Deutsche Telekom is the leading telco in Europe. Young people are telcos super users. They use twice as much data and shape mainstream digital behaviours. They have high lifetime value but are willing to break with brands that don’t reflect their needs and priorities. Deutsche Telekom is the national carrier in Germany (and many other European markets). National carriers represent the establishment and can often feel out of touch with younger generations.

Telekom’s CEO recognised this and set the company a mission to rejuvenate the brand. As a result, we embarked on a journey to build a relationship with Gen Z in 2020. Our ongoing brief is a platform to build affinity with young people. To do this, we take a leading role in Gen Z societal challenges where technology can affect change.

This campaign is the third installment of this ongoing commitment to support Gen Z through connected technologies.

Value.

An NFT that uses the blockchain to authenticate and accelerate youth volunteering across Europe.

Value supercharges youth volunteering in two ways:

1. Young volunteering project leaders who meet the required criteria are issued with a Value ‘Proof of Volunteering’ token that authenticates and publishes the project to our global platform. Owning Value gives them access to a world of support to accelerate the project – from financial support, to live Q&As with volunteering experts and exclusive access to a token-gated Discord server to collaborate with like-minded project leaders.

2. Young volunteers looking to make a difference can access the campaign’s directory of blockchain-authenticated projects across diverse categories such as gender, racial and social equality, disability advocacy, climate change, urban regeneration, mental wellbeing, migration and more. From there, they can browse, get inspired and get in touch with young project leaders to help and/or collaborate.

Our ongoing brief is to use new technologies to support young people on societal topics they care about. One such topic is youth volunteering. Coming out of COVID, this generation takes social responsibility even more seriously. They campaign, advocate, and take action to bring about the real change they want to see in the world. 82% of Gen Z globally say they are active in some way when it comes to advocacy.

As for new technologies, one was unavoidable – Collins Dictionary’s word of the year: NFTs. A technology vilified by the media that Gen Z had mixed feelings about.

Deutsche Telekom believes that new technologies should have real world value.

Our strategic approach was simple. To flip the NFT narrative on its head and transform them from something you buy for personal gain in a virtual world, into something you earn for collective gain in the real world.

We built what quickly became the biggest directory of youth-led volunteering projects in Europe. A platform for socially-committed young people to connect, learn and get inspired. We called out for young volunteers to submit their projects. Each time a project was verified by our team of experts, a Value NFT was minted as proof of volunteering. Owning this blockchain-verified proof of volunteering opened up a world of support to accelerate the project – from financial support, to live Q&A with volunteering experts and exclusive access to a collaborative Discord server.

A launch film featured real youth project leaders, riffing on the ‘NFT’ acronym to emotionally connect with the true potential of the technology. It ran across key Gen Z platforms. Creator content demonstrated how NFTs can be used for good – offering the blueprint for a new wave of social action supercharged by connected technologies.

The volunteering world is hard to navigate. Many young people want to help but don’t know where to start. Value authenticated and published hundreds of youth-led projects young volunteers could help. Our platform quickly became the biggest directory of youth-led projects in Europe, connecting a community of 1.6M young people to blockchain-verified initiatives they could trust. Unlike most NFT projects and celebrity endorsement deals, Value survived the great crypto winter whilst having a world-changing impact. This includes over 50 tonnes of rubbish cleaned in Croatia, 18,444 free meals in Hungary, free sanitary products in Poland, a new animal shelter in the Czech Republic, 450 laptops repaired and donated in North Macedonia and more.

Our token-gated Discord allowed project owners to connect, collaborate and learn from each other as well as attend an exclusive 12-week programme of live inspirational talks from youth volunteering experts.