NFT.NYC C-Suite Preview at NASDAQ: 7 Takeaways

5 min readMar 9, 2023

NFT.NYC 2023 kicked off last Wednesday, March 1st, at the Nasdaq Exchange MarketSite in Times Square with a C-Suite Preview of what’s to be expected at the event in April.

Marketers and business leaders gathered to learn how NFTs are being used to create engagement. Featured speakers from ESPN, National Basketball Association (NBA), PwC, SAP, Warner Music Group, Macy's, CoinFund, Boss Beauties and others shared their insights with the 140+ attendees.

So what were the key takeaways from the event?

1. NFTs are used to create engagement

Co-Founders of NFT.NYC Jodee Rich and Cameron Bale jump started the event advising the crowd that NFTs are more than speculative assets. Jodee Rich explained that “NFTs are used to create human connection” and how engagement can be created with “dynamic NFTs evolve along the Customer Journey”. His counterpart Cameron Bale outlined how the NFT.NYC event will be using NFTs to “deliver ongoing benefits to community members” by allowing holders of the NFT.NYC 2023 Pass to receive benefits like physical merch or ticket upgrades on the NFT.Kred platform.

2. NFTs are the most successful consumer product since the Smartphone

David Pakman, Managing Partner from CoinFund spoke about the success of the NFT as a consumer product, stating that “10 million people have spent $50B on NFTs in the past 2 years”. He believes that we are just at the beginning of our journey and that NFTs will be the largest consumer industry, reaching multiple trillions of dollars.

3. Major League Sports are using NFT Technology to reward fandom

Essem Harris, Senior Lead Product Manager for Platform R&D at the NBA and John Kosner, Former Senior VP & GM of Digital Media at ESPN came on stage at the event to discuss how NFTs are impacting sports at the major league level. Essem explained how “a large part of your social identity comes from your digital life” especially for the younger generation and how they are already familiar with digital assets. The throughline for their fireside chat was that even with a growing fanbase of digital native consumers that NFT products need to obfuscate the technology. Users shouldn’t know they are interacting with a blockchain, just how “you don’t say www anymore” — Essem

4. PwC have created an NFT consulting division

Matthew Blumenfeld, US Web3 & Digital Assets Leader at PwC has consulted for hundreds of Brand clients along with his team. They understand how Brands can leverage NFTs to drive revenue, engage with customers and deliver value through utility. He suggested that organizations can “tell your brand story better” by using NFTs and that they should do so in an authentic fashion.

5. Brands are bringing NFTs to their mainstream audiences

The sole panel from the event was a perfect blend of what it takes to launch an NFT project. The panel was composed of representatives from an advertising agency (Marc Beckman, Founding Partner and CEO of DMA United), public relations company (Jeremy Cohen, Head of Web3 Investment at Publicis Media), Web2 Brand (Dave Torres, VP Digital Experience at Macy’s) and a Web3 Brand (Lisa Mayer, Founder and CEO of Boss Beauties). Consensus from the group was that Brands are looking to utilize NFT technology for their mainstream audience by rewarding these digital assets to consumers who engage with them either physically at a brick and mortar store or through an e-commerce experience.

The panel sees a bright future for brands that leverage NFTs. Marc Beckman of DMA United believes that Brands need to “level up their digital assets with brand experiences” whether that’s online or IRL so that mainstream can participate. Lisa shared that her project BossBeauties “onboarded over 20,000 women and girls” into NFTs through a collaboration with Barbie.

6. The Music Industry facilitates fan engagement with NFTs for musical artists

Spotify recently announced that they were experimenting with NFTs on their music streaming platform. Oana Ruxandra, who has been involved in similar conversations as the Chief Digital Officer at Warner Music Group shared her thoughts on how the music industry is using NFTs for fan engagement. Specifically, Oana explained how Warner Music is “focused on community and brand building with NFTs” so that fans can connect directly with their favorite artists.

7. Share verifiable credential NFTs to employees who contribute to the success of an organization

Nicolle Gurule Sternberger, Global Head SuccessFactors GTM at SAP joined Cameron Bale to discuss how SAP partnered with NFT.Kred to share a company-wide achievement as an NFT with all 2,000 employees of the SuccessFactors team. Nicolle believes that “people should own their careers and have immutable records of their achievements” to take with them wherever they go. The most interesting part of the project was that with a single click you could add the verifiable credential NFT to your LinkedIn profile for the whole world to see.