The EV company’s short-lived experiment with Bitcoin helped Adidas crypto supporters “start the conversation” about blockchain, said the company’s Web3 lead.
When Elon Musk said that Tesla would start taking Bitcoin as payment for its cars, the plan didn’t last long. But the EV company’s move made it easier for Adidas to use blockchain, said Erika Wykes-Sneyd, who leads Web3 for the sportswear company.
“Elon Musk helped to open that door for us, just a little bit, so we could capture people’s imaginations internally,” Wykes-Sneyd told Decrypt at the NFT Paris conference. “We did use it as a slipstream,” she added—one that enabled Web3 advocates at the company to “start the conversation” around what Adidas could do with blockchain technology.
One thing Adidas wanted to avoid was making it easy to pay for its products with cryptocurrency.
“I think those of us that knew were like, ‘Well, I don’t think just accepting crypto is what it means to get in this space,'” said Wykes-Sneyd.
Instead, the sportswear giant started an ambitious set of Web3 projects, like buying its own Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, working with NFT collector gmoney on a multimillion-dollar NFT drop, and teaming up with crypto exchange Coinbase and metaverse platform The Sandbox. The company even showcased its Bored Ape avatar, Indigo Herz, in its World Cup trailer.
Developing Adidas’ Web3 plan
From day one, said Wykes-Sneyd, the aim was to “make sure we’re supercharging and using Web3 to fast track what Adidas is saying its corporate goals are.” This required extensive planning; her team spent nine months “laying down the strategy, building the foundations, a lot of relationship building” before putting its Web3 plans into action.
“By the time we went to market, everybody for the most part thought, ‘Wow, Adidas is early,'” she said. “And we were, but we were actually thinking about this and planning it for 10 months prior.”
Future plans for the firm involve token-gated sneaker drops and payments in Apecoin, a token themed after the Bored Ape Yacht Club.
Elon Musk made a big deal about Tesla’s plans to use Bitcoin as a payment method, but just a few months later, Tesla gave up on the idea, saying that the cryptocurrency is bad for the environment.
On the other hand, Adidas cares more about cryptocurrency and Web3. “We’ve fully indoctrinated everybody at this point,” said Wykes-Sneyd. “That’s been part of the journey for the last year and a half, is getting people across a huge global organization to be drinking the Kool-Aid.”
Content Source: decrypt.com
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