This is Eric Golden and my guest today is Avery Akkineni. As President of Vayner3, Avery has been at the forefront of guiding CMOs, brands, and corporations into Web3. This conversation is a little different for me as we focus on marketing and how to both connect and grow audiences in Web3. I’m fascinated by Avery’s work on Super Bowl commercials and learning what it is really like to work with creative brands such as Budweiser and Pepsi. To start this episode, I asked Avery to teach me about how traditional marketing works, before diving into case studies of how brands successfully leverage blockchain technology like NFTs. We then go behind the scenes with Vayner Media and their rapid testing of ideas on Gary Vee himself and her personal experience with their VeeFriends. Please enjoy my conversation with Avery Akkineni.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here   -----   This episode is brought to you by OKX. You may have seen OKX on McLaren’s Formula 1 race car or Manchester City’s football kit. But what is OKX? OKX has over 730 spot trading pairs, 280 derivatives markets, and 1000 options markets. It processes 400,000 requests per second with 99.95% uptime. That’s why over 20 million traders and institutions choose OKX when they want to trade. Visit okx.com to learn more.   -----   Web3 Breakdowns is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Web3 Breakdowns, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @Web3Breakdowns | @ericgoldenx | @patrick_oshag  Show Notes (00:02:36) - (First question) - How her background in marketing informs her work at Vayner3 (00:07:12) - The competitive and dynamic nature of the marketing industry (00:10:55) - How Vayner3 leverages agility and keeps up with trends (00:14:00) - Her pivot from corporate marketing to Web3 brand-building (00:16:24) - What attracted her to the NFT space in the early days (00:19:48) - Balancing risk aversion versus early adoption in marketing (00:22:30) - How different brands have come online to Web3 and how Vayner3 enables them (00:25:55) - Common mistakes made by brands trying to enter the space (00:29:00) - What she learned from the launch of VeeFriends (00:33:29) - How VeeFriends came to be and how it keeps momentum up (00:36:27) - How she approaches brands following the recent crypto downtown (00:39:59) - The aspects of Web3 adoption and growth that she’s most excited about (00:41:56) - What she’s most excited to see built over the next six months and six years