Even if the market isn’t taking Web3 too seriously (gulp), advertising students are.

Apparently, it felt like “every other” application to the ONE School, an online portfolio school for Black creatives, included a pitch about NFTs or the metaverse over the past two semesters, Oriel Davis-Lyons, the school’s founder, told Marketing Brew. The school typically gets more than 100 applications each semester.

“I think it shows that the next generation of creatives are already comfortable with incorporating this emerging tech into creative solutions. To them, it’s another channel to play in,” he said.

Big picture: Web3 concepts are the current idea du jour—it feels like every brand is either unveiling NFTs or looking for property in the metaverse. The next generation of advertisers (and their professors) know they need to pay attention.

ABC, NFT

Like any other campaign, creatives aren’t asked to actually code in the metaverse, just create concepts for it. “We kind of encourage them to learn the language, right? Learn as much of the language as you need to get by,” said Davis-Lyons.

“As long as businesses are using it, our students need to use it, too,” Andrew LeVasseur, professor of experience design at VCU Brandcenter, a master’s program for advertising, told us.

• LeVasseur said Web3 lingo has “totally” sunk into the curriculum, including a class he teaches called “User Participation Platforms.”
• In that class, students might be asked how a brand could show up in “decentralized and tokenized economies,” requiring them to pitch concepts centered around crypto, VR, and blockchain.
• A prompt asking students to envision what the Olympics might look like over the next decade resulted in one team pitching “a personalized home-viewing experience using modular (tokenized) design systems and Augmented Reality,” LeVasseur explained.

Keep reading (and check out some of the student work) here.—RB

In New York City, it’s not uncommon to see weird things while out. An alien on the subway? Sure. Someone walking their pet duck? Why not? Vecna opening a portal to the Upside Down through the Empire State Building? Sounds like a Thursday.

No, really: To mark the return of Stranger Things, Netflix helped create the Empire State Building’s first immersive show using light, sound, and projection. It was also part of Netflix’s largest campaign activation to date, marking the return of the show’s fourth season, running for two hours on May 26.

Using projectors, drones, buses, building lights, and custom animation overseen by the Duffer brothers themselves, creative agency Giant Spoon and Netflix pulled off an experience not just in Midtown, but around the world. So how did they do it?

If you can make a portal here, you can make it anywhere

“We’ve done things that are as cool and as ambitious before, but have I ever projected an original piece of content 500 vertical-feet in the air in New York City? No,” Monica Herman, VP and group creative director, experiential at Giant Spoon, told Marketing Brew.

Herman said Netflix approached Giant Spoon in September, giving more time than most activations. “I think that’s what allowed us to do something so spectacular and monumental,” she said.

• Giant Spoon, which had previously worked with Netflix on promo for Waffles + Mochi and Outlaw King, created custom animations for the marketing stunt with the help of the Netflix VX team and the Duffer brothers, who created the series.

Getting those animations onto the Empire State Building required 46 projectors mounted to an adjacent building. The projection was accompanied by a tower lighting scheme made in collaboration with Marc Brickman, resident lighting designer at the Empire State Building, to “really [make] it feel 360° versus just one facade of the building,” Herman explained.

Continue reading and see photos here.—KH

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

MVP: See who Kantar considers the most valuable brands in its annual BrandZ report.

Convos: The seven social media monitoring tools can help you track conversations about your brand.

TikTok: None of us are above this—the top trends on the app this week.

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Stat: Annual metaverse-related spending across businesses and consumers could reach $5 trillion by 2030, according to a McKinsey report.

Read: “Google says it bans gun ads. It actually makes money from them.” (ProPublica)

Look: This thrift-store Steve Jobs ’fit. C’mon.

Did you miss our brand announcement last month? Not to fear, we’re here to keep you in the know.

Marketing Brew is hosting a full-day affair of industry exploration and navigation on November 15 in NYC. Complete with brand leaders and industry connections, The Brief: A Summit Presented by Marketing Brew is an event that will not want to miss.

Vans, McDonald’s, Wieden+Kennedy, and more incredible speakers will take to the stage to tackle the dizzying industry topics we love so dearly. Rebranding, attribution, omnichannel, CTV, social commerce, brand values—we promise to tackle all the buzzwords in Brew-style with some of the most notable brands and individuals. Grab early-bird pricing while it lasts. Register here.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• While some agencies speak out, their clients are mostly silent on abortion
• Two CMOs reflect on their roles
• One great place for streamers to find new audiences: 35,000 feet up