Thanks to moves from McDonald’s, Adidas, and Budweiser, advertisers left 2021 with at least a vague understanding of the Web3 alphabet soup—rich with non-fungible tokens, cryptocurrency, and, of course, the metaverse. One chat room is trying to make sense of it all.

Called Jump, it’s billed as the first “tokenized community for marketing and advertising professionals.” Housed on messaging platform Discord, it’s where advertisers can follow the intersection of Web3 and their industry, ask questions, and join groups by interests.

• Since it started last June, Jump has grown to more than 630 members, publishes a twice-weekly newsletter, and has held (virtual) roundtables with executives from Publicis, Playboy, and artist-slash-musician Young & Sick.
• On Jump, conversations range from discussions about branded NFTs to privacy in the metaverse. There are channels about sports, gaming, and music. (An ad-tech channel was retired due to low activity. Shocking.) Like many other online communities, the conversation is often free-flowing; it can be hard to keep up, even if it’s just members sharing links.

“I can’t walk into a meeting and just talk with 20 other people and have a conversation about the intersection of crypto and Web3 and marketing. I don’t know if it’s happening anywhere other than inside Jump,” said its founder Jeff Kauffman Jr., who was previously head of business and product innovation at The Richards Group, a job he left last year. He’s now also founder and CEO of Parachute, a consultancy helping marketers navigate Web3.

WebWhat?

Web3—the decentralized, blockchain-based internet, sort of like a new internet—has become the catchall term for anything relating to cryptocurrency, the metaverse, and NFTs. Those that proselytize Web3 envision an internet where communities, including the Jump Discord members, have ownership of their experiences (as opposed to massive tech firms like Google).

Kauffman is in the process of structuring Jump as a DAO through an incubator for tokenized communities, and Jump currently gives tokens to its members.

Wait. What? Remember when crypto investors tried to buy the Constitution? That was a DAO—basically, a collection of people who’ve bought into an internet community, whether financially (by buying tokens with cryptocurrency) or by earning tokens through work done within that community, something Kauffman calls “sweat equity.”

Token holders can then dictate the decisions the group makes. That’s how Jump is currently organized. “The idea is that the community will be governed literally by the people who get their hands dirty,” said Kauffman. Unlike many other DAOs, Jump’s tokens aren’t tied to monetary value.

All together now

Over the course of a 47-minute interview with Kauffman, “community” was said nearly 100 times. Though Kauffman is adamant about the future of Web3, the future of Jump is unknown. Not because he isn’t confident, but because he isn’t in charge. The community is.

• Brendan Gahan, a partner and chief social officer at Mekanism, believes that Jump is “going to create a group of Web3 apostles that are going to go out and preach the church of Web3” to agencies.
• “Some are going to have success, some aren’t going to land, but we’re going to be out there evangelizing this stuff, and we’ll convert more people to Jump,” he told us. “I am fully drinking the Web3 Kool-Aid.”

Click here to read the full story.—RB

Today, the Center for Intimacy Justice (CIJ) released a report on how Meta’s ad-blocking practices have impacted health products and services specifically for women and nonbinary individuals, after a study of 60 businesses in the space.

• After partnering with pelvic-floor physical-therapy startup Origin to survey 42 of these companies that offer those products and services, all of which said they’ve attempted to advertise on Facebook, CIJ found 50% of those businesses had had their entire accounts suspended, at least temporarily, by the platform.
• Violating Facebook’s adult products and services ad policy is the reason Facebook gives most often for declining these ads, the nonprofit’s founder and CEO Jackie Rotman told Marketing Brew.
• According to Facebook’s guidelines, ads can’t promote the “sale or use of adult products or services” or focus on sexual pleasure.
• But the report points to many suggestive ads for men’s sexual-health products that have been approved to run on Facebook (including ads for Hims and Manscaped), contrasting them with far less suggestive ones for women’s and ​​nonbinary individuals’ health products that were rejected.

Why it matters: Facebook is the “single biggest driver of business” for many of these companies, Rotman, who has written about inequality in advertising for The NYT, told us.

For example: Coral, a sexual-wellness company founded by a queer woman, had been advertising on Facebook since 2019—but was banned from running app-install campaigns on Facebook in June 2021 “despite direct competitors being able to advertise and with very explicit content,” Coral senior marketing manager Amy Neumann told us. “It has severely impacted our growth trajectory,” she said.

Marketing Brew reached out to Meta about the findings of the report and Coral’s experience. “We welcome ads for sexual-wellness products but we prohibit nudity and have specific rules about how these products can be marketed on our platform. We have provided detail to advertisers about what kinds of products and descriptions we allow in ads,” said Devon Kearns, a spokesperson for Meta, in response.

Sound familiar? When sex-tech company Dame pointed out similar gender bias in how the MTA enforced its advertising guidelines after its ads were rejected, the MTA banned essentially all ads for sexually oriented products. Rotman doesn’t want the same results here. “We don’t want Facebook to stop allowing [ads for] ED or other men’s health brands. We simply want to level the playing fields,” she told us.—PB

Arby’s has the meats…and the spices, apparently. The fast-food chain this week introduced a new player in the chicken-sandwich wars: the Diablo Dare, which Arby’s claims is the “spiciest sandwich on the market,” according to CNN.

The sandwich comes with a vanilla milkshake to make its five fiery ingredients—including ghost-pepper jack cheese and fire-roasted jalapeños—more tolerable. Those who don’t want chicken can opt for brisket instead.

That brings us back to the chicken-sandwich wars, the fast-food phenomenon that Popeyes kickstarted in 2019.

Need a recap? Following Popeyes, chains like Burger King, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s have upped their chicken-sandwich game, introducing new and revamped versions—some spicy, some not.

• Last year, KFC came out swinging with a campaign calling out its chicken-sandwich competitors.
• Taco Bell joined the fray with its own crispy chicken sandwich…or was it a taco?
• And things really got out of hand when Airheads—yes, the candy brand—briefly served a chicken sandwich on a bun made from Airheads Xtremes Belts.

Arby’s has been a relatively low-key player in the chicken-sandwich wars, although it did some…odd marketing stunts in 2021. Remember its meat-themed clothing line and fry-flavored vodka?

Now, after asking people to wear and drink its menu, Arby’s is challenging customers to “a true test of how much heat you can handle,” said CMO Patrick Schwing in a statement.

Vids or it didn’t happen: How will those who can take the heat prove it? On TikTok, of course. Starting January 18, Arby’s is telling customers to use the hashtag #ArbysDiabloDare on the app to show just how much of the sandwich they can stand before grabbing the milkshake.—AM

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Think big small: Here’s a handy guide on how to create effective local SEO content.

#Planning: Influencer Intelligence put together a rundown of notable and hashtag-able events in February so you can get a head start.

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Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Wunderman Thompson debuted its “metaverse” at CES
• Being “sober curious” isn’t just for Dry January anymore
• Heineken is giving away a trip to “one of the wettest places on Earth”

Last week we quizzed you on the average price of an ad in the very first Super Bowl. Well done to those of you who knew it rang up to a cool $37,500.

During the 2020 broadcast of Super Bowl LIV, Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston and Black-ish’s Tracee Ellis Ross co-starred in a Mountain Dew commercial spoofing which famous film?

1. Beetlejuice
2. The Shining
3. Psycho
4. The Breakfast Club

Keep scrolling for the answer.