Australia and elsewhere. And yeah, that’s where the journey sort of started. Our relationship friendship, I suppose, started. And it was interesting. He’s like, part of his team were like, you interested in coming on this board of a fitness metaverse? Which at the time I was like, wow, what’s that?

Nick Abrahams:
It was, yeah, yeah. It was somewhat out there in the early stages.

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah, no, it definitely was. And then that sort of journey turned to about last year, being called by Yat to say, listen, would love to chat, love to use the synergies of your company and a lot of your skills in project management and delivery and stakeholder management and technology, all those different components and parts to come on board and sort of join the group if you like, to execute on the big vision.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. No, it’s a great story. And it’s often quite fortuitous, the people who you meet throughout your career and how that can pay off. I think what I’m seeing right at the moment, is there a lot of digital agencies who are now claiming, I guess, to be Web3 agencies and they don’t necessarily have quite the book of work to support that. I understand completely why they’re there, but you guys have been around in the space for a long time, comparatively speaking. Can you talk a little bit about sort of some of the projects that you’ve worked on?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah, definitely. Probably an exciting one that’s been a lot of our head space the last six months particularly has been the AFL projects. We’re in Australian football league. So, a lot of people call it the brand that runs Australia.

Nick Abrahams:
Well, I mean, look at what happened during lockdown. Yeah. How critical was it to the government to get football, the AFL, back and making… Because people do, people love it. So, yeah, it’s a very important- [crosstalk 00:04:18]

Jordan Fogarty:
It’s a great opportunity to work on such a culturally relevant, it’s got this passionate fans, a million members, so it’s a really exciting project to work on because we’ve got a five year joint venture with them. And it’s a really open scope to basically add as much value in this space together with them in this partnership over the next five years. And I think the NFL’s been incredibly cutting edge in how they’ve approached this. Like they have been against most other leagues in Australia consistently is being that sort of willing to take risks, being that front runner for their fan base. So it’s been a really exciting six months.

Nick Abrahams:
And so you mentioned something which was really, well, a lot of things that were really important, but one of the things you said was the fan base. And, if you look at sort of Web2 compared to Web3, it seems like community is one of those big differentiators. So in Web3, we talk a lot more about community. Can you talk about, I guess, that the importance of having a community, having a fan base and it’s probably simple or easier with AFL because the concept of fans and sport is pretty common, but for corporates, what’s the lift to go from customers to community?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah. So there’s a few components to that. I break it down into sort of starting with, we sort of view Web2 as very much, and previous, prior to this Web3 space for riders, very, very product centric marketing. You’ve got your product in the middle and you’re running either digital ads or you’re running marketing comms, all these other variants of marketing to shift and sell that product. Whereas it’s very much the opposite in Web3, you’ve really, and this is what our comms are with all our different partners is it’s about the community first. It was interesting, we were at this event a few months ago, Yat was speaking there, and someone said, listen, the [inaudible 00:06:19] Yacht Club Community is just for really rich people with Ferraris. And he said, that’s interesting because a year ago it wasn’t.

Jordan Fogarty:
You could get into the [inaudible 00:06:28] Yacht Club for $200 for your board. And they put so much onus on the community and how important that was. Then they started opening them up to other projects and all of these other things that are creating this great tribe. We’ve always been tribal creatures as humans. And yeah, now there are some people paying millions of dollars for one of them, but that’s correlated to the value of the community they built, not, if they started at 12 million per, then that would be a good argument. Right. But they didn’t. So, I think that’s an interesting story, which we find a lot of corporates or large organizations quite struggle to get their head around, but people go, well, how is this monkey worth that? And it’s like, well, let’s break down the fundamentals of the value and power of community, which we’re all really trying to create at the end of the day.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. Yeah. And maybe just do, to drop into a little bit more about the AFL. So what’s the… If you can talk about it, what’s it going to look like? What’s the fan experience and so forth?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah. So I’ll start high level, then I’ll break down into specifics. So from a perspective that, all the conversations with the AFL have been listened and they’ve been totally on board with this journey is, it’s about building this really awesome fan community. When using this technology to empower that. So NFTs of great sporting moments like the top goals, the top buddies 1000 goal, all of these amazing moments that people want to own. It’s the first time ever where these actual fans get to own a piece of the AFL. This has always been IP that has been owned. Now it’s actually been sold and offered. So you, for example, Nick, can buy something or you could actually for the first time ever truly support and back your favorite player.

Jordan Fogarty:
Let’s say he’s been playing the game for a couple of years. You’re like, this guy’s going to be a hero of the game. You could be buying his NFTs, really supporting him. Five, ten years down the track, that’s on chain, on the blockchain that you were truly there as a fan supporting him. So I think that’s really quite one cool way to look at what we’re doing with just the NFTs. But don’t forget the NFTs, almost, we think of it like your ticket to the dance. Now that you own an NFT, you can get all of this other access and something called utility where you can use this NFT across, not just the AFL Web3 ecosystem, but actually game day. And why not with partners external? Why not getting a beer before the game or dinner afterwards? And then we look at all the different Animoca partners and subsidiaries, why can’t you go and use your NFT throughout this wide virtual ecosystem as well? So it’s a lot more than just buying an image, if that makes sense.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah, absolutely, and I think that’s probably the missing piece of the puzzle for corporates particularly, or folks who just look at like why is an indifferent looking ape JPEG worth a million dollars? And it’s more, I think, than just an invitation to a country club sort of thing, like a high end club. I think what we are seeing with corporates is this is the loyalty program but completely reimagined, and trying to create that sense of community. And it’s fascinating, you mentioned bringing other brands into that as well, so that obviously creates tremendous opportunity.

Nick Abrahams:
I was speaking to a particular corporate and they were like, “Oh yeah, no, we’re going to go down the NFT path.” And I mentioned Discord to them. They were like, “Yeah, what’s that?” And so it sort of makes me realize that, how do we get… So in the case of something like the AFL, so it’s one proposition to sell to people who are already on chain and have already got a wallet and get the NFT thing, but the AFL, it’s a very broad church, there’s a lot of different folks there. What’s the strategy to bringing off chain folks into buying it and is there fiat, can they buy it in Aussie or do they have to get crypto? How does that all work?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah, definitely. So I think we’re trying to make the user experience as easy as possible. I think one challenge of web3 at the moment is the user experience is a little bit clunky, potentially like the internet might have been 20 years ago or e-commerce was 15 years ago. It wasn’t as easy as it is now. Amazon one click now, it’s here in six hours. How is it so easy? It’s even easier than going to the shop down the road sometimes. So they’ve worked on that user experience for 22 years, Amazon has, but in this instance, it’s about connecting the community so we’ve got to make it as easy as possible.

Jordan Fogarty:
So yes, you can come on with your Visa card and then you’re going to go through one or two steps that won’t feel too much different to buying a pair of shoes online. That’s the real goal with making the user experience nice and easy, and to be honest, by using that passion and fandom, it’s like, “I want to own that,” so you’ve got to put in that little bit of extra effort, even though you might have to go through an extra one or two steps because you’re so passionate about owning that particular moment or that particular pack that you want to own because you’re a fan.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. And once again, if you’re not able to talk about that, that’s fine, but what’s… Because you mentioned the players, and so obviously in sports, there’s the code, so the AFL, and then you’ve got the players. So are the players coming along for this ride as well? Do the players benefit from his NFT?

Jordan Fogarty:
Totally.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah.

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah. They really do. So I think there’s almost three levels. There’s the code if you like, then there’s the clubs – there’s 18 clubs all around Australia, which each to their own, are thriving businesses and thriving organizations – and then you’ve got of course the players. So I think initially, our real focus here is, and we’re actually within a couple of weeks going to be launching the whole project, AFL Mint, and it’s exciting because initially, it’s about offering some great packs and all these things that fans can love. But Discord already is really thriving for AFL Mint and we are getting so much feedback from what people want to see, whether it’s Collingwood or West Coast or Essendon or Sydney Swans, all of these different clubs and players and whatnot are giving us so much feedback.

Jordan Fogarty:
So yeah, we’re going to be working on some really, I think I find, really interesting projects, art collaborations and different collaborations with particular players. So I can’t say too much specific [inaudible 00:13:33] right now I can’t because we haven’t announced it but there’s some really exciting… And this is I think what’s quite cool about this space. You mentioned before, community. When you start to connect these really strong communities together and almost have all these connections occurring, whether it’s bringing in artists, bringing in entertainment, bringing in other retail and hospitality partners, bringing all of these communities, that’s when I think it becomes, for an end user, super valuable and exciting to be part of these groups.

Nick Abrahams:
And it’s fascinating because they become this quite specific community, it’s like a social media platform but just for that specific community, which I guess is why folks like Facebook have changed their name to Meta and are trying to think about what their web3 strategy is. Maybe if we could flip to what does it mean for corporates? And we know Penfolds has got their wine NFT, we’ve seen endless amounts of the luxury brands minting NFTs, we’ve got car brands minting NFTs. Can you give us a sense of, with the corporates that you’re working with, are there any projects that you’re working on? What are the things that you say to corporate? What’s the strategy that you take them on?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah, it’s been interesting because we’ve really been a challenger in this space because we know how important the mindset and culture of creating successful community is, so really starting their mindset culture. They’re interesting conversations to have with big corporates that are like, “Well, we have 10 million members or we have 10 million customers and we just want to do an NFT for all of them.” And I’m sitting there at times going, hold on. Why? Okay, so everyone gets one. That really makes me want one. You go to a petrol station or even a supermarket and they ask you if you have 17 cards. And you’re in a rush, you’re like, “No, no. Please let me just pay. I don’t have all of these different…” Because they’re all quite siloed, all these loyalty programs. They’re really quite siloed.

Jordan Fogarty:
So I think number one, it’s we really push back on like where… And I use an example like Mickey. He’s 28, he loves the football, maybe he loves the NRL as well. Might want to fly between Sydney and Melbourne, or over the rugby in WA at the moment. So therefore, he needs an airline. He might want to go to the pub before. So you think of this end user, Micky. Okay, maybe we spoke to a luxury watch group. Maybe Micky would be interested in that so maybe that would be the line partner. So a lot of it’s about really pushing back and challenging them. You can’t just have an ROI on your first… It’s not a campaign. We’re not running a radio campaign. We’re not doing it like this, you’ve got to be willing to put the investment in. I think, do you want me to give you an example I think of a company that’s done it really well?

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. That’d be great. Thank you.

Jordan Fogarty:
[inaudible 00:16:37]. And they’ve been in the sandbox, they’ve been quite connected in the Animoca broader group, is Gucci. So of course, Gucci’s been an amazing story in the last decade. Possibly 10, 12 years ago, a bit uncool, not very popular, just fading away a little bit. And then now, whenever I walk through a city, you’re like, “What is that huge line of people outside that thing?” And it’s always Gucci, isn’t it.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. They’re young and they’re incredibly groovy. Yeah.

Jordan Fogarty:
They’re young, they’re hip, they’re kind of small street. All of these things have just reconnected and reinvigorated a very old brand. So they started with something actually in the Sandbox metaverse, which is an Animoco company, and they just did an activation. They just had an area where it was experimentation and they were playing around, experimenting. They did an NFT drop of these little collectibles, and people actually got them sent to them as well, they were ceramics, and people paid three and a half thousand dollars US for that, I can’t remember how many Ethereum it was at the time. And they did a limited run. They went, “This is really cool, okay.” Now, what I like is they’re putting together these experiential, almost playing, back like being a kid, like, “Okay, let’s just play and throw some creativity in,” and they’ve done some great joint ventures now in partnerships with different artists and created these stories, and some of the Gucci projects are now in the top 20, a number of them are in the top 20 NFT projects in the world. And it’s like, they make leather bags not long ago.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah.

Jordan Fogarty:
Creating this amazing form of digital art, really. And they’re also making a lot of money out of it because I think that this is the emphasis. They’re making a lot of money out of it because just like the Bored Ape Yacht Club, as well, they didn’t start with that as their primary objective. They started to go, “Let’s create something that is exciting, and different, and interesting, and be not afraid to fail.” So I think this conversation, as you’d imagine with corporates is quite like, “Okay, how are we going to be judged on this in three months time?”

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s often with folks, I get the sense that they’ll come in and they’ll say, “We want to do an NFT.”

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah.

Nick Abrahams:
A bit like. And no one’s 100% sure why. And that’s perfectly understandable because it’s a pretty new world. But actually, getting people to think about this as, not just being a campaign, I think that’s really great advice, because I think that people do think, “Well, this is just an AdWords campaign,” or, “We’re just going to pump and promote something and we’ll see what the ROI is on that.”

Nick Abrahams:
But it’s a curious, well, particularly once you think about how to engage on platforms like Discord and so forth.

Nick Abrahams:
One thing that, obviously, we’ve we’ve got a bit of volatility in the crypto market, the NFT market, and so forth. Do you get a sense? Because I know there’s lots of folks out there that are very keen on the narrative that this is a Ponzi scheme, it’s all going to collapse and we are seeing that now.

Nick Abrahams:
What are your thoughts on that narrative? Where do you see things headed?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah. I think I’ll give you one example, which is really the great one at the moment, I think, let’s look at this Lunar. If we think of a global economy, now let’s just use it, I’m just give a story first, then come back to this, like a conceptual way to view this is the global economy. If a country went into, totally just became bankrupt. It would be bad. It would be really unfortunate and then terrible. But it’s very unlikely, practically impossible to sink the global economy. Now, right, maybe if it was the US or something that might be a different story, but a smaller to medium-sized country, that would be really unfortunate, but that wouldn’t pull the whole global economy down.

Jordan Fogarty:
Now the Lunar examples, actually, if anything, gave us more confidence of where we feel Web3 is at. Because that, and five years ago could have sent this into five-year total freeze, if you’d like. So the fact that this collapsed and it had a bit of a shake, but then relatively worked its way out and back on that upward trajectory, actually builds us with confidence.

Jordan Fogarty:
So you might be going, “Wow, that’s a really interesting way to look at it.” But it’s just like that analogy of a small or medium-sized country, unfortunately collapsing. It didn’t pull everything in with it. I think like anything, the .com early days, whenever I went out buying Pets.com and this, and this, and this, is that buzz, it’s a maturing. It’s still such an early, let’s think of it in an age lifetime. It’s probably not even in six or seven years old, if you think about it. Maybe it’s in that bratty stage where it’s still learning.

Jordan Fogarty:
But underlying why NMO being in so much gaming is there’s some simple facts, if you look at it. There’s approximately a couple of 100 million people that own crypto wallets in the world. There’s over 3.2 billion gamers that spend so much of their hard-earned money in these closed-environment games that are not in the blockchain. So they basically just hand over, sometimes thousands of dollars a year, tens of thousands dollars a year. Never getting a dollar back from that. If 10% of that audience moves into blockchain gaming this year, it’s just 300 million people into gaming. And gaming’s the bigger it’s going to start, then it’s going to move into sport.

Jordan Fogarty:
So I think there’s there’s going to be those natural ebbs and flows. But everyone, what’s that saying? Everyone loves to doubt something. Or when it’s [inaudible 00:22:58].

Nick Abrahams:
Well, yeah, I think, everyone. It’s fascinating because literally, four or five months ago, there would be people who were just consumed of envy. Maybe that’s not the right word. But it’s like, “Oh, if only I’d bought Bitcoin at 20,000,” or whatever. And now you can buy Bitcoin at 20,000.

Nick Abrahams:
So what we are seeing, I guess, is just the human psychology, and the psychology of groups, and so forth.

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah.

Nick Abrahams:
Like you, I’m a huge believer in this Digital Asset Space. And I think I lived through the original .com and it feels very similar to ’97, ’98. And we didn’t know what we were doing. Largely, we didn’t know how big it was going to be. It was largely driven by marketing, which feels like that’s schedule went through.

Nick Abrahams:
But with the folks who you are talking to at corporate, who the owners of of the Web3 strategy? Is it being driven just by marketing folks who are wanting to have a bit of a punt? Or is it driven by CEOs and senior leaders? Or if senior leaders more cynical about the whole thing? Who’s owning this within an organization?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah. It’s a really interesting question. I think from our perspective, maybe starting there, because it helps scope the question is, we’re working with a very, very, very select few large organizations that we feel weak out and our ecosystem and technology can add the most value to. So in terms of working with a lot of corporates, it’s not as much. Maybe what I can give is some stories where we have.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah, great.

Jordan Fogarty:
Very quickly, very quickly, you can see these may be ones that might partner into certain communities. Very quickly, you can see whether they’re ready. And I would say, unfortunately, probably a vast majority aren’t ready, because starting back at that cultural and their focus, is their organization ready to do what Gucci did and explore, put some budget in, without expecting much back, to be a front runner, to be truly in innovative?

Jordan Fogarty:
There’s a lot of them. There’s a lot of organizations out there that are like that. But when you use the word corporate and that terminology, I think there’s some that might want to put it on a board strategy just to tick the box. And if that’s how it’s approached, then I think it’s probably what I’ve seen is, CMOs or marketing leaders reaching a lot of resistance because it’s being viewed as product-centric. Like, “Okay, well within six months, what are we going to see?” I’m often seeing it.

Jordan Fogarty:
Where it’s been exciting is some of these, like the AFL and others, it’s where the most senior are taking it really seriously, as something truly valuable to their company, and their customers, and the wider community. They’re the ones that are on board, willing, AFL’s been phenomenal in terms of almost anything we said, no matter how out there it’s been, they’re like, “That’s cool. Let’s try that. How would that work?” Whereas, so I think culturally, our alignment with them has been really cool.

Jordan Fogarty:
And I’d encourage, probably as maybe my message out of all of this is, let go of how you’ve done things in the past. Or you’re actually very much, this is the perfect way to lose.

Jordan Fogarty:
There’s one large organization with 12 million customers here in Australia, they were like, “This is the fastest way for us to go from 50% market share to 20.” I said, “You’re spot on. So I highly recommend you guys get on board.” They said that.

Nick Abrahams:
Really?

Jordan Fogarty:
They said this is the fastest way for us to lose this much market share. I said, “Unfortunately, you’re just the cheapest. You actually haven’t built a community. You’re just the cheapest.” And these are those type of challenging conversations that things are shifting, the ground swell’s moving. So my recommendation would be to4 start with something really small, just something small. Maybe it’s a collaboration with another cool brand or another cool community that has maybe a similar appetite and do something really small, maybe to a small subsection of your audience. That’s probably the best way to be able to do something in this space.

Nick Abrahams:
Brilliant. I guess if we sort of recap, so don’t think of it as a campaign and start small. I think that idea of collaboration is really important because we don’t necessarily see corporates do that super well. And then the big challenge seems to be moving from the notion of customer to community. Incredibly valuable stuff. Thank you very much, Jordan. Where do you see the media and what’s happening over the next couple of years? What’s the proposition, do you think? And how will your business grow?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah, great. I mean, I think we’ve got a heavy focus at the moment on sport and entertainment groups. That’s because they just have such enormous passionate fans. Not just here in Australia. Asia Pacific and other. There are some really amazing, really large communities where we’re working on. And then for us, like I mentioned before, you start to plug in these other associated partners to add value to Mickey at the end of the day. That’s really exciting for us. Like what technology, what products can we create to all of these hundreds of millions of users and members that are going to flow into the ecosystem in the next two to three years? That’s what gets us really excited. Yeah, we’re excited to have fun with this too because you can’t take it too seriously.

Nick Abrahams:
Well, I think that’s actually great advice, isn’t it? I mean a bit difficult when you’re going to the board for a budget request. You probably need to be a bit more straight about that. But I think that sense of… As you mentioned with Gucci. It’s a world where we look at folks like Snoop Dogg as being people who’ve actually made a mark. So it is curious, but once again, not dissimilar to the original dot com. I think if we look back in five years’ time, if we look back, we would say of course digital assets were going to be a thing. There’s going to be big steps along the way. We know that, but the opportunity is now for the right brands to be involved.

Nick Abrahams:
I think one of the great things that you’ve said is if you’re a brand that thinks you might be able to help Mickey along with what he’s doing and his journey to the AFL or whatever it is, and you’re a beer brand or whatever. So it would be worth, I guess, looking at the space seeing what NFTs are coming out and seeing how your brand might be able to collaborate. Is that the sort of mindset that you think would be valuable?

Jordan Fogarty:
Yeah. And then challenging your end user, whether it’s a Mickey or a [inaudible 00:30:16] or whoever it might be. It’s like, how can this technology within everything that it can create? How can that actually add value and make a deeper experience, a richer experience for your customers that you weren’t able to do before this technology? So that’s probably what I’d say is like anything, go and buy your first NFT. Because then you’re kind of in the space and you’re reading. You’re starting to get it more rather than being too strategic about it all. Kind of get involved and get into it a little bit.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. It’s a very difficult space to be theoretical about it.

Jordan Fogarty:
Theoretical. That’s the word. Yeah.

Nick Abrahams:
Yeah. Because I think it’s just we’re so different, right? You can’t learn this stuff overnight. It’s not like you could sort of bluff your way through it. In fact, one of my previous interviews was with the managing partner of KPMG Canada who spent $50,000 on an NFT and then also bought some crypto to hold on the balance sheet. His partners didn’t quite understand why they should be spending that money, but it is true. If you want to be involved in the space, then you’ve actually got to get in there yourself. I think it’s very helpful. So Jordan, thank you very much for your time. Ladies and gentlemen, Jordan Fogarty. So CEO and founder of Be Media by Animoca Brands. So Jordan, we wish you and the team the best of luck. Is there a date for the actual drop of the AFL?

Jordan Fogarty:
In the next couple of weeks. So July.

Nick Abrahams:
Okay.

Jordan Fogarty:
So AFLmint.com.au is where you can go to register and get your updates.

Nick Abrahams:
Okay. Terrific. So everyone should get onto AFLmint.com.au and get that. And just to be clear, you can do it with a Visa card so you don’t have to be a crypto [inaudible 00:32:08].

Jordan Fogarty:
MasterCard. Yeah, totally. It’s nice and easy.

Nick Abrahams:
Perfect. So great for everyone. What a great way to show your love for the AFL. Jordan, with that, thank you very much for joining us. Best wishes.

Jordan Fogarty:
Pleasure to be here. Thanks so much.