The NFT Treasure Hunt is in the same vein as the play-to-earn model because it invites to play in order to get rewarded.
However, those gaming events or sessions can take place in real life. A brand willing to think outside the box and test new engagement and loyalty levers can use the NFT treasure hunt model, especially to target the Gen Z.
What an NFT treasure hunt is all about?
The future of Web3 holds a lot of promises. And part of the Web3 in the future includes a great deal of gaming interactions. People love games and they love to win. The Gen Z in particular is known to be the gamers generation. In their daily lives, they are very involved in the Web3.
The platforms most frequently visited by Gen Z are proto-metaverses games such as Fortnite and Roblox, which attract almost half of Gen Z players. In other words, to engage communities, creating a rewarding and entertaining game machine can be a real business results driver for a brand. And engaging players in different ways can be initiating a NFT treasure hunt or an Web3 treasure hunt.
The NFT Treasure Hunt is a game event which objective is to find clues, solve puzzles or riddles and complete quests to win prizes. The event is designed for both enthusiasts and gamers who are familiar with the crypto space, but also for people who are new to the blockchain technology.
Why should a brand dive into NFT treasure hunt?
By providing a fun activities, the NFT Treasure Hunt aims to drive brand loyalty to another level and elevate a brand NFT project. Those game events can be hosted on metaverses or in real life with rewards at stake. The Web3 treasure hunt can have multiple purposes: educational, entertaining, discovering and much more. It can also be to provide an opportunity for NFT enthusiasts and gamers to interact with the emerging features of the blockchain.
It is a real deal to grow user engagement
Setting up an NFT scavenger hunt not only serves the brand, but also keeps consumers engaged in the event that they are rewarded for. Games and Treasure hunts are valuable because they entertain users with a winning prize at stake. If the NFT scavenger hunt is well executed, users will keep a good memory of the contest even if they don’t win, which will improve the brand’s image in their subconscious. The latter will be associated with the joy of playing, which will result in a higher user engagement and later conversion.
For the winners, the latent benefits for the brand will be abundant. However, the rewards offered by the brand must be significant enough to capture the user’s attention. A lifetime or long-term royalties, free tickets to events or limited premium products can be engaging rewards.
To give the brand a touch of youthfulness
An NFT scavenger hunt is a way to create interaction around the brand without going through the advertising itself. The NFT treasure hunt renews the brand’s image and even brings something new to consumers.
If the contest is successful, the user will be looking forward to the next activation of this kind, which is very beneficial for the brand, which will see its loyalty rate jump. In turn, satisfied players or treasure hunters will promote the brand to their friends and family, becoming brand ambassadors.
To promote the brand’s products or services through a Web3 Treasure Hunt
In addition to presenting the brand in a new light, treasure hunts allow to give more visibility to the services or products of the brand. They can be used to promote a new product or service, for example by offering the new product as the winning prize.
If this fun activation attracts more audience and makes the brand popular over a defined period of time, it also saves on advertising, in that the hunt will speak for itself. Participants, whether they win or not, will be tempted to try the prized product or service. In every case, the brand wins.
To attract more Gen Z users
An NFT scavenger hunt can be an opportunity to bring back user profiles that are not very present on social networks but are more active in metaverses, such as Gen Z. It can be a way to reactivate less engaged users and even bring back those who were not interested in the brand before.
So basically, it is designing a contest to get existing users less or even more engaged by rewarding them as soon as they complete a contest. Or it could be designed to attract new users by offering them perks as an incentive to try the product or service of the brand after having completed the challenge. This way brands can increase user retention and engagement rate significantly.
These scavenger hunts are a great way to re-create the need in consumers’ minds to be interested in the brand and to invest in a conquest educated by it. By doing so, brands raise awareness of their brand image quality as well as products or services, which can win back consumers who were previously inactive or simply non-existent.
Moreover, the young generation is one of the most important audiences that brands need to target. However, they are also known as one of the hardest to reach. But now that blockchain technology has made it possible for brands to create a variety of experiences inside and outside the metaverse, brands can focus more on this group of consumers.
Steps for a brand to build a Web3 treasure hunt
Along with the reasons why brands should try NFT treasure hunts in their engagement and retention strategy, here are some steps to get a Web3 treasure hunt strategy right.
Set a Treasure hunt goal for the brand
A brand marketing team has to set a goal for this activation before getting into it. The goal can be to showcase the brand in a new light, gain new consumers, retain the most active consumers, create a meeting between users and engage them, introduce a new product or service in a fun way as mentioned above. The objective must be in line with the strategic plan and the quest construction too.
Set a strategic plan
The plan will be fundamentally built around these questions: Over what period of time? For which rewards or winning price? What will be the game type or treasure hunt? What platform to use and why? Which locations to choose in the case the contest takes place virtually and in real life? What type and when to drop hints or clues as the game progresses to make it more immersive and fun? What budget should be included?
Find good riddles and design a treasure hunt map
As long as the riddles make sense and match the brand image, there are no right or wrong ones, whether it is images associations, logical sequences, texts to decipher, etc. However, making them too difficult can be deterrent. It is good to find the middle ground as well as be creative and encourage dexterity with the hunters. Once this part is done, design a clever treasure hunt map will be crucial. Here are some more details on this page.
Some use cases
An NFT treasure hunt has many uses including marketing campaign to make a brand more appealing and fun for the target audience. With brands can use it in their event strategy also by designing it as a scavenger hunt or treasure hunt with prizes in the end. As far as competitions are concerned, brands can design their Web3 treasure hunt as a contest where winners get something very special as a reward. Some brands have taken the treasure hunt plunge and generated strong engagement through it.
The Volkswagen NFT treasure hunt
To promote the new features of its latest Polo model the IQ.DRIVE, the Volkswagen brand South Africa merged virtual gaming and reality into a Web3 campaign. Named “Game On”, this campaign puts forward an NFT treasure hunt highlighting an interactive storytelling. The first user to find clues and reveal the secrets will get rewarded with both physical and virtual items, such as a Playstation 5 and lessons from the Volkswagen Advanced Driving Academy. This NFT treasure hunt also presents a collection of 100 NFTs named the “Mzansiverse”. This NFT activation is available in South Africa, as can be seen in the teaser.
The Lucid Multiverse NFT treasure hunt
This NFT treasure hunt was conceived by the creators of Lucidity Festival. It consists of 888 unique artworks collection each having a one-in-three chance of holding a Lucidity 2022 ticket inside. It is about either discovering 8 spirit animals, 5 elemental backgrounds, 11 deja vu clan symbols, 2 ways of being or the ultimate 8 super rare legendaries NFTs.
This NFT treasure hunt provides mysterious maps with riddles to decrypt in order to find the treasure and get rewarded with: travel packages to sensational live destinations, a chance to get permanent SOL (Solana cryptocurrency) royalties in case of finding and holding one of the 8 super rare legendaries NFT, getting a festival ticket for free and many other perks. This collaborate and competitive treasure hunt is a way for hunters to meet new people, to decipher a mysterious story and find out great artworks as well as crypto treasure.
Turtle Island with an NFT treasure hunt to engage communities
This NFT Treasure hunt presents twelve unique creatures such as thunderbirds, bears or even orcas designed by Coast Salish artists. Turtle Island NFT website provides for each of those creatures a unique background. Originally aimed at empowering Coast Salish art on Solana Blockchain, this Web3 adventure is of 215 fun tasks to complete while discovering and learning from Indigenous issues.
Those tasks are basically having a senior to lunch, attending events such as powwow or at a friendship center, and telling someone you love them, in order to create great and memorable experiences. This 215 number aims at depicting the 2015 graves found in 2021 at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Indigenous territory.
To get into the race, participants must submit an entry by doing the tasks and must finish at least 20 activities, make a post on social media with the #TurtleIslandNFT and let the organizers know through social media. Hunters automatically entered into a draw for the grand prize after completing 20 of those tasks. The grand prize is a paid vacation at Tigh Na Mara Resort and Spa, at British Columbia.
This Web3 treasure hunt has been made accessible and easy to enter so that people not familiar with Web3 can still compete.There were 3 500 NFTs mint on September and 10 000 for October to be purchased.
OVER partnership with The Sandbox to launch the NFT NYC Treasure Hunt
Taking place in Manhattan, the NFT NYC Treasure Hunt comes from the partnership of The Sandbox metaverse and OVRTheReality. OVER is one of the leading and promising metaverses on Ethereum blockchain. This Web3 metaverse allows real time experiences and interactions and provides Augmented Reality, static or dynamic for more realistic sights. This allows real-life elements to be integrated into virtual worlds, with users able to interact with their environment.
OVER and The Sandbox developed a feature enabling players to have control over their NFTs on OVER and get their friends to join. This treasure hunt has two prerequisites: hunters should first download the OVER app on PlayStore or AppStore and collect 3D items around the town.
The prizes for the 5 best hunters will be in SAND, the cryptocurrency on The Sandbox game. It goes from 2500 for the 1st, 2000 for the 2nd, 1500 for the 3h, 1000 for the 4th and 500 for the 5th. A video contest is also part of the game, following a post and a follow on Twitter account @OVRtheReality and @TheSandbox. The top 3 win SAND too, 1250 for the 1st, 750 for the second and 500 for the 3rd.
The Netflix show Love, Death + Robots with an NFT scavenger hunt
The Netflix sci-fi series Love, Death & Robots launched a digital scavenger hunt. It consisted of nine QR codes associated to social media accounts, real life billboards and NFTs stashed within the third season of the show itself. The entire thing was done through an interactive AR experience built on Web3 technology.
This allowed users to go on a virtual treasure hunt through these cities while also making them feel like they were actually there. Those NFTs portrayed nine artwork inspired by episodes of the show, from every season released. The hunters who discovered the codes and scanned them had two options: save it by just right-clicking or mint them as an NFT art. US viewers were first the only on be to be able to mint via a Coinbase or Metamask account.
If brands are willing to diversify their user experience, leveraging an NFT scavenger hunt could be a great activation lever. Being first a blockchain-based game, an NFT treasure hunt enables users to solve puzzles, find and collect tokens that were hidden in various parts of the world, but also in metaverses, and get rewarded. Providing a unique multiverse experience difficult to find on other platforms, is the goal of METAV.RS, with technology such as Augmented Reality and a dedicated 3D studio.
