In December 2021, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors was closing in on the world record for 3-point shots. Our client, Under Armour, planned to launch a highly anticipated sneaker in celebration of this incredible accomplishment, but unfortunately, global supply chain problems meant the shoe would not reach the market in time. It also meant there would be very little budget available to celebrate such an important moment. While the world watched in awe as Stephen “changed the basketball game for good,” what could we do without a traditional product and budget to live up to the moment and get Under Armour back into the cultural conversation it had lost to its competitors Adidas and Nike?

Our task was to do something that lived up to the stature of this moment and drove the brand back into a leadership role in culture.

Just as Stephen was changing the game of basketball for good, we changed the metaverse for good by launching the Genesis Curry Flow, the first wearable a player can take with them as they move across platforms. By doing this, we became the first true metaverse wearable, an accomplishment that could live up to the importance of this moment.

We launched 2,974 unique NFTs in five discrete rarities, each one coming with a “shoe locker” where we designed the Genesis Curry Flow into the unique languages of the leading metaverse platforms of Decentraland, The Sandbox, Gala Games, and RKL, giving Stephen’s fandom and the NFT community alike a chance to own a piece of history. The locker connected directly to the platforms, meaning that for the first time, the game player could enter the distinct worlds with the same unique sneaker, changing the game and the metaverse for good.

It’s one thing to have an insight about the gaming world or even a great idea about “changing the metaverse for good,” but when you have $0 to market your idea, that presents a different challenge. With no traditional media and no influencers to hype up our drop, we instead developed another strategic first by turning gaming platforms into media.

Gaming platforms don’t do commercials or much of what might be seen as traditional marketing, but they have large, loyal gamer audiences on Twitter and Discord engaged in conversation about games. We created high-quality video assets, essentially teasers, for our drop and invited the platforms to get as excited as we were about achieving the first true landmark of metaverse interoperability by sharing with their audiences. The strategy worked beyond our wildest dreams.

The lead-up to the drop began with a simple video asset, a “loot box” that gamers recognize as a sign that something exciting is coming. The loot box was distributed throughout the gaming social channels of Decentraland, Gala Games, The Sandbox and RKL. This was followed by a video asset of our “Shoe Locker” teasing the cross-game interoperability. Finally, a 30-second video of our Curry Flow NFT moving through the metaverse platforms, starting with real-life Stephen Curry, was dropped to the same gaming audiences. The video captured the core idea by revolving on an axis from one “world” to the next while keeping the sneaker and player central to each world.

The 2,974 Genesis Curry Flow NFTs are 3D high-fidelity video assets in five distinct rarities, each focusing on a unique aspect of Steph’s game. The NFTs were built on the Polygon blockchain, which is carbon neutral, and were sold directly to interested buyers from a Curry Brand website that we created, with an embedded link to OpenSea, the primary NFT trading platform, where holders could immediately buy and sell the NFTs. Each variant of the sneaker, airdropped to our locker, came with its own specific utility, adding to the value of the NFT. It glowed in Decentraland, a custom basketball court was built for game play in The Sandbox, and the sneaker earned Gala token in Gala Games. These factors helped propel the sneakers to massive desirability, reaching value never seen before for an Under Armour product — the rarest sneakers traded for a value upward of $55,000 at the height of the drop.

At the time of the drop, over 25 million people had visited our site. When the drop went live, 4.5 million tried to buy the digital sneaker, ensuring the shoes sold out in minutes. All proceeds from the initial sale went to UA’s charities resulting in $1 million raised for Access to Sports. Secondary sales followed and continue to rise, with over $17 million in volume, contributing to greater funds for the charities, paying for the cost of the entire marketing campaign more than twice over, and setting a new standard for how to generate a true metaverse product.

Our campaign was No. 1 on Polygon for over a week, earning over 1.3 billion impressions with $0 paid media and an overall 98% positive sentiment. The campaign was also picked up by 30-plus media outlets including Time, WSJ, Hypebeast, and CoinDesk, proving this was a truly cross platform campaign.