Tameka Bazile laughs when she recalls the first time she entered the world of web3.
As the Head of Artist Relations & Marketing at TIME Inc., Tameka’s job is to get marketers to take immersive worlds, NFTs, and the metaverse more seriously as tools for engaging consumers. As she comes up to her first anniversary at the established media company, she’s finding that brands are more than ready for web3.
“It's so funny, because when I started out in web3, we kept talking about how early we were as early adopters, and that we were just building it and figuring this out,” says Tameka, who is also a brand strategist and content creator. She shakes her head in amused disbelief as she raises her hands, adding, “Over the past six months, the amount of major brands that have started entering the space — it’s insane!”
Major brands as diverse as Nike, Tiffany’s, Starbucks, PacSun, Wendy’s, McDonald’s entered web3 spaces in a variety of ways. While the past year’s web3-based marketing were seen as experimental ways of connecting with gamers and social media users, the use cases are starting to expand in more serious ways than mere exploration, Tameka suggests.
As the Social Strategist for TIMEPieces, TIMES's web3 community initiative, Tameka has worked with a series of inclusive NFT collections. These include Genesis, Inspiration, Long Neckie Women of the Year, Slices of TIME, and the Beatclub Collection.
The Genesis Collection launched in 2021, including works from over 40 global artists, followed by a second collection by Artist in Residence, Nyla Hayes. But when it comes to Tameka’s favourite project thus far, it doesn’t take long for her to come up with a strong answer.
She worked alongside her team on the TIMEPieces x Deepak Chopra: The Seven Collection, which was a web3 project that included 73 NFT artists who created unique book cover art for The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, inspired by the teachings and lessons of the book.
“It brought a new era of wellness into the web3 space. It allowed us to use blockchain technology and NFTs to be able to position wellness and mental health as important elements in the space, whilst of course supporting 75 incredible diverse artists.”
