From Emmy Awards to Battle Bunnies: The Creative Evolution of Jon Briggs | S4 E08

Jon: 0:00

NFTs have been a great way for us to build a community of co-creators that also help us push the project forward on our own terms and have a hell of a lot of fun doing it while we're doing it.

Joeri: 0:12

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Joeri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm excited to finally have Jon Briggs on my show. Welcome, Jon.

Jon: 0:24

W elcome man. I feel like it was yesterday, it was a year ago that I was lucky to be enough a fly on the wall hearing you and Dan Nessel discuss the name of the podcast, the name of this, and it's taken off since then, man. So I feel like I'm part a little bit of the Web3 CMO history a little bit. Tiny bit, man, but glad to be here as well.

Joeri: 0:44

You are. You and Dan, for the listeners. I was at CX in Cleveland one year ago and talking to other marketers and we had a discussion about the name of the podcast and, because I was at all, the episodes were around Web3, AI, Metaverse and so they were thinking of a better name without losing the connection with the initial name, and so we came up with Web3 same old stories. I remember we were there.

Jon: 1:09

That happened from that late night at the bar stuff man, and I had nothing to do with it, I was just sitting there, but I was in awe of both of you guys and glad to see where this has come.

Joeri: 1:21

So guys, that's why I'm excited to have Jon on the show. But if you're now wondering who is Jon, I was having a look at his LinkedIn profile because there's so much to say about him. But, in short, he's an Emmy Award winning creative producer. He's a co-founder and executive board member at TThe Source at Food Fight Studios also creative producer at Food Fight Studios. So yeah, Jon, maybe to start the podcast, can you share a bit about your journey of digital content creation and what inspired you to co-found Food Fight Studios?

Jon: 1:54

Yeah, man, so I was. When I got out of college I naively went into medical device sales thinking that I was going to make a lot of money, which can be true, and I was going to make a lot of money, which can be true, and I was going to help a lot of people. And it was just this whole Kumbaya world. I did really well in it, but I just my nostalgic view of what it was not really the case. You're in my personal experience and it's a great industry helps a lot of people it really does. But my personal experience with the company that I was with, they were really pushing the initiatives of implantable stuff that goes in your brain, based on their R&D budget and all that stuff. So real medical decisions were being made based on the financial world, and I guess that's what you have to do if you're a business. But I got a little disenchanted with that. So I was like you know what, let me try to figure out something else, something I have control over, something I really love. I was fortunate enough to have done a decent enough in that industry where I could take a step back and start to create. So I decided let me just consume some podcasts. This is 10 years ago or so. Let me just consume some podcasts and learn e-commerce. That was like the future. So let me open up a Shopify site, learn how to do all those things. And I created this little rinky dinky t-shirt company not because I wanted to sell t-shirts, I just wanted to learn a little bit of e-commerce. You can actually see one of the. There's that logo back there just outsourced a bunch of creative creatives from all over the world to create these parody logos of these American football teams. And they got traction, sold some shirts. Didn't make any money off of it stuff. The site's still up. It still sells shirts. Still don't make any money off it. So I don't know if I learned e-commerce per se, but it got attention right out of the gate and we started. So I said, okay, let me just continue this path of the content game.

Jon: 3:40

And at that point there I didn't really think there was a term for like content entrepreneur or anything like that. I was finding I was just creating and doing some cool things, so ended up, um, going down that rabbit hole a little further. And then we took those logos and it just woke up one day and let's make a cartoon. But how do you make a cartoon? I can't draw, I can't animate, can't do any of that stuff. So went to YouTube and said how to make a easy, simple cartoon and the little South Park tutorial came up. I ended up hiring the guy that did the tutorial as a little bit of an animator.

Jon: 4:11

We created this really embarrassing. We get another really embarrassing piece of content based on these goofy little sports logos. That also got attention and before you know it, people started asking us to create for them. And when I say us, I had brought on another overseas animator and we were just tag teaming this. Mike, which you also know from the Creator Economy Expo, is a guy that I go way back at and he was involved in the team. So there were three or four of us just doing our own little goofy stuff and people just started asking us to create for them.

Joeri: 4:49

Wow, but yeah, that's sometimes how it goes. So meaningful event happens also with me. My jump into Web3 was also. I was at another social media conference talking to people and having the lunch with Mark Shaefer because I bought his token and discussing this, discussing with others, and from one event comes the other event.

Jon: 5:07

Cascading effective events. Man, they really. If you told me that years ago that I would be winning awards for animation and content production and all of those things, I wouldn't have said you were a liar, because I understand those possibilities can happen. I just wouldn't have picked that path, which is crazy. But here we are.

Joeri: 5:22

Yeah, so it's about how you react to things that happen in your life, and going to events always opens the door for a lot of things, but now, today, you have also interesting projects going on. Tell us a bit about, yeah, how you are now addressing the needs of digital entrepreneurs.

Jon: 5:40

Yes, you mentioned The Sauce, so I'll give you a couple. I'll give you the short end of the version or do my best. No-transcript was the guest. Then James reached out and said, hey, let's do some. I was like, cool, I want to do Tony Robbins. He's like all right, can you do Sarah Blakely also.

Jon: 6:17

And we just started this long thing which ended up with that poster being a docu-series on Amazon Prime right now that you can check out where we did all the animations for this seven episode I believe it's seven episodes docu-series called Choose Yourself, based on his bestselling book. So we just got passed around. But they would ask us like, hey, can you do this? Or hey, we have a book launch, can you do that? And the answer was always, yeah, we could do that, we could figure it out, but they were on different sorts of platforms LinkedIn, facebook, youtube and they were they're all different. So it was too hard to keep up with all that stuff.

Jon: 6:51

So we, we, we said, hey, man, let's take our secret sauce and just put it on an internal document, because I don't have time to understand LinkedIn. I know you're a LinkedIn guy, I don't. I would be go to you, would be one of my go-to guys to understand LinkedIn right, but I don't have time for that stuff, but we would just whatever expertise we individually on the team had, we threw it in this little pot and then we could reference that and ultimately, you know, two years ago we were like you know what, let's roll that out because this is super valuable information. Let's just roll it out for everybody and the those everybody and those that choose to find it valuable want to understand the content game a little bit. We just threw it out there and it's been great. It's grown pretty well organically from there.

Jon: 7:30

But that's just a newsletter which I can send you a link for the show notes on that. But that's how the sauce kind of happened and it was just an internal pick our brain secret sauce type of stuff, because there's so much to learn out there in the content game that it's hard for one person to understand. It's impossible for one person unless you have an ai brain chip to to understand it all absolutely so.

Joeri: 7:50

The Sauce is, of course, so one thing that you're doing. You're also into Web3, NFTs, so it's interesting to understand. For me a question to ask you if the creative process is different when developing content for your Web3 NFT projects compared to for traditional.

Jon: 8:09

I don't know if the creative process is different for me. For me, what creative is? Just, it's a creative problem solving, and that includes that, that that delves over into content creation, whether whatever form that may be, because, again, again, I can't draw, not a great writer, but we've written a book and been nominated two times for an Emmy and won one because I can put pieces together and try to solve for creative problems. So I think that's it. I think I always try to whatever they are. And when we did the, we did a concert at the Apollo Theater. We'd never done that before. I just sat back and said, okay, how much time do we have, what do we need to do and what are some options to get this thing done? And we got it done and, like, most of the concert was done on the long weekend, frankly, and it got nominated for an Emmy. It's just thinking outside the box and trying to break down problems into strategic little parts that can all be solved.

Joeri: 9:03

Yeah, but it's still that's a talent that you have doing that now I also. Everyone has their talents. We also have now these days, AI that's there to help. So, in everything that you are doing, what is the role of AI?

Jon: 9:19

I used AI for I don't know how many lost track of time, but probably four years, three something. Along that we were using a program called Jarvis. I think they got sued by Disney and became Copy AI or Jasper, jasper, jasper, yeah, jasper, but I was always using them for just blog stuff and simple stuff and they were great for that and seeing how they've evolved so quick, it's been nuts, but AI has been generative. AI has been in my wheelhouse for a decent amount of time, but every single day I'm using it on 80% or more of the tasks that I'm doing. I don't see many implications, applications that AI is not useful and the stuff that I'm doing there's just so much to even name.

Joeri: 10:02

It's interesting too, because I in the past I've been using a lot of freelancers to do stuff for me, like podcast editing, content creation, video creation, and then now I see what I can do with AI. Even we were discussing, before we started the podcast recording, what I'm doing with AI to create this episode and to repurpose it. So it's really amazing the impact that it can have and if you can combine this with giving it the right input from the creative side, the best of both worlds.

Jon: 10:31

It's nuts man. Look it's leverage. It's digital leverage at the highest scale that I think I've ever seen. Most of us have ever seen. Business is all about leverage and what can you output versus what can you input, and this AI stuff allows you to output way more, way, way more than we could even two years ago, three years ago, even in four years ago or so. When we're using that, that jarvis software, this stuff is just nuts.

Joeri: 11:00

Yeah, actually I was also using Jasper before everyone chat GPT came out and then there are now so many possibilities. So for me, when I talk about Web3, everyone has another definition, but I also I'm talking about AI as a part of it, because it's an umbrella term. Another part is NFT, and Metaverse, and so on. First, I'd like to know your, because of course, you're obviously also in NFTs. What can you share about how NFTs change the game for creators? How they can create and monetize?

Jon: 11:33

It took me a long time to understand NFTs and what they were. Again, I said earlier in the podcast that we had done some creating for Gary Vaynerchuk and he was a dude, that we didn't necessarily wake up on Mondays and listen to his hustle Mondays, get out of bed and do your stuff. But there's no doubt that this guy is a pulse on the culture and the trends and the content trends, so he's always a guy that I've always checked out. When he started talking about NFTs, I knew there's a reason for that. I didn't know what that reason was, so it took me a year to try to dive into that stuff. And at that point you're jumping on you know clubhouse and um app and stuff and listening to Lindsay Lohan talk like pedal her stuff and I was like this is a scam, this is stupid, don't get it. I'm out and man. I have always been a slow learner but I kicked myself for that for being a slow learner, cause I was in the conversations early on with those crypto punks and things like that that I never could grasp it. Never could grasp it, but I knew there was something, so I just kept going down and understanding it and as AI started to come out, use that to help me understand it a little more. But it clicked at me because that simultaneously we have an animation company and we're working with influencers. I don't necessarily want to be creating, I don't want to be just creating for people. Like it's cool to do a concert, it's cool to do an animated podcast or a book trailer, that's awesome, it's fun and I've gotten to work with some great people. But what happens after that? Like, you've met a lot of cool people, you've scratched your creative itch, but I want real estate, I want stuff that you can actually own. So in the animation world or the creation world, for me that was IP and intellectual property.

Jon: 13:10

So even before I started diving down the path of NFTs, we were working with some of the creators that we were helping create content, develop some cool projects, and had some talks with Michael John. We had some talks with Jesse Itzler about just creating some different types of properties and still some of those talks happen. But the development of it is hard and it often gets stalled and these are side little projects sometimes and you need to get into the development world. You need to know a lot of people, or you need to be balls to the wall all in everybody, and that just doesn't work with all these busy people I was finding, but everybody, and that just doesn't work with all these busy people I was finding, but it still was the thing I need. That was, that's the thing that was going to allow us to to have some longevity and scalability and things like that as creates some IP.

Jon: 13:52

One of the guys that I had chatted with was a world-renowned tattoo artist down here in South Florida named Franklin Atra. I just loved his style art there's actually this little painting down here is his style and I've been a physical collector of his art since my 10 year old boy was my oldest was born. I went into his his a tattoo studio, but it was also an art gallery and I I decorated my boy's nursery with these cute little characters that he created. That just reminded me of my childhood and all of those things. Right, so I was a collector of his physical art.

Jon: 14:30

So, as we were trying to create IP, I had said with our animation company I said hey, can you give me some of your files of your character designs and let's see if we can animate them. That started a conversation with. This is him talking and he's from New York, so he's like you know, I went to animation school and I want to be an animator and check out this development project that I would love to work on and it was a project called Never Dead and it was amazing. It is amazing Hasn't gone anywhere. This is three or four years ago at this point and it was a cute little story. It was like the way I would say it, it's a pet cemetery, but for kids everything he does is cute little kids. A lot of ways it's like Stranger Things but way before Stranger Things, and it's a lot of ways it's it's like stranger things but way before stranger things and it's a really great little story. I said let's and I'm working on some other projects, let me bring it to these guys also and let's see what we can do. And you could just see the juice wasn't going to be worth the squeeze with this, with just taking this project I don't have crazy Rolodex connections and the Hollywood or anything along those lines and you give it to some people and they would say this character, we should change it to that and maybe go along like this line and you could just see every step of the way that our work was going to be the most work and we would probably get the least of this if it ever got picked up. Because some of the deals would say we'll give you a thousand bucks for the right to use it for six months or even a year, and if we don't pick it up, it is what it is, but if somebody else came we couldn't do anything with it. So it's like just didn't make sense, so we shelved the project.

Jon: 15:54

Fast forward to trying to understand NFTs. Through Lindsay Lohan and Gary Vaynerchuk, I came across a project that was called Stoner Cats. They've since gotten in trouble with some of their marketing tactics. Which was called stoner cats. They've since gotten in trouble with some of their marketing tactics, which was which is a learning experience for anybody in web3, I think. But that didn't stop the fact that I really helped me understand what nfts can be. And it's not what nft is, it's what can it be. And in this instance, if you owned a stoner cat, which was these random, you'd buy the nft, you'd get a random one of their characters. Then you would connect your wallet to their website. You got to watch their animation, so essentially it funded their animation and they didn't have to go through the Hollywood red tape. They could create on their own terms. So that's okay, now I get it.

Jon: 16:36

So at that point there was no stopping me and I went all in on really jumping into NFTs. I saw Mr Franklin Atra had started his own NFT project, so I reached out and I was like bro, and it was just nothing but gratitude. I was like congratulations, this is exactly. If we had this back then, never Dead would be cooking. So he's like let's chat. We chatted again and I had the team with Mike and other content creators, taylor, that could come in and really help launch an NFT project even though we've never done that before and our whole team went full force into the Battle Bunnies, which was his NFT project, and that thing is still going strong Even to this day. We've already released a book, we've released a trading card game and we're on our way to releasing book two of the Battle Bunnies. So it's been a great. Nfts have been a great way for us to build a community of co-creators that also help us push the project forward on our own terms and have a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

Joeri: 17:38

Yeah, I love that story For all the people that know you. I've already heard that or you can check it out. I will put a link in the show notes to all the people that know you have already heard that or you can check it out. I will put a link in the show notes to all the links, all the projects that Jon is doing. But to grow such a project as, as everyone knows, it's challenging, did you have collaborations, because you have also building your network or maybe influencers that you worked with that were part of the success, or was it something else?

Jon: 18:02

so there's battle money specific project. Is that what you're asking? Okay, so the first one we released was we released 300 of these, so originally these were 5,000, these randomly generated bunnies I don't know if you can see this with the glare of the light, but this is what the character was and we made the decision you know what I said 5,000 here because we were at the tail end of this hype fest and I was looking at this hype. Clearly, this was a hype and this was not going to last forever. So I looked at this and I thought, well, we need to get to market quick, but we also let's learn some stuff. Let's not just go all in on our 5,000 collection and if it's a dud, it don't launch. Well, because there's so many unknowns with these smart contracts, a million different things. So we suggested that we just do a little soft launch, like a soft opening almost, and release 300 of these. And we released our Genesis collection of 300 Spartans, which is one of the classes of the Battle Monies, in March of two years ago Just had our two year anniversary on it and what worked? There was one.

Jon: 19:08

Frankly, we were at the still at that hype phase, just at the very tail end of it literally weeks within that ending and sure collaborations worked and that was the best way to get out there is just have conversations with people. There was a lot of people trying to make a quick buck and do a bunch of flips at that point. So, frankly, it wasn't that hard to get to where we needed to get to, but that stuff wasn't sustainable. We knew it wasn't going to be sustainable. So, after that launched, almost every other project that we were around doing those collaborations with either ceased to exist or stopped doing it at the level that they were doing.

Jon: 19:44

And we weren't in it just to be an NFT project. We were in it to build a business, let's build a co-created story, let's create a universe, let's create IP that we can all be proud of and that is here for longer than not only NFT space, but longer than all of us. That's always been our mission with the stuff that we're trying to do. Nft has been a huge component of it and still is a component of it, but we were never in it for the quick buck and I think that's why we're still around doing our thing.

Joeri: 20:12

Yeah, so there is another motivation that keeps you going doing the things that you're passionate about every day. There are also entrepreneurs, marketers, listening to this podcast, also content creators. What would be if you can give them one advice about content for, and using technologies like Web3, AI? We haven't even discussed Metaverse, but what advice would you give them? Yeah, we didn't. We discussed Metaverse, but what advice would you give them?

Jon: 20:37

Yeah, we didn't we met in Metaverse as well. Give me some examples, because I guess the one advice was stop taking advice from randos that you never met, and me included. But give me some examples because I definitely. I'm sure I have some nuggets.

Joeri: 20:51

I would. So, like I said, we met in the metaverse. It's interesting also for people that are listening. I met Mark Schaefer, started doing events for his community in the metaverse. From my point, my advice would also be try stuff, do stuff. I just said, I organize these events, I will see what's happening. Try to create. I also created my own NFTs and just saw what was was the feedback. So there is now a content creator or something work, someone working for an organization and instead of doing the standard social media posts, the standard digital marketing, the standard stuff everyone does, but they want to stand out, do something more. I would say advanced or more, because I'm in Belgium, if I do stuff, it's already special for everyone. In the US, more and more people do interesting things.

Jon: 21:43

Keep a nail on the head in terms of what works for me and I guess that's the only piece of advice I can give and if it works for others that's even great is I am constantly testing stuff out, was one of the first ones in my crew around here to get the oculus headsets and kind of play around in there, and I've had it. It opened my eyes to a lot of different possibilities. Definitely we're definitely one of the ones, first ones to delve into the nft space and kind of take that leap and go all in and still be in there. But this has really shaped our business and content in general, because it's not just one thing, it's all of these different things that we have picked up that now we're implementing into a business. So there's collectible NFT components in our business now that we're doing and implementing in physical trade shows that we do every other month Now we just did a gaming convention last month and there's things that we've had done in the digital world that we now implement in the physical world and vice versa. So I love to be a sponge and just understand all of the different new technologies that are happening around. Play around a little bit with it.

Jon: 22:44

I will say a piece of advice, and this is not do this, I'm just telling. What's been a roadblock for me sometimes is because I can get lost in playing in too much, and it's you got to pop your head back up and make sure that you actually don't just play with all the shiny tools. Get, get moving on some of the stuff, take what's worth, because it's not going anywhere. In fact, it's getting better. So once you come back to it, there's there's some really cool things that you'll be able to do as well. You're not missing out. I think a lot of people use fomo and you're gonna, I'm gonna miss out. I'm gonna miss out. We're not missing out, man. We're out there and rolling up our sleeves and playing around. We're actually having fun and there's too much stuff to have anyway.

Joeri: 23:19

Absolutely, and the world is moving. Every day there are new things coming out and, yeah, like just with the mindset of openness, of abundance, there are so many things you can do. But, as you say, there are a lot of shiny objects, a lot of new things, a lot of AI tools out there. You you can lose a lot of time with it, but, yeah, it excites me also to try these new things and to evolve. What is something, Jon, that you are now the most excited about? Maybe something's happening in your business or in your life.

Jon: 23:52

I guess from the business side, that's we're talking about. This is our first book, which we did in the Battle Bunnies and the Unlikely Spartan. What's cool about this is our first book, which we did in the battle bunnies and the unlikely spartan. What's cool about this is this came from that launch that I showed you of that card where we put all of the proceeds back into developing this ip and this. The 80 of the characters in this book are characters that are in discord names and or people that have contributed. So there was a contest to name some of the lands and these lands are like memorialized in this book that we are. Our goal is to build this like a harry potter star wars type franchise. So that was released a year ago and we are.

Jon: 24:30

I have been, you can see. You know need a haircut, you know need to probably lose some weight here because I've been. I have been heads down working on books two and three simultaneously in this series and it's better. There's more contributors to it, more community members. All of the characters are community members at this point and it's getting really fun. I can't wait to get that book done so that the community members can read it and see what happens to their co-created characters in this world, so that's what I'm most excited about at this very moment.

Joeri: 25:03

Wow. So, Jon, I guess I'm also excited about our conversation and the time goes really fast. But if people that are now listening and they want to know more about you, everything you're doing, your project, your books. yeah, you can check me out on LinkedIn.

Jon: 25:19

Yeah, you can check me out on LinkedIn. I don't know what that URL slug is or whatnot, but I'm connected with Yuri on that stuff, so you can connect with me personally on LinkedIn. If you want to check the Battle Bunnies out, it's thebattlebunniesio or thebattlebunniescom doing some really cool things with that. If you like trading card games, we have created our own trading card game where actually you are a character in the story. This is actually I'll pull this out this is Lothbrook. He's actually a community member in America. Never met him before, but he was integral to creating this TCG.

Jon: 25:48

So if you like TCGs, it's a balance of Pokemon and magic so anybody can jump in and still get that strategic play. Jump into the battleb bunniescom slash TCG. If you like the book the battle bunnies and the unlikely Spartan, that's on Amazon and sign up, because we'll be releasing some new chapters here soon of these and it's not too late either to jump in and understand and be part of it. So if you like, if you have interest in trying to co-create a world like Harry Potter or Star Wars, and be at it and get to sit with the artist as he actually draws the lands and the characters and your character in some cases jump into our Battle Bunnies, discord or the website and jump in man, because there's always room for more stories to tell. So excited about that.

Joeri: 26:30

I will mention everything in the show notes, Jon. As people know, there is a blog article. There is a lot of content I'm putting out. So, Jon, thanks, it was a pleasure to have you, man, pleasure to be here.

Jon: 26:41

Man, are you going to Cleveland again this year or no?

Joeri: 26:45

it's on the list, not 100% confirmed, so I need to check this out. But yeah, like these events, I got a few events on my map, I would say on my plan. So I same here, man, same here. Yes, had a great time, man had a great time. This is map, I would say, on my plan.

Jon: 26:56

So I Same here, man, same here. Yes, I had a great time, man. I had a great time. This was awesome. Thank you for having me. As always, a great show, and I'm a listener, I'm a fan of the podcast. So thanks, man.

Joeri: 27:05

Thank you, Jon. Guys, again, what an amazing episode with John and by on an event, come and say hi. I always like it when people come, then you see who is listening and who is watching the shows. So thank you so much for listening. If you like this episode and I'm sure you like it be sure to share this with your friends, with your neighbors, with colleagues, with other entrepreneurs, other content people. Please do that. If you are not yet subscribed, like I always say, this is a really good moment to do this and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care, great stuff, man.