internally a lot about do with thousands what takes some millions if you just
look at traditionally how IP comes to market yeah it tends to take like it's a
scale game and so it takes a ton of marketing spend you have to get people
you know excited about discovering something new you have to put it in front
of them all the time and then you expect like a pretty low like attach rate to
that web 3 flips out on its head in that we have we're very very fortunate to have
a very deeply motivated committed and engaged community that is really excited
and it wants to like build with us a lot in the way and so it's been really
we measure like everything from site views to purchases all the like
traditional metrics you would you would think of and then all the web 3 metrics
you know how long if people held their NFT what does the average value look like
yeah how active are they and it will be no surprise to anyone here who is taking
time out of their day to jump on a Twitter space on a Thursday that by far
and away web 3 is synonymous with super fandom and we have collectively made the
decision as we like really think about the products that we're building and who
our core audience is to always start with that superfan like our our expectation is
if we deliver a product that superfans will love then as the affinity of the
brand goes down so people that are like lurkers if you will that are
interested they'll see all that energy for superfans and because the product
works so well for them they'll make their way into the ecosystem so that is that
is how we've thought about it and even to our like more mainstream products like
the doodles avatars that we have on flow that is all made with the intent of
driving people down to superfan them love it great response thank you yeah go
for it Andrew thanks for it oh and I'll say this I'm the co-host we're the co-host
bring our hands up I don't care whatever it takes made the conversation go
well I'll put my hand up I don't really care um Brad's I know you're against that
but we're all equal up here except for Joey he's laughing supposed to be in a
meeting right now Joe you're laughing um Austin I have a quick question to what
time had said time time both maybe your tomatoes model both sound good Austin do
you think or how can I say this we had a founder space yesterday Ruto asked a
great question he asked what the the journey of like converting someone who's
not seen the product seen it for the first time likes it loves it superfan
what does that that journey look like and how long does the attachment bonding
curve usually take and obviously for person that's subjective on age
demographic location I know capital expenditure all that stuff what is that
usually that curve that timeline look like I don't know I guess you have to
map it out draw it out for us yeah there's kind of two ways to approach
that I think looking at like a web 3 audience and a broader a general
consumption audience like that curve looks very different what's interesting
about web 3 particularly people that either got in around men or have like
recently bought a doodle they move downstream very quickly and that makes
sense right because ultimately like you have made a decision like to this
collectible to like show your support in that way and you want to feel validated
in that decision and so that validation typically looks like like going deep and
heavily investing and understanding the ecosystem making friends building some
communities like you want to see that payoff in a different way than a
general like consumer who may see our may see our social content a couple
handful of times before actually being like you know what I want to go into
the profile page and see what's going on here and like oh this is interesting I
guess I can create my own doodle like I want to go down there like the this goes
back to the traditional media where like the attach rate is much much much
lower and the the conversion is much lower when you get out to that you get
out to where you don't have that context and that's why you traditionally
see these media players like have to get so much scale have to get so much
awareness in order to drive people you know to acquire them into their ecosystem
one of the things I think was really interesting of like how we look to
shortcut that is the studio because if we are our hypothesis as this is coming
out of beta and next month is if we can get an individual who likes our
content likes our merch who's you know starting to understand doodles who may
listen to some of the music to create an account we can give them an enjoyable
experience where they create their own character they get their own wearables
they can start to learn about other characters in our ecosystem have content
to interact with that is much stickier and makes the world feel much much more
immersive than you know just hanging out on socials or just seeing you know our
vinyls that may be in stores and things of that nature so that is really like
really our objective is to drive people into this this ecosystem where we know
we talk internally a lot we have this like heuristic if you will that affinity
is effectively like narrative over time divided by community don't actually try
to do that math because it doesn't work out but the idea is that if you want to
drive brand affinity you basically have two metrics that you can control right you
can't control time you can control the amount of narrative that you give the
amount of context for people to dive in and then the multiplier which I think is
really really fascinating is community so when you feel that you are a part
of something greater than yourself when you feel that there are other people who
also have this fandom that you can interact with that like shortcuts
everything and I think that is why we think about you know getting people on a
single-player and into multiplayer mode through the studio is so important the
example are how to product squinch game when we were in New York a couple of
weeks ago is like think about Lord of the Rings you had a lot of people when
J.R. Tolkien had you know the hava come out and Lord of the Rings it was reading
all that who were kind of like off on their own reading these books and their
level of fandom would like steadily go up if not stay stagnant over a very long
time horizon then you had the movies come out and you had people were
interred like introduced to that IP for the first time and they saw this
phenomenon where like everyone else was involved in these like big fan
communities started emerging you know like the San Diego Comic Cons and
getting the opportunity to like meet other people who are also a fan of Lord
of the Rings and then you had like the merch that you could put up and things
like that and that became like an accelerant so your brand affinity in a
very short time because of these like tentpole experiences and movies and the
community around it could actually supersede someone who had been reading
the books for decades that's how we think about like driving that that
affinity and fandom I'll be honest Austin and I hate giving flowers we've
interviewed a ton of people you are probably top five on that list if not
cutting to top four top three of people who could create great responses like
very very impressive responses that actually make sense opposed to know some
other things that we've gotten so this is this is amazing and I'm so happy this
report awesome thank you for your time it's dude it's been great Joey are you
still laughing you're in a meeting are you back with us my decline notion so
actually never left and then I accidentally clicked a notification which
switched my account which then booted me off stage and then I had to close
everything down to come back and such a pain in the butt but I but I wanted to
ask a follow-up question when Austin had answered my previous question which is
you know as a as a strong IP brand you know we've seen other projects and their
focus on for example you know pudgies committed to a year-long campaign of
really not pushing NFTs or products and just pushing the storytelling on
Instagram and gifs and memes and right like really penetrating the market to
the point where we see people all the time say oh my god my grandma sent me a
pudgy penguins jiff today right so they're they got my they took over like
it's mindshare like yeah like a scale like the human species on all the
social media platforms they they captivated mindshare oh no I agree
with you 100% and then so that's kind of what was sort of my question
previously was like are you guys focusing because obviously with the
acquisition of Golden Wolf there was going to be a lot more leaning into the
storytelling and the animations and so are you guys using similar metrics of
like how many people are sharing our gifs and how many people are sharing our
memes and what's our impression rate when we're posting things on TikTok and
Instagram to to look to to kind of judge your market penetration and growth beyond
just here on X yeah it's a balance of let's talk about like social strategy
because I think that there are very different playbooks and very different
objectives for ultimately like very different business models yeah
particularly like I think pudgy and doodles are sometimes compared but we
have like very different swim lanes and have like a tremendous amount of respect
for how they operate was actually catching up with the debt yesterday and
Peter is setting me up with someone on the team to talk about something else
today so like very very big fans of them that's definitely awful that's
definitely awful maybe might be it might be a little alpha but anyways so
you know for socials there are a couple like the vanity metrics of okay
how many views did this get how much recent this get is definitely important
right like we want to see over time that it's basically a snowball where we're
we're able to increasing our reach over like more and more time but our main
focus is the like love ability of that content so I would much rather have a
lower total reach and a much higher engagement rate so defining engagement by
likes by comments by shares then having like a massive reach that no one then
takes the time to invest in so that and and by and large like we've done the the
math on that like our engagement rate is not only like top in web 3 but across
like broader media we have like a very engaged audience when they get into
seeing the content they want more of it they want to share it with people it's
unlike anything that they've seen it surprises them in some way so we feel
really good about how that's building and look like the the social strategy
took a lot of conviction and a lot of belief in the Golden Wolf team because if
you go look at our socials and we were hovering when they so they were
acquired the top of last year like this time last year I think actually like
beginning of this week was like the announcement which was also my first
week at doodle so like that was a pretty crazy time and it took a minute
to obviously like one get them integrated and then to really think
deeply about our social strategy and then deliver content that we would feel good
about delivering on a consistent basis and now we do two posts a week across all
the major social platforms and we've really seen an uptick in in growth we
were basically like hovering at like 80k on IG like most of last year and even
like the first couple months of putting the content out was kind of just like a
waiting for the algorithm to like a really like latch on and then it was
just like a rocket ship and that took like a lot of conviction you know from
the creative team of like we have a very strong belief in the strategy you know
it's gonna take some time to like really feed once people actually start
to see it because the algorithm we feel really confident that it'll accelerate
that is exactly what is what is played out but we yeah we have like a mix of
looking at those top-line numbers of course we have growth goals that we're
focused on across all of our socials across our Giffey's UGC is very
important to us overall you know we're a firm believer and it's core to our
strategy that co-creation within this community is like a paramount importance
and so unlocking more tools for it to be a bi-directional relationship and
not just us you know disseminating this content all the time but the community
being able to do it themselves are all like pretty key metrics but I think at
the end of the day if I have like a North Star metric it is very much like
that engagement rate and then ultimately when the studio comes out of beta what
does that conversion rate look like that's yeah that's a that's a great
answer and then real quick you mentioned at the very end the community
what are you guys doing to promote more community usage of their characters like
I'm friends with Ralph Kentaro down here in Miami and Ralph you know is a big
supporter of Miami NFT week and his doodle is like was you know was
pictured everywhere and so what are you are you guys doing anything to really
push the community to jump more into the IP usage and the branding to help
push the brand forward like what's that look like thank you for that softball Joey
because now I can talk about the incubator so we've got a few initiatives
where we're really focused on how we can accelerate community participation and
ultimately give the community a platform to use the IP one of my like
pet project babies I think it's important to give like a little bit of
a context on my journey within doodles of like why I feel so strongly about the
incubator so I joined as a holder the week of mint I got my first pickle I put
it on my story a while ago if anyone wants to check it out but I was a
community member would go to all the spaces would go to all the events hang
out with the guys and one of the things that really attracted me to the
project overall was what was then called the doodle bank and this idea
that we had a community treasury that we could use to accelerate the brand and
also be able to deploy it for driving use of the of the IP and it wasn't
properly it wasn't properly used basically and so I had like a bunch of
different proposals back in the day before I joined the team around how we
could activate the bank in a better way what the governance of it need to look
like is like at the end of the day like you can't expect your entire
community care about governance like a lot of people just want to like grab
their NFTs ball them enjoy the ride and you have to be able to segment your
community and make sure that those that do care and those that do want to use it
have an opportunity to do so and they're not being weighted down because
of quorum requirements or anything like that so a lot of actually my
conversation with Julian before I joined was in a capacity of like hey can I
help bring the doodle bag like into this new era and figure out like how we
can evolve it but that was really I give him a lot of credit a Trojan horse to get
him to have me come on full-time so when I started that was like one of my pet
projects along with a few other individuals on the team in changing
that into what it is today which is the incubator where we have moved governance
to of those funds to a community council who takes in proposals they help draft
requests for proposals and really have sent it around what our key pillars are
which is like the incubation of businesses using the IP we've got
someone like deep hang stare in our community who has started his own candle
company called toasty code everyone check it out and grab grab a candle if you can
they smell phenomenal to our events program and you know how can we make
sure that we're fostering connection even when doodles can't have an official
presence there how can we give you a fun for people to go and make sure I like
the different conferences and events like we have a good representation there and
then experiments which in this next iteration of the incubator which is
launching very very imminently I really want us to focus on experiments with
software and so what that looks like is we've been fortunate to have a bunch
of community members create like their own products and tooling for the
community a good example of this is there's a product called the doodle decks
which shows like all the different wearables think of it like a polka decks
which ones have been revealed which ones haven't we want to be able to encourage
that type of product building because it's something that one gives them the
company leverage right like we can only create so many things we have like a set
team but there's so much more that is like just under the line that we would
love to make that we think we can encourage the community to do so and to
you know really focusing on digital experiences overall because not
everyone can go to the IRL events you know we can't be everywhere all the
time and so we just get more leverage in creating software where we can so I
would say that has been like a big effort we're about to announce the next
community council which I'm very very excited about a phenomenal group of
individuals I think are really going to take it to the next level we also have
so that's like one one situation I talked about the product console as well
the ability for people to come in and give feedback and have their voices heard
and just generally finding opportunities to support creators in the space you
know whether it's like a retweet or jumping on their spaces or whatever we
can do in that capacity but firm believer in and platforming members of our
community helping them build their own brand building their own businesses
building their own you know identity with these doodles characters is fundamental
to this co-creation ethos that we have as a company Austin quick question
Aurora breads at the Machiavelli silly but you know honest question the SAS
tools the SAS products they're not Google spreadsheets right no no they're
not Google spreadsheets I don't know not to Google spreadsheets okay and I hope
you understand what the reference is from awesome response Machiavelli over to you
with them breads yo good morning thank you for having me up Andrew yo Austin
what's the deal pickle it's good it's about my humor now my questions pertain
to something that happened this past year were you guys like consulted or
anything like that for like the Fox rendition of the doodles characters and
stuff like that in the treehouse of horror because they kind of took their
take on web 3 and I noticed that there was like a doodle on the poster and
stuff like that did you guys were y'all consulted or was there anything y'all
have anything to do with that we didn't have anything to do with it it was also
like a pretty interesting mash-up of like someone who goes by the name mr. doodle
and the doodle character with the people you know our team actually burnt toast
and ingy met with some of the Simpsons folks in LA like gosh it had to be like
nine months ago at this time and so like there's definitely like an
admiration and you know any any press is good press in the in that respect
yeah we we did not have like creative direction over that over that episode
well yeah I wouldn't be creative direction also like did you guys see a
good ROI or a good return on your physical installations like I know that
y'all did one in Chicago and stuff like that did it seem to be profitable or
have enough interest that you'd want to do other physical installations like in
LA or New York or anything like that sorry I missed the first part of
like y'all did the physical installation for doodles out in Chicago correct like a
campers doodle so yeah it's still there yep oh and so are you guys seeing a good
ROI on that like a good interest like is it active is it making money like yeah
yeah I spoke to that a little earlier in terms of the the KPIs that we're
looking at we we wanted I can give some anecdotes so we held a holder event for
the opening back in August and it was very funny seeing the reaction of the
people like working the front counter as like they ran out of almost everything
in terms of the different merchant things that were there to be offered and
we got feedback after that weekend that it represented like one of the biggest
openings that camp it ever had it in terms of IP and I think it's important
to know like who we're up against like camp works with IP like bluey and Nike
and Disney and friends like all establish IP and we were really the first like new
IP if you will to the broader consumer that they worked with and we were right
up there with like the Mickey and friends in terms of how many ticket
sales were being generated so we're we're a firm believer in live experiences
overall for people that have gone to NFT NYC or South by Southwest or doodle putt
it's very evident that doodles is a brand that is felt and appreciated most
most live I think it's where like I fell in love with the brand for the first
time was a South by Southwest experience and so we're we're definitely committed
to bringing more of those we also know the bar for them is pretty high so he
definitely take our time and make sure that we have all of our ducks in a row
when that when those come out but we've had you know we've had partners reach
out to us about bringing back you know certain types of installations in
different markets and I'd say all those options are on the table as well and I
think the next step we've always tried to bridge like people being able to see
their characters and you get like a doodle plan if you tapped your badge
with your character like you got different shortcuts that you wouldn't be
able to get if you weren't an OG like that is really important to us I think
when these experiences come out like making sure that we can take that to
another level every time and then ultimately now that we'll have the first
party product out in the studio tying those live experiences and what you do
there back to your your overall profile is incredibly important yeah man
thank you for the answer we appreciate you Machiavelli great
brutal go for it you got it got the mic no I appreciate that Austin um I only had
a super quick question and in regards to the the acquisition of the animation
studio they've obviously worked with a ton of different brands obviously major
enterprise companies in the past did you guys also was that also a strategic
move in the sense that you kind of Trojan horse and get access to like the
Rolodex or network of people they've worked with in the past a thousand
percent and then also from you know our vantage point and experience like Julian
has a Rolodex of individuals that he can bring new business to Golden Wolf you
know I have a background in entertainment for the last decade Brandon brand
partnerships has been instrumental in bringing a lot of these IPs to market
with doodles and so it really felt like it was going to be a very like just a
very strong partnership on both sides so like they would be able to bring a
new business to doodles we'd be able to bring in new business to Golden Wolf and
it is bore fruit exactly like that so I would say of like all the things we did
last year like from a long-term strategic perspective I don't think that
there's anything that was more impactful than that acquisition yeah I'd
imagine I'd imagine that was a great great acquisition man I can I wouldn't
even I don't know what I'd do with myself if I got the chance to go hang
out the in the offices and just meet all the crazy talented people there it's
got to be super fun and yeah go for a time and then we'll pass it over to
Brent yeah for sure I know you mentioned South by Southwest earlier and
in the past I've seen some installations and just events you have or doodles have
have gone to are you able to share maybe any events this year that doodles
plans to attend or have a pop-up or anything yeah I can give a little alpha
so we're definitely gonna be at NFT NYC that's really important to me because we
have one it's just like there's a theme of kind of like going back to our roots
and a lot of respects and we didn't show up in web 3 as much in 2023 in large
part because of obviously the acquisition and the investment that we made in the
camp and so we really feel it's it's like paramount to our strategy to show up
in these events and be one with the web 3 culture we're really really proud of
that heritage we know that it is like a significant importance to just how we
operate as a business so I'm personally very excited about obviously it's I get
to sleep in my own bed this time which I'm pretty stoked about that will be
likely like a pretty intimate experience for holders we've you know hinted at
these animated short film specials that are coming we're hoping to be able to do
someone behind the scenes of that content and where we're at for holders at NFT
NYC and we're still working out the details of exactly what that'll look like
and then we'll we'll be looking at more of those immersive experiences that you
know us for in the back half of the year with that being said and we
reviewed Mackenzie is our head of experiences we reviewed kind of like the
full calendar for this year where the team is gonna do speaking engagements
where we'll have like doodles branded events and then also where we really
want to encourage the community to do community-led events at like key
conferences so when the incubator comes out one of the big things that you'll
see is a request for proposal for the key events globally that we would like
to have a presence at and basically giving the community funds to go and
activate there and we've got like really excited about the events lead that
we're gonna be able to announce very in very short order they're an individual
has like an immense amount of experience putting on events they're in a key
market for us and I think there's a lot of communities over there that will be
very excited about this and so we're very much looking to like it be be
here in 2020 for I also just quickly unfortunately like I have to jump to a
meeting so I hate to cut this off but if there's like a closing question I'm happy
I have a question thanks okay so you said previously that uh you know you're
looking to basically expand the IP so it doesn't necessarily need web 3 to
operate I mean I imagine the ultimate goal is to have a web 2 community just as
engaged just that you know providing feedback with entrenched in your
ecosystem just as much as your web 2 community so for those who are holders
that are not looking to you know expand the IP or build a business themselves
you know how are you differentiating your holders from basically the rest of
the people who are in your you're pulling into your ecosystem yeah great
question and on so we really focused our personas on anchoring around fandom and
really segmenting based on like our site so yes there is a delineation between like
web 3 and web 2 but I think for the longevity of the brand what we really
focus on is like what are and I can kind of give like a little overview of
some of these but like for someone who is like a hype beast for example like
what are the value propositions that they look for what is the type of content
that they appreciate what how do they want to feel and be seen by the brand
versus someone who is more into our talking and what does that look like and
what sort of products would you release for them what sort of like how would
they go down downstream with your brand but we very much view it is like it is
very much like a funnel that can go both ways right and so people if they
aren't feeling a sense of belonging if they aren't feeling appreciated can move
back down and have less affinity for the brand over time and then
is that me or am I rugged or oh no I think I think his meeting literally just
just started he's coming back up he's come back I thought it was me I texted
Rudolph like real close it up if it's me I don't know it was him or how many
people just like cursed out there my time limit hit like literally in your back
yeah can you guys hear me yeah okay yeah sorry about that my lip my like you've
spent too much time on X today so I had to jump off and come back on but yeah
just to finish that thought like we definitely have within within those art
types we then think through okay if they are a web 3 participant how do those
value propositions change and if they're not you know why does that look as well
so hopefully that helped answer answer the question I'm not one minute late to my
meeting with Julian so I got to jump off but this was great I would love to do
it again I really appreciate you guys having me on it was a lot of fun
appreciate you it's on Austin's here so you you've answered all these and these
questions as best as I could possibly think of anyone answering them so
seriously bullish on doodles bullish on you man keep doing your thing appreciate
your time awesome thank you a ton the speakers thank you a ton as well awesome
we'll definitely keep in touch good luck with the meeting hope Julian's not too
upset with you guys once again thanks for tuning in always appreciate your
support Ruto as well speakers questionnaires community thank you guys a
ton Glenn let's close it up