Iggy Azalea Late to the Stage at Token2049 But Early on Celebrity Meme Branding

Turning up around 20 minutes late to her panel at Token2049 in Singapore, rapper-turned memecoiner Iggy Azalea took to the stage to educate the audience about celebrity branding in Web3.

Candidly admitting that she has only been in the crypto space for four months, Azalea nonetheless achieved great success with her $MOTHER memecoin, which reached a market capitalization of $194 million in its first week.

But for Azalea, celebrity memecoins, and memecoins in general, need to evolve beyond their current state.

"If you're going to be a first mover in memecoins, it would be smart to have a different angle from a tokenised version of a meme," Azalea said at her Token2049 panel titled 'The Virality of Value: Memecoins in the Attention Economy."

She gave the example of turning a catchphrase into a meme, revealing that "Iggy Azalea started a bull run" and became a "viral" phrase in her community a few days ago.

"It's a phrase that was repeated and replicated, sending my market cap up $50 million in one day," she said. "I've memed language."

Azalea went on to say that token functionality integration "is something we're going to see much more now that we see crypto accepted as a payment system."

"It will be a necessity to integrate those sorts of perks," she continued. "I see people talking about these perks being good for onboarding normies but these perks also eliminate the PVP [player versus player] model and turn it into a PPP [player pump player] system. Integration has to develop into something that is more interesting and valuable for holders," she said.

Azalea also believes that digital assets can help to build a brand persona. "What you hold in your wallet becomes a brand persona and brand association plays a lot like it does in the entertainment industry."

"Without brand identity, there's no consumer identity," she explained. "Memetokens have to go there."

The 'Fancy' singer further explained that branding needs to go beyond the celebrity. "Celebrity tokens cannot translate if the brand is just the person - It has to be the same retail formula like Rihanna having Fenty where we move beyond their face being on the brand, otherwise you're pigeon holding yourself."

She believes that retail marketing mechanics are already in line with memecoins. "A song is a meme, a hook is a meme, and people behind them understand memetics whether they realise that or not. We need to expand what an internet meme is."

"Celebrities aren't essential in coming into the space," she stated. "It already exists in retail and what catches their attention. Katy Perry's Purr perfume is a memeable thing that's parallelable to her but she didn't brand it "Katy."

In her closing remarks, Azalea admitted that "a lot of people thought [she] was a shit rapper but [she] was still successful" and that "if everybody thinks something is a terrifying idea [she] would lean into that shit."