Domino’s Pizza is hopping on the digital blockchain trend with their new marketing tool announced Tuesday: the pizza chain is using the image of their retro cartoon nemesis, the Noid, to auction off three NFTs on online auction site Rarible.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital codes stored on a blockchain linked to the original formats of online image assets like photos or GIFs, and restaurants have begun to use both NFTs and cryptocurrency in promotional material.
In this promotion, the Domino’s villain, the Noid — which was recently brought back out of the vault after a decades-long hiatus — is auctioning off NFTs of his nefarious schemes, which have been featured recently in Domino’s advertisements, including the Pizza Crusher, Pizza Slayzer and giant Noid Balloon Blockade. The 14-day auction of “Noid’s failed tools” started last Friday with the base price set at $48.05 and the company’s marketing campaign is facetiously asking fans to “avoid the Noid” and not to purchase the NFTs.
“We saw the Noid fans on Twitter asking how they could get a Pizza Crusher. We get it, it looks pretty fun,” Kate Trumbull, Domino’s vice president of advertising said in a statement. “But who knows what pesky ideas the Noid will be able to fund with the proceeds from the NFT sale? It’s just best that everyone steers clear.”
Domino’s hinted that the proceeds from the NFT auctions could go toward more elaborate marketing content, including appearances of the Noid on TikTok.
For now, restaurant brands have mostly seemed to use the popularity of NFTs as an opportunity to create unique promotional campaigns and to fund nonprofit partnerships, like Taco Bell’s launch earlier this year of “NFTacoBells,” where 100% of the profits went to the chain’s charity, the Taco Bell Foundation. But the Blind Pig in Las Vegas, for example, has been testing NFTs as rewards for customers, as well as testing out acceptance of cryptocurrencies as a new form of payment.
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