Like most networks, the marketing industry is built on trust—between brands, agencies, platforms and consumers. What if the flimsy bet that is taking someone’s word could be replaced by something more robust? An incorruptible and provable certificate that verifies a claim, such as an agency’s engagement metrics, a brand’s standing with fans or its knowledge of what its base wants.

This is the concept underlying a soulbound token, or SBT—a non-transferable digital certificate that verifies a credential. The credential can basically denote any kind of information, such as an achievement, a recommendation or a medical record. Conceived earlier this year by a group including Vitalik Buterin—co-founder of popular blockchain Ethereum—the idea stems from “soulbound items” in the online video game World of Warcraft, which are priceless and can only be awarded, not found or bought.

Similarly, SBTs cannot be bought, sold or traded. Whoever receives it is the only person that can own it. While this differentiates them from NFTs—as well as the fact that they’re mostly conceptual at this point—SBTs share some characteristics: They’re non-fungible, meaning one of a kind, and live on a blockchain. 

SBTs intend to solve the previous inability to verify, with 100% certainty, that someone’s credentials are truly theirs, short of calling up each and every party that issued those credentials. Employers or business partners must often take as word the information on candidates’ resumes and portfolios, while employees and consumers must do the same for companies that make their own claims, such as the completion of a sustainability goal. 

For marketers, the technology could be leveraged in helpful ways, such as improving client dealmaking by eliminating the need to verify trustworthiness; rebuilding customer relationship management systems for a privacy-forward internet; and even increasing diversity in the advertising workforce by making it easy to find candidates from different backgrounds and institutions.

“I think [SBTs could] solve a problem that we have right now in verifying identity,” said Keith Soljacich, head of innovation for Publicis Media.

‘Matching service for business’

Striking deals to work together can be a tricky process for both brands and agencies; it requires a lot of research, vetting and negotiation, and despite these qualitative undertakings, it still calls for a heavy dose of trust in a partner you don’t really know.

SBTs can flip this script by standardizing a digital reference system. Every time an agency completes a campaign, crosses a performance benchmark or helps a partner achieve any other milestone, that partner would be able to send the agency an SBT. This token would join the agency’s other SBTs in a crypto wallet that serves as a kind of portfolio. 

In the future, sending an SBT is expected to be as easy as transferring any digital asset from one wallet to another. The main difference is after the SBT has been transferred that first time, it cannot be transferred again. This means that future clients can trust the agency is the rightful owner of that token. And since these transfers are recorded on a public blockchain, clients can simply check that the SBT came from a verified brand.

The efficiency of this process could birth a de facto marketplace, where brands and agencies can search publicly listed portfolios for owners of SBTs by the issuer of the token, its content, its rarity and more.

“It’s like a matching service for business, almost like dating,” said Akbar Hamid, founder and CEO of creative consultancy The 5th Column. He is also co-founder of People of Crypto Lab, a Web3 company focused on improving diversity.

There is the potential for adland to use SBTs to provide protection for agencies during the proposal process. Brands often request proposals from 15 or so agencies at a time, and while they end up choosing one, they may still try to incorporate another’s idea without their permission, according to Hamid. RFPs in the form of SBTs would essentially put an agency’s stamp on its ideas, and make non-permissioned use inconcealable. 

SBTs could also change how marketers recruit talent. Employers, universities, workshops, conferences and extracurricular programs of all kinds might award SBTs based on specific criteria. These tokens, as with an agency’s portfolio, would form a reliable resume that also tells more than PDF CVs. For example, a candidate who spearheaded a diversity and inclusion initiative at their previous job could promote that experience to future employers in a way that won’t be buried like a one-off bullet point. The token could include a description of the experience, a multimedia overview and even comments from colleagues.

Brands and agencies looking to hire diverse talent could search for candidates by ownership of such SBTs, or SBTs that were awarded to graduates of HBCU programs and other institutions that cater predominantly to people of color. 

“From a recruiting perspective, we don't have to do the legwork of Googling or Instagramming a person, or going on their LinkedIn,” said Hamid.

Verifying consumers

When brands started marketing with NFTs, an early problem was ensuring that those who owned them actually cared about the brand. While these tokens may have been initially given to wallets that earned them through engagement, and thus indicated an interest in future engagement, their ease of transferability and use as speculative instruments often lead to their winding up in the hands of those merely interested financially.

SBTs, however, can provide a sense of security that those who hold them are genuine fans. Since the tokens cannot be transferred, the original owner is the permanent owner—a feature that wipes out any speculation on the asset. The incentives are also changed: A rational consumer would only accept a brand’s SBT if they valued it and the opportunities it presented.

“[SBTs] should give brands a lot more confidence in building for the blockchain because you've got verifiable identity,” said Soljacich. “You actually have formed a relationship with this consumer and now you can effectively guarantee that [you] can maintain this relationship without [them] just selling or transferring that token to somebody else, and then you lose all connectivity.”

When collecting data on consumers, brands have increasingly needed to deliver strong value exchanges, especially as the industry has moved under the microscope of the public eye. SBTs could streamline this process by potentially enabling a menu of privacy settings that can be programmed into the token’s design. 

For example, a brand may one day be able to offer multiple options of SBTs to consumers who engage with a campaign. Each token would differ by the data tracking tradeoff: one option might request access to more of the owner’s data but enable entry to more token-gated perks while another option might request access to less data but therefore offer fewer perks. These differences could be made transparent and bring the consumer into a more comfortable, participatory role in the value exchange. And the brand could be sure that the privacy preferences apply to the current owner because they are unable to transfer it to someone else.

With third-party cookies, consumers have little say in how they are tracked, which is why Google is working towards doing away with them. Apple’s ATT changes extended more power to consumers by allowing them to opt in or out, but are still falling short of offering the nuanced settings that both brands and consumers desire. SBTs can carry these efforts to their logical conclusion, finally putting consumers and marketers on a level playing field.

The idea underpinning all of the benefits of soulbound tokens is decentralization, wherein power is not consolidated in the hands of one or a few companies or platforms, but rather the entirety of the participating usership. While the way that brands advertise may not be fully decentralized, they still need to understand that a growing body of consumers does not support them holding all of the cards, said Ty Smith, founder and CEO of Web3 marketing agency Coinbound.

“There's this sense of digital ownership now that the younger generation has been exposed to, and it’s, ‘Hell yeah, we want that,’” he said.