Bored Ape Yacht Club in the Adidas commercial for the 2022 World Cup, Beeple becomes an advisor for Yuga Labs and CryptoPunks arrive in museums!
The FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar has finally started and it’s not missing out on getting NFTs involved! After the collaboration between Algorand and the FIFA World Cup in September, the World Cup 2022 also welcomes the Bored Ape Yacht Club, thanks to Adidas. Adidas has been the main sponsor of the World Cup since 1930, and in this year’s commercial they have also involved the Bored Apes. The Adidas-owned Bored Ape, number #8774, appears in the commercial in the company of champions Karim Benzema and Lionel Messi.
Let’s stay on the NFT theme and talk about the star of the week: Yuga Labs, the Web3 company that created the Bored Apes. Yuga Labs teamed up last week with Beeple, one of the most famous NFT artists in the industry, and launched a plan to donate some NFT CryptoPunks to contemporary art museums around the world, starting with the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami.
The Adidas Bored Ape in the 2022 World Cup commercial
In the Adidas commercial for the 2022 World Cup, the Bored Ape Yacht Club is also present. In the advertisement, ‘Catch our family reunion all World Cup long’, the Bored Ape of Adidas, Indigo Hertz, can be seen on a cereal box in the shape of footballs. This cereal was named ‘Indigoool’, in honour of the ‘bored monkey’. In the commercial, the cereal is eaten by French footballer Karim Benzema.
Adidas bought its Bored Ape in September 2021 for 46 Ether, about $156,000, and subsequently dubbed it Indigo Hertz, creating a Twitter profile for the occasion. Starring in the Adidas and Bored Ape Yacht Club advert are some famous footballers, including Lionel Messi, Heung-min Son and Serge Gnabry immortalised as they prepare, to the tune of Opus’ ‘Life is life’, to set off as one big family for Qatar. The commercial is narrated by English rapper Stormzy, who is also the driver of the ‘hippie’ style bus on which the footballers board at the end of the commercial.
The Adidas commercial in collaboration with the Bored Ape Yacht Club is not the German brand’s first NFT and Web3-themed initiative! Almost a year ago, on the 17th of December 2021, Adidas launched the ‘Into the Metaverse‘ initiative with the aim of bringing the sports brand into the metaverse. Adidas also recently released a capsule collection of NFT clothing. The collection is called ‘Adidas Virtual Gear – Genesis Collection’ and consists of cyberpunk-style digital clothes, which can now be purchased on the OpenSea NFT marketplace. These clothes, which will also be released in a physical version in the near future, are designed using state-of-the-art technology like 3D printing.
Beeple becomes advisor of Yuga Labs
Beeple, the digital artist who produced one of the most expensive NFTs ever, the Everydays NFT, has become an advisor to Yuga Labs. The relationship between the digital artist and the Web3 company came about through Yuga Labs’ acquisition of WENEW Labs. WENEW Labs is Beeple’s NFT fashion startup and has already established important partnerships with industry giants such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton.
Yuga Labs seems particularly interested in 10KFT, the NFT marketplace built on Ethereum by WENEW Labs. 10KTF is a shop set in the fictional city of New Tokyo and allows users to create and purchase NFT clothing that will, in the future, be able to be worn as their PFPs within metaverses. The 10KTF NFT marketplace is run by Wagmi-San, a garment designer who describes himself as a ‘digital artisan’.
Greg Solano, co-founder of Yuga Labs, said in a comment about the acquisition: “Beeple and the WENEW team have found a way to tell the Web3 story, while at the same time harnessing people’s passion for digital avatars and desire to personalise them. WENEW co-founder Figge, who co-founded the start-up with Beeple, will join Yuga’s management team as CCO (chief content officer), while Beeple, who’s real name is Mike Winkelmann, will act as consultant.
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CryptoPunks come to the museum!
Yuga Labs is unstoppable! It has also devised a plan to donate CryptoPunks to modern art museums around the world. They are starting with CryptoPunks #305, which was given to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami. CryptoPunks are one of the most expensive and iconic NFT collections ever, created in 2017 by Larva Labs, a startup by Matt Hall and John Watkinson. This NFT collection is inspired by London punk culture and are true ideological and philosophical icons of the Web3. CryptoPunks #305 was not chosen at random by Yuga Labs, this number is actually the area code of the City of Miami, one of the main hubs of the NFT industry.
A few months ago, in March 2022, the intellectual property of CryptoPunks and Meebits (another Larva Labs collection) was bought by Yuga Labs together with most of the Crypto Punks and Meebits NFTs owned by the founders. Since then, Yuga Labs has been in charge of project development, planning initiatives to make CryptoPunks and NFTs in general more mainstream.
The Punks Legacy Project initiative, which started with the donation of CryptoPunks #305, aims to donate and create ad-hoc installations for more CryptoPunks in contemporary art museums around the world. The aim of the initiative is to promote NFTs and reinforce the idea that identifies these digital artworks as works of art in their own right. “Just as Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol led the renaissance of contemporary art, I hope that CryptoPunks can lead the charge for NFTs,” said Noah Davis, CryptoPunks brand manager.
Number 305 is not the only CryptoPunks in the possession of the ICA Miami, the museum in fact already holds Crypto Punk #5293, nicknamed “Priscilla” which was donated by a private collector named Eduardo Burillio in July 2021. Punk #305 will be “installed” inside the ICA in Miami on the 2nd of December 2022 and the installation will remain in the Florida museum until the end of the year.
