FRANKIE D TANKIE
“I really love the narrative, you know, who is the artist? What’s their background? What’s the process they use for their work? I think NFTs are a great way to experiment with new ways to connect with buyers.”
Frankie D Tankie was around at the birth of the internet, the mobile web, and now is witnessing the birth and early years of web3. He has a track record in financial technology, including working with start-ups and multinational companies.
Working as a strategist for a Fortune 500 fintech company, in 2021 he saw the promise of peer-to-peer technology, and as much as he loved the art of NFT, he loved the technology underlying it even more.
Aside from technology, Frankie is fascinated by the entry into the Web3 market by big brands. “I think we’re going to see a lot of experimentation by brands as to how they can leverage NFT technology,” he muses.
The use of digital artifacts that you can issue to a customer and that they can share on their social pages becomes a way to connect a brand to the customer. It’s the web3 version of traditional gift cards. NFTs as incentives issued by brands will be a significant area of focus for many retailers and other companies who care about how their brand connects with consumers, Frankie believes.
Frankie is now an avid collector of NFTs, largely fine art and photography. In 2023, he is looking to expand into commissioned NFT travel photography. To scale something up that is inherently expensive to undertake – travel is, after all, costly – he is looking at investing early in specific projects by sharing some of the costs with the travel photographer.
“This format will be more of a common interaction in web3 space where with the patronage and sponsorship of a collector in the bag before they ever undertake the effort, artists are free to explore their real creativity,” says Frankie, who believes that artists have a lot to learn from big brands’ methods of marketing. It’s not simply about the product or, in this case, the piece of art. What they’re both selling is a lifestyle, an aspirational goal, an entire story, and getting in touch with what that story is.
“I really love the narrative, you know, who is the artist? What’s their background? What’s the process they use for their work? I think NFTs are a great way to experiment with new ways to connect with buyers.”
As a collector of both real and virtual artworks, Frankie is definitely a believer in the simplicity of art for art’s sake.