Hennessy: Cognac On The Blockchain
A great example of NFT membership that ALL brands should look at.
Hi NFT Community
I wanted to speak on NFT memberships for brands as this subject has been at the forefront of conversations with my team and potential/current clients for almost 2 years. It’s a subject I’ve mentioned in the newsletter a few times in the past and today I want to dig into a real example from a brand you may have heard of, Hennessy!
Back in November, Hennessy launched their first NFT project focused on a membership club, the club is called Cafe 11. They call it “Your Key To Cultural Moments”. I like the use of the term key as this is exactly how my team and I describe NFTs for brands providing utility through NFTs. The NFT is the access key to whatever exclusive experience the brands want to provide.
What is Cafe 11?
“Café 11 is a bold new take on the free-thinking café society of 1920s Paris, curating intimate cultural experiences at a series of unusual locations, designed to surprise and delight our members.”
According to LVMH, the conglomerate that owns Hennessy,
Inspired by the artist cafés of 1920s Paris, Café 11 is the first club of its kind, merging a DAO – decentralized autonomous organization – and an iconic luxury brand. Club members will have a chance to be part of exclusive culture experiences in exceptional places. Café 11 reimagines today’s social gatherings, taking a cue from the chance encounters of the 20th century. This exciting new space will unfold during a series of global events as Hennessy becomes the first luxury brand to join in an initiative like this with a DAO.
For those who don’t know what a DAO is, A DAO is an entity with no central leadership. You can read more about them here.
Hennessy has teamed with the pioneering organization Friends With Benefits (FWB) which is the DAO in this case. FWB is home to a web3 community of 3,000 creatives, including artist Petra Cortright, music icon Erykah Badu, designer David Rudnick, and founder Trevor McFedries, who invented the virtual influencer Lil Miquela.
Access to this exclusive network is granted to holders of a Café 11 NFT, designed by artist and FWB member John P. Dessereau.
Who Is The Artist?
His Website about page states,
John P. Dessereau aka Johnsville, is a Native New York artist and creative. His work is widely inspired by many forms like comic books and street art, to surrealism and impressionism. His practice consists of both traditional and digital methods.
He’s created artwork for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Spike Lee, The New York Times, Bleacher Report, and of course Hennessy among many others.
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What Is Hennessy Offering?
Real-world experiences. This is the part that I personally find the most interesting.
Hennessy’s inaugural Café 11 experience was at Art Basel Miami 2022.
The luxury social club launched in December where members could enjoy experiences such as cognac tastings, cultural programming, and live music. The team behind the Hennessy Cafe 11 say that “International opportunities for connection, inspiration, and chance encounters will follow.”
Café 11 will be, in the words of Hennessy CEO Laurent Boillot, about “curiosity, community and culture.”
Boillot has centred successful engagement initiatives around four ideas: education, entertainment, utility and collaboration. He says, “Web3 is just another way to have this engagement, probably with stronger possibilities,” Café 11 will have the four aspects of engagement built into it, from exclusive parties to brand messaging.
While doing my research on the project I took a look around their Discord server and this particular utility item caught my eye
We want to reward this community with special and unique experiences. This is why we are happy to announce that we are exploring solutions to co-create with you an exclusive Café11 Hennessy bottle, made by and exclusively for our holders. This would be the first ever community-designed spirits bottle. Being an innovative piece of the Hennessy Web3 journey.
If you know anything about exclusive and limited edition alcohol products from established and iconic brands, you’ll know that this has the potential to become quite the collector’s item.
Why The Name Cafe 11?
If there is one thing that high-end brands in the premium and luxury sectors do well, it’s storytelling and creating a glamourous perception in the eyes of consumers, I touched on this in my article on Luxury brands. This offering is no different.
The “eleven” in Café 11 is a reference to Hennessy’s 11 a.m. daily tastings, where the team samples the Eaux de vie which, with careful ageing and a lot of patience, transforms into cognac. “11 a.m. is a sacred time,” Boillot explains. “Then there was this idea of Paris and cafés. There is this energy and this vibration in the café where people are meeting, discussing and inventing the world.”
If you’ve ever spent time in Paris you’ll understand what he means by this. There’s something about that time of day in the City of Love.
This entry article is public so feel free to share it with a friend who may be interested.
Why Take Cafe 11 To The Blockchain?
LVMH wrote,
Café 11 is a partnership between visionary leaders in their fields. For two and a half centuries, Hennessy has been synonymous with excellence, inspiring generations with its hand-crafted cognacs. FWB joins this legacy and enriches it with a blockchain-backed, community-led ethos. This initiative underscores Hennessy’s long tradition of embracing the avant-garde.
Developing a membership club through NFTs over the traditional way puts brands at the forefront of the new internet. Whether some people want to accept it or not, change is coming, in fact, it’s here. The naysayers are shouting very loudly about this but when you now have an extensive list of the world’s top brands all making significant moves in this direction it’s pretty clear. These brands have deep pockets and they hire smart people, they wouldn’t be investing so heavily in this area without strong signs that this is the way to go.
On the note of top brands, I heard this week that one-third of Interbrand’s top 100 are now either involved in Web3 or at least filed patents and trademarks. I haven’t been able to verify this yet but looking at the list of top brands who have spoken about it, launched something, or people have shared their legal filings of patents and trademarks, it looks like it could be true.
Creating or evolving a membership club through NFTs allows for a stronger brand-to-consumer relationship and actually provides far more benefits to the consumers than what is currently on offer. By using NFTs to manage access to exclusive assets, events, and content, brands can build customer loyalty and open new revenue streams for both the brand and the consumer.
Final thought,
I’m not telling anybody to purchase a Cafe 11 NFT, that’s your call if you see the value in it. I did, and I look forward to going on this experimental journey with one of the world’s best-known and iconic alcohol brands. Outside of the fun casino side of NFTs, this is what I predominantly look for, brands with a solid track history who are trying to explore new worlds and evolve to fit the times we live in. I think Hennessy has started strong and I’m excited to see where they take it and what experiences I’ll be involved in within the coming years.
With a project like this, I don’t care if the value of the NFT goes up. I see enough value in the utility on offer to enjoy the ride and if it goes up in value over time when mass adoption of NFTs becomes real and people start to look for the limited NFTs from their favourite brands like they do with tangible items, then that’s a bonus.
Something people need to keep in mind is that this is all new and experimental, but guess what, so was the whole internet at one point. I can’t say that this project is going to be a roaring success because it’s a journey of discovery to see what the brightest creative minds at the top brands can achieve with the new tools Web3 has to offer. That said, I’ve seen what they’re promising, I’ve seen them deliver so far, and I’ve been welcomed by the community and feels like a good place to be. That’s a strong start that gives me confidence, not to mention, it’s HENNESSY!
If you want to find out more, check out the links below. Feel free to ask me questions on social media, links are also below.
Hennessy Cafe 11: Details
Secondary Market: OpenSea
Friends with benefits DAO
Thanks for reading, David Skilling.
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Disclaimer: None of the content provided by The NFTV should be considered advice. The thoughts and ideas presented are personal opinions and are for entertainment purposes only. You (and only you) are responsible for the financial decisions that you make, you should always do your own research as investing comes with risk. The ideas presented here are my opinions at the date of writing and may change in the future.
Great PR