Zach Sugarman
Appearances
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
yeah so art releases so you know they they can vary of course with everything that we got going on but in general right like we want to create this hype moment we want to create a sense of urgency um where people are excited and know what's coming and then ideally we're selling out um pretty quickly after the drop right so It starts with teasing what's coming up.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Can we play off of some previous references that the artist is known for? Maybe we've already collaborated with them. We do have our own super fam, our own loyalty group. And so we do give them early access to what that drop is going to be. It's part of them being so ingrained with our brand and being loyal to it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And then how can we show off the story and the lore like behind the drop itself, like what went into it and how can we create a larger conversation around it with maybe kind of, you know, partners or fans of that artist itself. And they do range. So like we had an amazing drop over the summer with an artist who's not known as like a big time art artist, but he's huge in
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
athletes by a name of gang guys based out of los angeles and he literally does all the tattoos for lebron james anthony davis carlos alcarez the entire brazilian soccer national team and so we did this awesome toy drop and there's three versions based off of one of his iconic characters and we had a super super limited run then we had a mid-tier and then we
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
had a larger one we kind of staged the drops to create excitement right people that missed out on the first super limited one had a chance for the other ones but what we did with gang and what he did a great job of was we seeded these to lebron to anthony davis to carlos alcarez to vinnie junior rodrigo and we have all these amazing photos of the toys so we use that to help amplify and so that would be one of bringing us into new audiences um we have another one coming up
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
With an Atlanta-based mural artist called Greg Mike, it's actually dropping later this week, where he's very much into the core artsy. He has an amazing space in Atlanta. He's doing stuff at Art Basel this week in Miami. And so with those, it is deeper into that art space. Can we do a very cool curated wall mural? Can we have potentially a live art experience with the drop at Art Basel?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Because we know that community is already going to be there doing things. We do try and customize these artist product drops to kind of align with what we feel the fans are going to be into and what the artist is known for. And so when someone like a Greg Mike's going to be at Art Basel, that makes sense.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
When someone like Genga is going to be in LA and you have the Brazilian soccer team in for a soccer game or LeBron James, let's seed them product and capture a lot of content around it. And then there's stuff in between.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
But we do want to bring our artists very close to our fans and then really have it be more of a partnership where they're involved with the drop and pushing it versus just licensing something and selling it. And then we're a manufacturer. That is not what we do at Superplastic at all. It really is that kind of blend of the IP.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And so that comes with how we bring it to market and how we sell it and really talk to and engage with our fans.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Well, one, we'll happily send you some so the kids can have some fun. I mean, the answer is yes. So I have a near 13-year-old, and my wife definitely enables us and supported in a big way. But yeah, I mean, he got back into collecting toys, also sports cards, comic cards. When there are local card shows in town, I'll buy a table for him and his friends to put up.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
you know, their collections and sell. And then it's a little business for them. So depending on who kids are, you could turn them into the, what's the value of the secondary market. You know, how do you buy low, sell high, what to track, what not to, how to frame things up. I mean, isn't the number one thing kids want to do when they're later being influencers.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
So at least put some business mind behind them. So there's not just an influencer. It's like, Hey, I'm an influencer, but I have a $30,000 a year side business on eBay and I'm 14. Like I'd rather see that on the resume. So that's how I've gotten my kid into it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
I feel like we're brothers from another mother on a different coast. Yeah, I am our coach of soccer and flag football and then do the same. And we'll have all those things. They're great. Your older boys will love our content. Your eight year old should not watch it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
But it's fun being a court collector because I mean, the passion comes through the work I'm engaged. Like it's very authentic and natural for me because I literally did grow up in San Diego, bringing my box of comics down to the San Diego Comic Con back when you could sell and buy comics. You know, this is in the late 80s, early 90s.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And now it's the most amazing entertainment vehicle extravaganza ever, but no one buys or sells comics there, yet it's called Comic Con. It's really just a pop culture fest. But then to now, and so when we're engaging these people, I understand the nostalgia feel. I understand how you want to display. I'm not in my family cave, which has all the toys and the cards.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
It's over in the garage, but it's fun to have out. We have things around the house. People love asking questions about it and then you can explain. So I'm more of an extroverted collector. We have some that are introverted that may not want to talk about it, but behind that door, that's where they get validation because they have all their toys set up, but that's more of an introverted collector.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And maybe they just want you to send them stuff, but they don't want it to be loud and broadcast. Whereas others like, yeah, here are photos of my collection. We're running something right now called Deck the Halls over the holiday campaign where we're asking everyone to show off their super plastic collection.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And we're having submissions come in online and then we're sharing them on social and then rewarding our favorites and other toys. And like people have the most amazing setups ever with how they display our figures in the house. And so it's very cool. But then because of that, it's like, Well, this doesn't just have to be collectibles. These kind of look just amazing in a lobby.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Why don't hotels have this or law firms or consulting agencies? These are great gifts. Instead of your boring corporate holiday gift, why don't we do some custom painted art figures? And even if they're not a collector, just give them something cool and different. So it's fun to play on the collector angle, but then understand that everyone doesn't have to collect it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
at the end of the day, it just looks cool too. And that's okay. If they just want to say it looks cool and have no other connection there, that's fine with us. Like we'll play with that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Yeah, I'll start. Go ahead. Yeah, you can lay on top. Yeah. So my background in sports was kind of always around monetizing communities, mostly more on the rights holder side. So I worked a lot with teams, leagues, rights holders, sponsorship strategy, merchandise sales, ticket sales, media rights, but The core of it was really like, okay, what are these fans into?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
How do we give them more of that? How do we monetize in the channel in an authentic way? So that applies to NBA. That applies to global soccer. That could apply to a Premier League lacrosse team. That could apply to a esports team. So from big to niche, it was still always around monetizing communities. and understanding that people consume differently. They want to be met on different channels.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
They want to be told different messages. And how can we personalize that to them? So applying that mentality, just bringing it over into the collectible world, it really is about monetizing our community. We have our core base of things. They are really into the vinyl art toys. We can grow more fans by engaging them with our content, with experience.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
We can monetize across all those channels individually, but also collectively. And how do we do that while staying authentic to our brand, which we're not trying to be everything to everyone. And so we're making choices. So for me, it's a very economic mindset of... What resources do we have? What's the best use of them for our endgame?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And we'd always do that in applying into the sports world teams. And so applying it in here. And then there's just the parallel of just fandom. Fandom is very similar. People love our characters and brand like they would do a sports team. There are live things they can go to now with Vegas. There are products that they have and display and collect. And then there's content that they're consuming.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
So I look at it in that lens. But I know, Jen, you got some other ones too.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
That's one way. Yeah. We're not a white label, like animation factory, but absolutely. Like we, I mean, we, we pursue all brand partnerships to hit across all three of our tent poles being kind of content, IP being the first product being the second and in real life experience being the third. So yeah. So like, Absolutely.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
There are things we deliver that are viewed as sponsorship that they're paying us. There are also things we're making together, whether that's product or new IP, where there's a path to revenue for both sides, and everything in between. So we do look at partnerships in a truly partnership way. But yeah, absolutely. We're bringing a lot of eyeballs, a lot of fans, consumers to the table.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
There's value in that. If we're putting additional animation resources and making a new IP and then taking it to market, there's a value in that. And that's very different than, hey, we made a toy together. Here's how many we sold. Here's a royalty. But that also is included in what we do.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
You know, we would want to have a little more fun. Is that hurting the brand? Right? We've done, here's an example. We did something with Mercedes where, you know, they had an amazing new car release coming out and they wanted to collab around a new character, a new product. So we actually came together and created a new character called a Super Gackle. which is kind of like an animated dog.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
But then we made this awesome limited edition wood figure. We had some apparel that was part of a capsule collection. It was available when they released the car. And then we did a big in real life event in New York also as tied to it. We then made a lot of content with Superbackel and kind of pushed that out there. And that was all integrated in one overall partnership.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
So it's more around that than just like the, hey, here's a Red Bull, drink it. Um, we would like to have more fun. We would want to get a bowl that maybe is red involved. You know, does it lead to F1 in Vegas where maybe they have to drink to kind of stay up awake for 48 hours and go to all the events? Does it culminate with Red Bull VIPs at dopamine?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Like I'm riffing here off the spot, but that's how I would kind of think of that partnership.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Yeah, so in our Fortnite map game, we're doing that. We have two partnerships that just closed where we're integrating virtual goods. So there will be one as a beverage company where if you find it and get it, it makes you graffiti faster. You have power-ups in the game. There may be a billboard or a branded vending machine that's in there that you can just interact with.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
People loved it.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And when we let you out, it's even better. When we let you out or when you come in, it goes right into our flagship retail store, which is available to anybody that goes to Area 15. They don't have to get a ticket to dopamine. So we have kind of all of our amazing vinyl art figures.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
From all of our artist collections there, we have some dopamine exclusive kind of merchandise, apparel, fun Vegas items, some things that tie into a pleasure research institute that have nothing to do with vinyl art toys. So it's a vibe and a whole experience that'll be there. And it's great.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
And we're getting great feedback from, you know, randoms that have no nothing about our brands to those that have been waiting for it to open that have gone out since it's been open to those that have been in town for other events in Vegas, both on the experience and on the retail side.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
It's in one of my strategy decks. We got it. We're embracing it. Although some would say Disney's already pretty demented. We bring it to a whole new level.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Love it. And then for dopamine specific, uh, we just launched at dopamine seven zero two on Instagram for all things from that experience. We'll be pushing a lot of content, but out there, but you'll see it on all channels. A lot of fun ways to engage.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
We got to get you dressed. I want to hear what the boys are into and get this collected story.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
For those who are watching us, you can tell they're great Zoom backgrounds. For all those listeners at home, podcasts or otherwise.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
yeah i definitely want to get down that i ai road but uh one thing got on real quick ryan on that like with the tech too like into where jennifer was going like once you make a rig a 3d rig of an animated character you can then apply it to all these different places so when we're thinking about our ip while yes it is predominantly tick tock youtube content instagram
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
We are making things in Unreal for a Fortnite game. We can apply that in other areas as well. So when people want to consume in different ways now with new animation technology, you got that core rig setup that then allows you, and especially with AI, to then capitalize on creating a lot more outputs more frequently and easier and nimbler without having to hand draw everything net new.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
an idea or spread out an idea or a piece of content across all these channels. Kind of once you get that core rig set up.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Yeah. So really my role kind of, you know, on the strategy side of things is looking at all the ways, you know, our fans and consumers kind of interact with the brand and then strategically thinking like, how can we serve them better? How can we do more of what's working? How can we bring in other partners that are missing to add a new element?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
How can we tweak things, you know, based on what we're seeing with our own fans, but also what's in the marketplace? And that kind of spans across the Demented Disney analogy. So that's everything from our content and the channels to like product itself. So we're known for our vinyl art toy figures behind me. You know, what are other ones that are going to resonate?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Are there different ways of selling them? You know, live selling on the floor, like a sports cart collectible. Are there different partners from an individual artist or brand that are really going to excite our fans that we want to bring to the table?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
Are there different things that we haven't done before, such as creating our own Fortnite map game, which we did back in the summer based on the popularity of our character skins as some new way we can engage our fans with our IP? And then in real life, like with our experiential at Dopamine in Vegas, Again, what is going to keep fans happy?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
What's going to keep them coming back, talking about it with their friends? How can we take advantage of a physical space strategically, not just for people to interact, have fun with the experience by product, but it's a third space venue in Vegas where there are major events going on all the time.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
so like for example like when f1 was there last weekend you know we did a deal with a brand partner that's a big sponsor of one of the f1 racing teams to just host you know 100 of their kind of vips at area 15 and dopamine um and have shut down the space have them go through it themselves get them a little swag bag and kind of entertain them there and give them that full white belt treatment so it is across all of those um
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
It's staying on the leading edge of kind of those trends. So I'm also the chief collector and the core nerd here who grew up collecting kid robot toys, sports cards, comics, everything since the 90s. So I'll participate a lot directly in our fans and Discord. We got a live unboxing video with one of our influencers later in the week that I'll be doing too.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
So I'm trying to just be the voice of the customer or listen to them, but also look at all the data and the tea leaves and kind of see like what makes sense and the beauty about our company. And with Jennifer and with Paul and kind of how we've set it up is, you know, I mean, we literally talk about ourselves as a devented Disney. We say our style is fuckery. So we want to have fun.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
It's okay if it's not for everyone. We want to do strategically what makes the most sense for us as a company and for those who get it and those being kind of our fans and those consumers.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
The Power of Social Brand Experience & Collectibles: Superplastic Launches Dopeameme Institute
I hope so.