[00:01] opportunities that most people are sleeping on in 2026 and beyond is using collectibles and collectible strategy to enhance the relationship with their current consumers, opening up new audiences and finding new revenue
[00:14] streams. And what's most exciting is whether you're a mom and pop single creator or one of the Fortune 50 and everybody in between PE backed, VCbacked or listed on the New York Stock Exchange, this matters to you. And this
[00:28] isn't new. Hostess. Yes, the cupcakes in the 70s were putting baseball and sports cards in their packaging to sell cupcakes. And now some sell for thousands of dollars. Local breweries, big shout out to my dad, Liquor Store
[00:41] Days, have teamed up with artists, uh, local sports teams, uh, and other IP to create limited edition bottles and cans, many that sell for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars on eBay today. But here's the difference in 26, cuz I could
[00:55] give you another thousand examples like I just did. Collectibles. Collecting is now joining the lifestyle ecosystem that music, fashion, sports, food, and travel sit in. Collectibles as a lifestyle genre is now going from the minor
[01:10] other big ones. And that will have massive, massive impact on every massive, massive impact on every consumer brand in the world. Reason number one, communication and the way humans communicate. Why did fashion get
[01:25] big? Over the history of the last centuries, we use what we wear to communicate to others. When you wear a certain pair of sneakers and someone know, you know. They give you the little hat tip, the little wink. When a woman
[01:39] sees someone walk by with a very rare handbag, they both know. Why do we wear our things? Why am I wearing this hat? Literally, every piece of clothes you wear, why do we post where we vacation? Why did we want MercedesBenz and BMW
[01:53] badging for communication. Why do people put bumper stickers like proud mom of a straight A student? What are we doing? We're peacocking. We're communicating often around insecurities, which is another topic for another video. But
[02:07] occasionally around tribalism and fandom. Why do I wear Jets stuff? Cuz I communities. Why does everybody go to ComicCon? Cuz nerds [ __ ] unite. Collectibles is the new stature. It's the new thing. like paintings in a home,
[02:24] your sports card collection, your rare toy, your lab boooo hanging on your bag. Collectibles are now a communication engine the way that automobiles, art,
[02:36] and fashion have been. Collectibles has now joined. Let's just use examples. If because you communicated through your marketing predominantly social that if you book a first class airline ticket
[02:51] you get this limited edition DVD from Bon Joy that's a rare collectible and only the first 10,000 are sold and then when I go and I get to my seat and it's there for that month or that week. There's also some content from BonJovi
[03:05] on the first class video play. You're starting to build experience. You're someone who flies every airline because I'm always booked by the people that have me speaking, this becomes a reason why I choose Delta. Maybe I'm a BonJovi
[03:17] fan. Maybe I'm not. But this is where I'm going. Everyone, the fact that I know there's a collectible and everybody's so into this flip life or has or you just want to collect it and you are like me, a collector because so
[03:30] many people are. In fact, leave a comment of what you collect in here. are in there. Anyway, that becomes an example. Now, that's a that's a airline. What about if you are a cereal? Remember the toys when we were kids? What if you
[03:44] are a commodity? A deodorant, a shampoo, a razor, a band-aid, a Vaseline, um a a razor, a band-aid, a Vaseline, um a rice, a pepper, uh a cupcake, a bag of
[03:56] apples. You start adding collectibles inside these packages. You are both getting the affinity of people that collect Pokemon V friends. He-Man, uh, Leuboo's, uh, Hello Kitty, uh, Lisa Frank art. You're getting that, but
[04:12] key, because before we're like, "Oh, we're going to tap into the IP of Pokemon and get Pokemon people to eat our our candy." You're now getting collectors. For example, I'm a little collector of Pokemon. It is not my
[04:26] driver. But if I knew in an aisle that I'm getting a collectible Pokemon that cereal, that becomes a differentiation for trial. Now, I might have never had that cereal before, but I got it for the Pokemon. But when I pour
[04:41] people buying a bunch and just throwing away the product for the collectible, caught up on that. But if I try that cereal, I'm like, "Wait a minute. I like this cereal." Now, I've used collectible as a trial lever to create that. And I
[04:54] know this happened quite a bit in the ' 50s, '60s, '7s, and somewhere around the 80s and 90s and really the '9s and definitely into the 2000s. Over the last 25 years, we've gotten too academic and fancy in marketing and we've looked at
[05:06] as like cheesy chachka when in reality it is now the biggest opportunity for anyone selling something to attach themselves to a collectible to widen it understands they can do many different things and it's not just one niche. So
[05:21] coast and here's a collectible for youth in middle America and here's people that people into cooking and you become a brand that's fully collectible oriented needs to be relevant to as many different consumer segmentations.
[05:36] Collectibles is an overlay to bring consideration and affinity into your product is a massive opportunity. Warning warning warning here's what I'm worried about. No [ __ ] QR code scratch redeem all that friction you
[05:51] guys create. Invest in the cogs the cost of goods. Put the product in. Make it easy. Ulta beauty has a limited edition collectible beauty thing like at the store in the bag. All of you get cute with this. You're trying to drive down
[06:05] waste a ton of money on [ __ ] television or all this other random stuff. Like make it easy for the consumer to get the collectible. I don't see passcodes. I don't want to see scratch off and get the code. [ __ ] the
[06:19] friction. Make it easy. Let them get the thing. Next. Why is this another huge opportunity now and not before? Have you heard about interest media? Interest media is the actual term we should be changing social media to. All of you
[06:34] know now in your feed is things you're into, not who you follow as much. It's evolving. So, play with me here. You make a deal with Tony Hawk and you do a limited edition um figurine of Tony Hawk. There's 50 different ones to
[06:49] you're trying to get that 50-year-old skater surfer culture, especially on the West Coast and Tony Hawk is of that age, like the 50-year-old, but you're also that look at him as a legend, blah blah blah. That for whatever reason, Tony
[07:02] Hawk is the right person. You make 20 of them, they're limited edition. Some have version. You got the little figurines in it, right? Here's why it's important. like, hey, we sell butter, but you can get the Tony Hawk thing in there,
[07:16] literally people that are into Tony Hawk and skateboarding will see that content. You are using, marketers, pay attention. You are using the creative collectible overlay as an opportunity to create relevance
[07:32] awareness in your product because the algorithms on social media actually know to put that content when you post it organically in front of people who have a high propensity of eating butter or liking Tony Hawk or
[07:47] skateboarding or the X Games from ESPN. That is insane. using the collectible That is insane. using the collectible campaign strategy to get to relevance to consideration to double down on heavy users or audiences you've never reached
[08:03] before. Wow. Like I might not overindex to non entrepreneurial expecting moms, right? So if you're non entrepreneurial expecting mom, maybe influencer. I think we could all agree with that. If I make a diaper of high
[08:18] quality and have a Laboo like collectible there, that is going to put me in front of those people that is like a personal brand. I'm limited. When you're Pepsi, when you're Proctor and Gamble, when you're a clothing brand,
[08:31] when you're Reebok, this is a huge opportunity. So, the social media era allowing you to reach people that care about the IP, the collectible that don't
[08:43] know you and don't follow you because of how social works compounds this massive opportunity of using collectibles. And that affinity to drive purchase intent happening? It's called the internet. eBay did it in the late 90s and got me
[08:57] into this stuff, but now StockX live shopping, whatnot, fanatics live, eBay Live, content at scale and social media, YouTube channels breaking on trading cards and comic books, labu influencers wearing something and blowing things
[09:11] out. The landscape of flipping has changed so many of you. And put it up here, team, the 2017 flip challenge. Give me team, give me nine to 10 good seconds of this little commercial break. Watch this 2017 flip challenge. That's
[09:23] right. Nine years ago, I have this really interesting 2017 challenge. It is my belief that everybody has a ton of chachkas, ton of former clothes, ton of electronics, iPhone 4 sitting in your closet, a Ram man. Here's my big belief.
[09:37] My big belief is this, my friends. The 2017 flip challenge is this. I believe that if you amass the hours that you allocate to a, you know, a a iPhone game allocate to a, you know, a a iPhone game for 3 hours here, um, to when you're on
[09:52] the bus commuting for an hour instead of just reading, but if you want the end of the year. All right. So, what I saw in that opportunity was people could take advantage of people not realizing how easy it was to buy and resell, flip
[10:05] life. That's what's going on now on steroids like with live shopping now from your house and do a virtual garage sale and just ship ship ship ship ship of eBay and now soon with eBay live Twitch one of the most important live
[10:20] shopping thing that they just launched with health cosmetics big shout out to them this is massive stuff the friction my poor brother when he was 18 20 years ago had to take a digital camera take out the disc put it into his desktop all
[10:35] list something on eBay in what, I don't know, 4 seconds. Lack of friction, technology scaled, liquidity, so much demand for collectibles. Gh, what an opportunity. All right, let's now go into a lightning round of like for
[10:50] know if I was watching this video, that's how I would learn. Let's go into please. >> John Deere wants to reach millennial home buyers who romanticize farm life and blue collar living.
[11:03] this scenario. I'm either going to, first of all, John Deere itself, their I'm trying to reach that world, I'm probably going to a couple country singers making a limited edition cassette cuz the cassette becomes the
[11:17] collectible. And I probably make, you know, 100,000 limited edition cassettes There's the regular cassette. There's a thousand that are silver. There's a that's platinum and signed by the artist uh that I bring in, the country artist
[11:31] with that gold one also will let you come backstage and see them front row at [ __ ] out of it. >> A small local gym in Austin, Texas that currently go to larger chains like
[11:46] probably go to five fitness influencers. I DM them national ones. Say, "Hey, I want to make a sticker with you on it." Like literally a sticker uh with you on it. And what I want to do is this is
[11:59] literally the DM I send to thousands of influencers on Instagram. Probably if they're too big, they're not even going to like look. That's the range. If influencers that live in Austin, Texas, that's even better because you can do an
[12:14] sticker pack. cost you less than a buck to make a pack with the influencers on it and basically have reach out to them, pay them a couple bucks to do a couple of autos and sell a pack of stickers of fitness influencers exclusively. You get
[12:28] for free if you sign up in our gym, you get a box of these influencers. And by the way, if you sign up for the membership and you get this free box also, all five influencers in three months are going to be part of a stream,
[12:40] a live Zoom and come in and you get one hour Q&A with these five influencers. that scenario is the influencers are flattered because they only have 300,000 now. They have a collectible sticker and autographs that sell on eBay. They also
[12:54] building their brand through your marketing cuz now you are running that video to people within a 10 mile radius over and over and over and you're these influence these fitness influencers into celebrities cuz they
[13:08] And that's what I would do there. Let's say J. Crew wants to reach Gen Z in quiet luxury. >> For that, to me, I think what Jay Crew is doing in that scenario is probably making a limited edition live social
[13:23] shopping collectible product like whether it's a t-shirt or a handkerchief or shorts. They could pick any item. I'd probably go with a quiet luxury influencer to be live on Tik Tok shop or whatnot or eBay live and really
[13:37] just do a thousand units, film a live shopping show, sell those thousand out, show and use it for my performance marketing to build a halo effect to all the other products that J Crew sells. So, you only sold a thousand of that
[13:51] limited edition item. But the creative from that live show is giving you a halo effect to make J Crew cooler to quiet luxury enthusiasts. across all their >> A local hair salon in LA wants to expand and reach men in the area that are
[14:07] >> Yeah. I mean, on that one, I'd probably go with like a high school football star in the California area who a guy like me, Gary, would see that and be like, one day. This collectible is actually going to be their rookie card." Like
[14:20] this weird rookie card from a hair salon. So, again, a card, a sticker, a comic book. You could go you could go that route. You could go a comic book with like a with a trendy like barber vic blends. You could do something with
[14:33] there's just like a lot of things where you're doing nil IP collectible item and Come and get a haircut here or do a punch card. Come and get three haircuts here and by the third time we give you the collectible. Again, what people are
[14:46] affinity. Whatever content you put there, whether you use an, you know, again, if you use a famous IP like Teenage M Ninja Turtles or Spongebob or Doug from Nickelodeon, it's expensive. So, you want to go to humans,
[14:59] influencers, emerging athletes, retired athletes. Notice how I didn't go in the player like Otani cuz it's millions and they're probably fanatics exclusive. I'm Worthy, or a high school player. You're playing on the edges, creating a
[15:13] collectible, and you're you're getting people who are into this collectible want to flip the collectible. That's the key understanding to all these random making in this video. >> Chevrolet wants to reach roadtrip
[15:27] enthusiasts in SoCal, Texas and Arizona. >> I'm probably going with a car influencer from southern, you know, the southwest. And I'm probably doing something where I'm signing a deal with that person to do eight appearances at tier three like
[15:43] do eight appearances at tier three like Chevy, you know, uh, you know, car lots and got probably 500 collectible items in this scenario. Road trip. Maybe I would do a throwback old map. Remember maps?
[15:56] Like people collect those like the old road maps. I'd probably do a retro road map with a car enthusiast influencer. first 500 people that show up to our lots, I'd probably get someone who's really emerging who'd be willing to do
[16:09] eight to 16 appearances, pay them like 100k, like emerging, obviously not a big dog, and make these limited edition road maps, like the old maps, 500 per location. First 500 people that show up get an autograph map. He'll autograph it
[16:23] with you. What that's doing is why would somebody, like, think about it. If I run that ad in a 10 mile radius, five mile radius of those car dealerships, the 16, in line for 45 minutes really care about this culture. They care about that road
[16:36] rules kind of like Winnebago cross country culture. So this influencer, personality there is going to mean something to them. Otherwise, if it's get something for free that's free and I could sell on eBay for 20 40 bucks. That
[16:51] not doing that. So, you're getting very deep enthusiasts and while everyone's in line, you're reinforcing the Chevy brand to them. That's my random idea for that one. Retro Road Map autographed by influencer in road trip culture. Every
[17:05] influencer exists. Roadtrip culture, tattoos, kung fu, uh, making mushroom barley soup influencers exist. NIL of emerging influencer or or retired used
[17:17] to be iconic and they're a good price. Play on the edges. physical items, comic books, road maps, magnets, coins, and uh social media marketing within the awareness both organic and paid. That's the framework you just heard for the
[17:32] last few minutes. I hope this inspired someone to understand that as we go into someone to understand that as we go into 27, 28, 29, 30, collecting is continuing to grow. Every Fortune 500 company should worry about this. and every small
[17:44] business, local pizza shop, hairdresser, all really think it's harder for you, less resources, might be a distraction, but it's worth flirting with because once you learn, you learn. See you