Consensus 2022 will feature the JUMP community token founder as a speaker on how Web 3 will transform branding and empower communities to purchase brands.
Jeff Kauffman loved skydiving. He was obsessed. He was determined to meet other skydiving enthusiasts so he used the power of the internet. To create a community hub, he used MySpace, a new and popular website.
This was in 2005. This was back in 2005. Facebook was only available on college campuses. The group was small and comical at the time. MySpace was only meant for local skydivers. Kauffman laughs, “It’s probably the most niche thing that you could ever do.”
He has been building online communities for over a decade. He launched an online skydiving group, which he quickly expanded to other parts of the country. It soon became the largest such group in the world. He then built communities with brands. Kauffman specialized in Web 1 and Web 2 branding for the next 15 years. His clients included GameStop, Dr. Pepper, Chick-fil A, and others. It was a pleasure. It was a great experience.
The game was changed.
Kauffman says that “Unfortunately, the evolution of Facebook and Twitter didn’t really foster online communities in the way we had hoped,” The new rules were: Paid advertising was out and communities were out. It was no longer possible to engage with customers; you only had to pay to display an ad. In the early 2020s, he did a deep look inside and realized that he could no longer engage with his customer. He had just paid to run an ad.
Kauffman visited the website of Andreessen Horowitz, a powerful venture capital firm. He followed the links to all the investments the firm had made. These investments were studied by Kauffman for weeks. He avoided verticals such as biotech and space, but he was a media, culture, and entertainment expert. “I was like, What’s the Future? He said, “What’s the future ?’,”.” He discovered a term that he hadn’t heard of before, “social token”.
Hmmmm. This seemed very interesting. Kauffman is a social media expert and can use “listening tools” to understand topics better. He set to work. Kauffman says that he understood the whole landscape of social tokens within three days. “I began building word cloud around who was associated with whom, who is using the term most, and who has been followed the most.
Kauffman started publishing daily insight on social media tokens and the native Web 3 area. People started to read it and got it. He began to tag influential people in this space, including Jess Sloss (the founder of Seed Club), a social token accelerator. He created research reports and analysis of these companies.
He knew that Web 3 was the future of branding and wanted to experience it firsthand. He created JUMP to connect discord-based branding execs from major companies who are interested in Web 3. Jump is basically a bootcamp to Web 3 branding.
Kauffman does not disclose member data, but stated that at least 200 top Fortune 500 companies have brand managers who joined Jump. Kauffman says that Jump members include brand managers from at least 200 of the top Fortune 500 companies. (And Jump is also on the radar of Morning Brew. stated that Jump has two clear uses: as a platform to network and as a place to ask questions.
We are all wondering where exactly we are going. Kauffman isn’t entirely certain. Kauffman isn’t sure. However, he makes predictions about how Web 3 will impact branding. This includes rewards programs “on steroids” and is optimistic about a revival of community building. He boldly predicts that one of these communities will “purchase an Fortune 1000 brand in the next five year.”
The early days of Web 2 were referred to as a “golden age”, when brands were able to create communities. What does that actually mean?
You could create an online community for soap brands and receive product feedback. “Boudreaux’s Butt Paste” was one of the brands that I worked with.
Important note for readers: Get out of the gutter. This diaper rash cream is for babies.
For first-time parents, it’s hard to know what you are doing. You are trying to figure it all out. The parenting communities are thriving as you’re using the product. We could create this space by bringing together the community around a product such as Boudreaux’s Butt Paste.
Then, in real-time, parents could say, “What’s going on?” We could then help them. Even if we weren’t selling the product directly, we could offer some support. It was a real-time conversation in which we tried to solve problems. It builds a stronger bond. Everyone is better served when the community is involved. Brands get loyal customers and customers get a better product.
Facebook is a popular social media platform that has seen a decline in trust from consumers. You might also say that brands have suffered. Why is this?
Advertising dollars became more expensive and less profitable until the ROI was eliminated. It was a race to bottom. Over time, Facebook began to impose handcuffs: “All right, you must pay for your ability to interact with your customers and potential customers online. Oh, and by the way, all your learnings will be shared with everyone else if you succeed. This will continue to increase costs. It was becoming incredibly restrictive.
What caused the creation of Jump?
When I was going through my discovery, in 2020, I created a trend deck. These concepts were presented [in one-on-1 Zoom meetings] before anyone in agencies was discussing [non-fungible tokens, social tokens or decentralized autonomous organizations]. It’s small. You can see Google search trends back then. These were the concepts I was presenting. Everyone in the agency and network of brands said the exact same thing. They’re like, “Holy crap, that’s cool. It solves so many issues. It’s hard for me to understand what you said. It’s something I have never heard of, but it is very cool. It’s hard to know where to start.
Those were the things I kept hearing over and over. It was then that I realized the best way to get started in marketing and advertising was to create a network. You can present decks all day. It’s difficult to learn how to build and create until you have actually experienced it. It’s important to first experience it.
Learning by doing.
This was the best way I felt I could share my knowledge with the industry. This is how I could scale my ideas and propel the industry forward. Let’s just say, “Let us create this community to help jump into Web 3!”
They can then take these learnings into all their brands and agencies, and begin to execute. Jump is a result of this.
How will Web 3 affect branding?
Brands can use NFTs and social tokens to create communities on Web 3. This is the low-hanging fruit. They can then create experiences within that community.
