This month: NFTs in the material world, plus the return of a mass media giant.

5. The Sandbox lurches back to life

The Sandbox is alive! After many months of relative quiet, the virtual platform announced a new activation from veteran partner Gucci. The experience is called “Cosmos Land” and is intended to be a retrospective of the fashion house’s hundred-plus-year history, while serving as a digital extension to Gucci’s physical exhibit in London. Not many details have been provided other than fans will be able to explore famous Gucci designs and themes.

While Gucci has been in cahoots with The Sandbox since early 2022, the activation is still a positive sign for a platform that has seen dwindling brand and user activity. Crypto winter and macroeconomic conditions have pulled brands away from spending experimental cash on a blockchain-based metaverse, while bad press has fueled fears that The Sandbox is a ghost town. Whether “Cosmos Land” will turn things around remains to be seen.

4. Cool Cats in the material world

Next week, Cool Cats will become the first NFT-native brand to float a balloon in Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade. And as the celebration nears, the brand—which began as a collection of 10,000 digital tokens—is preparing a strategy to onboard the masses. Its plan hinges on a holiday marketing campaign that launched last week.

Jaclyn Woo, Cool Cats’ head of marketing, sat down with Ad Age to discuss its new campaign and how the opportunity with Macy’s arose. Woo also weighed in on the growing trend of NFT brands selling physical toys in major stores, as well as the necessity of trading in some of its Web3 roots for more predictable and prosperous territory.

“I feel like staying extremely Web3-focused is a little limiting at this point in time,” she said.

3. NHL launches NFT trading platform

The National Hockey League has come around to NFTs. Some three years after the launch of NBA Top Shot and over one year since the launch of NFL All Day (both created by Dapper Labs), the NHL has unveiled its own digital collectibles hub. Dubbed “NHL Breakaway,” the effort looks a lot like the NBA and NFL’s platforms, hinging on turning highlights into tradeable NFTs.

NHL Breakaway is a collaboration with NFT company Sweet, not Dapper Labs. Fans can buy and sell packaged moments in the “Trade Lounge,” create social profiles that sport their owned assets and complete challenges in exchange for rewards. To give an idea of pricing, an initial starter pack is currently selling for $19 a pop. The platform is built on Ethereum-scaling solution Polygon.

Earlier this year, the NHL debuted a Roblox experience called “NHL Blast,” featuring obstacles, unique environments and recreations from the 2023 Stanley Cup Finals.

2. Macy’s unveils comprehensive metaverse hub

Macy’s last month launched a metaverse to house all of its virtual fancies. The experience, created with technology firm Journee, is called “Mystlelab,” and will allow users to create their own characters, collect digital items and explore new clothing styles.

The hub is debuting with an experience around Macy’s new On 34th in-house brand, in which users can explore a New York landscape and create personalized fabrics via a gamified activity. “Mystlelab” will eventually expand to other brands within Macy’s portfolio.

“What we’re looking to do is break down the barrier of connectivity and access and trying to really help consumers embrace newer technologies from a fashion perspective or an immersive perspective,” Dave Torres, VP of interactive marketing at Macy’s, told Ad Age.

1. Disney takes new dive into Web3 with NFT platform

Despite Disney indicating it was pulling back on Web3, the media giant has returned to the fold with an NFT platform for the buying and selling of unique digital pins. The focus is inspired by Disney’s popular tradition of selling physical pins at its theme parks. 

Dubbed “Disney Pinnacle,” the mobile platform will allow fans to trade pins based on Disney’s original intellectual property, as well as Pixar and Lucasfilms’ assets. Marvel IP, however, is excluded. The effort is a collaboration with Dapper Labs, which has outfitted similar platforms for the NBA and NFL.

A notable aspect of “Disney Pinnacle” is that Web3 jargon will mostly be absent. The term “NFT,” for example, has been substituted with “digital collectible”—echoing a similar strategy deployed by Reddit to limit mass confusion.

“Every transaction is verified on the blockchain, but nobody has to pay attention to that if they don’t want that, so they can be fully immersed in a Disney experience,” Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs, told Ad Age.

The NFT platform arrives eight months after Disney eliminated its entire metaverse team. Mike White, the former head of the team and lone survivor of the layoffs, departed Disney five months later.