McDonald’s will soon feature cartoon animation-style characters on its McCafe coffee cups for a limited time. That’s not particularly odd. But in this case, the animated characters are from Doodles, the web3 project. And it’s just the latest sign that some people are trying to bring back the NFT fad after a very brief but loud explosion in the tech scene a few years ago.
Remember non-fungible tokens? When NFTs went mainstream in the winter of 2021-22, everyone wanted to get in on the hype. Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton bragged about their Bored Apes on late-night TV, Budweiser launched Dwayne Wade NFTs to promote its no-alcoholic beer, and Starbucks launched a marketplace for NFT stamps.
But it didn’t last long. Fallon’s Bored Apes promotion in Jan. 2022 was the beginning of the end. By Sept. 2022, trading volume for NFTs had fallen 97%. Doodles, which started as an NFT project, was declaring by early 2023 that it was no longer just an NFT project. And now Doodles is partnering with McDonald’s for a coffee cup promotion and Doodle NFTs are soaring in price, according to CoinTelegraph.
The X account for McDonald’s shared a teaser on Tuesday which included a short 7-second video with the numbers 11/18, meaning Nov. 18.
• ᴗ • 11/18 pic.twitter.com/LDxlE9pnrx
— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) November 12, 2024
By Thursday the reveal came, with a tweet promising new holiday cups just over the horizon.
drinking out of the McCafé x Doodles Holiday cups exclusively starting 11.18✨☕️ pic.twitter.com/nBdc8VroYl
— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) November 14, 2024
Doodles also explains how digital assets will be promoted to people who make their McDonald’s purchases through the restaurant’s app.
cups are just the beginning – we’re introducing Doodles to millions of McDonald’s fans through free Stoodio experiences, available with your in-app drink order
each pack unlocks McDonald’s digital wearables & a pass to watch Dullsville and the Doodleverse pic.twitter.com/L0eRjLRVGp
— doodles (@doodles) November 14, 2024
It’s perhaps telling that Doodles ends its tweet thread with a warning about scammers.
“this is the last post in this thread from the official @doodles account beware of impersonator accounts & phishing links remember, DO NOT click on links that appear to be from Doodles before cross-referencing with http://doodles.app,” the tweet reads.
Why would Doodles need to do that? Because the crypto and NFT communities are absolutely swamped with scammers who pose as legitimate operations. And one of the common ways to do that is to create an account that looks identical to Doodles, buy a blue checkmark from Elon Musk for $8 which will push your reply to the top of all the responses, and compel people to click on a link that looks like it’s part of the original thread. Thus, saying “this is the last post in this thread,” helps make it clear that anything under that could be dangerous.
The chief marketing officer for McDonald’s Tariq Hassa touted the promotion in an email to Gizmodo on Thursday, seeming suitably optimistic about the partnership. And it seems clear that marketers are much more open to getting back into tech like NFTs than they were perhaps a year ago.
“It may not be the first thing you think about when you talk about McDonald’s, but coffee is an integral part of the McDonald’s experience. Over the years we’ve continued to prioritize enhanced flavor, experience and even sustainability of our delicious coffee,” said Hassa.
“This year, we’re making our coffee even more special by giving our seasonal packaging a fresh and unexpected collaboration with Doodles, the perfect partner as so much of their content revolves around mornings and coffee moments,” Hassa continued. “The Doodles’ fanbase has for a long time fantasied about a McDonald’s collab, and it’s only fair to say THEY made it happen: we could not be more pleased to make our fandoms collide. Beyond the web3 scope, we chose Doodles because they are an agent of change in the cultural landscape, and they span beyond digital assets—an entertainment brand in itself with a fearless community we cannot wait to interact with and more importantly, bring to more people across the US.”
Will McDonald’s and Doodles actually be able to give NFTs a serious revival? Nobody can say for sure. But with incoming president Donald Trump’s embrace of cryptocurrencies, it seems likely that many people will try to ride this wave into something lucrative. When major brands like McDonald’s are dipping their toes back into the water, it really feels like something’s afoot.
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