- Advisory board has begun the archival process, re-examining and
curating OG Collection's substantial contents to unlock maximum
revenue potential.
- The Company is actively looking to engage an M&A banking
group to facilitate the successful completion of a transaction
related to the OG Collection, Inc.
- Analysis of the NFT space has been a year-long endeavor; the
Company took advantage of the most recent market volatility to
acquire the vast majority of its Web 3.0 asset portfolio in the
last 30 days.
- Creatd's shareholders are expected to receive up to 1/3 of the
newly spun-off company.
NEW
YORK, July 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Creatd, Inc.
(Nasdaq CM: CRTD) ("Creatd" or the "Company"), the parent company
of Creatd Studios, today announced the creation of an advisory
board for the OG Collection, tasked with guiding the Company toward
maximizing the potential value of the media library, which
comprises a cache of rare and never-before-published materials and
artwork originating from Bob
Guccione's personal and professional archives. These
materials are rich sources for the colorful storytelling Creatd has
become known for, painting a complicated picture of a highly
influential and previously mysterious figure of 1960s-2000s popular
culture.
In addition, the portfolio includes a number of transmedia
projects that the Company has released previously or currently has
in development, including:
- Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story: An insightful
look into the mind of an artist, an entrepreneur, and an emperor.
The film premiered at the Toronto
Film Festival in 2013.
- Till Human Voices Wake Us: A fashion short starring
Lindsay Lohan and directed by
renowned artist and photographer Indrani. Premiered in 2015 and won
Best Picture at International Fashion Film Awards.
- The Mind's Eye: The Art of OMNI: An art book celebrating
the remarkable creators who contributed to the most innovative and
artistic science-fiction magazine in publishing history,
OMNI. The book was published in partnership with Powerhouse
Books in 2014. Red Bull Studios celebrated the release with a
collaborative, experiential event.
- In production: The re-release and film adaptation of No
One's Pet: The Autobiography of Sheila
Kennedy: Exploring Kennedy's life in Guccione's
New York penthouse and out,
punctuated by her time as Penthouse Pet of the Year 1983. The
book-to-film adaptation of the No One's Pet intellectual
property includes a planned series for a streaming service,
podcasts, and additional books on the lives of Penthouse Pets and
individuals associated with the Guccione empire in the 20th
century.
- In development: a fictionalized series inspired by the life and
history of Bob Guccione,
illustrating the personal life and inner workings of the man behind
a media empire that would change the industry forever.
- In development: two podcasts on health and wellness inspired by
the Company's intellectual property Longevity and
Viva. Both trademarks are part of the Company's proprietary
portfolio.
- In development: Sci-Fi anthology TV series inspired by the
content of OMNI. In partnership with a streaming service,
the Company is excited to bring the legacy content of OMNI
Magazine back to life.
The Company previously announced on March
30, 2022, its intention to spin off the OG Collection into a
new publicly-traded entity, an initiative expected to be a key
liquidity event for the Company. The new company will maintain an
ongoing partnership with Creatd Studios. The Company is actively in
discussions with a number of M&A advisors and is reviewing
multiple options including listing the new company on both the
Nasdaq and tZERO.
As the Company has stated previously, the Collection is not
currently valued on the Company's balance sheet based on
purchase price accounting guidance, despite its physical assets
alone having been independently appraised at as much as $10MM. The
copyright and additional media assets since acquired could see the
value increase significantly. Upon its completion, the spin-off
should strengthen the Company's balance sheet and reward Creatd's
shareholders.
To help spearhead the effort, the Company today announced that
it has established an advisory board consisting of several highly
experienced archivists and headed by Creatd's Lead Editorial
Innovator and published author, Erica
Wagner.
The advisory board includes:
- Martha Ball, the Processing
Archivist for the OG Collection, is an emerging archivist who
specializes in conscientious archiving of mixed media materials
that illuminate and complicate popular culture history. Martha
comes to the OG Collection from The Schlesinger Library on the
History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and the
D.C. Punk Archive, where she began her focus on describing and
revealing the stories of women in cultural spaces.
- Consulting Archivist Parker Fishel is an archivist and curator
who has spent the last decade preserving and celebrating popular
music collections. Most prominently he has worked extensively with
the Bob Dylan Archive® as well as the Grammy Award-winning
Bootleg Series releases that explore the collection. With
experience facilitating appraisals, acquisitions, archival
organization, and public access, Parker's focus is on bringing
private collections to light and surfacing the stories within.
- A professional archivist for over 15 years, Jenifer Monger has focused on engaging
communities and promoting responsible collections stewardship to
foster a rich understanding of archival collections. She is
currently the Assistant Institute Archivist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with roots in the
curatorial and museum collections management sector.
Archival processing will establish the Company's organizational
and intellectual control over the Collection, supporting the
asset's ability to generate significant revenue. The Collection
represents an impactful and popular sector of 20th-century cultural
history that is not often explored or analyzed, representing new
opportunities to further the understanding of sexuality, gender,
and American studies among other disciplines. Without proper
preservation and storytelling, this swath of history, one that is
both complicated and prominent in cultural memory, is at risk of
being lost forever.
The advisory board will execute curation, bespoke rehousing,
documentation, and research to ensure the Company can fully
leverage the contents of the collection, which include:
- Over 250,000 unique photographs, slides, and negatives:
-
- The photography collection is the largest component and is made
up of photographic prints, original 35mm and 120mm transparencies,
and even glass negatives. Penthouse photo shoots dating
between 1973-1995 constitute much of this series, featuring
unpublished photographs from the most recognized centerfolds,
celebrities, and politicians.
- Images include those taken for iconic magazines in addition to
Penthouse, including OMNI, Longevity, and
Viva. Both OMNI and Viva were trailblazers in
the magazine space, launching the genres of science fiction and
futurism coverage and erotic magazines for women, respectively.
HBO's current series Minx, chronicling the business of a
1970s feminist porn magazine, is reportedly based on
Viva.
- Approximately 30 portfolios and five flat slides containing
65,000 bound and unbound drawings, sketches, cartoons, and artwork
by legendary illustrators, including Guccione himself, Alexander Wolfgang Olo, Michael Cummings, Bill
Lee, and V. Kotyonochkin as well as satirists, humorists,
and sci-fi artists. Highlights of these materials include the
original 1969 Penthouse advertisements targeting
Playboy's famous bunny logo.
- Nearly 1,000 documents of published and unpublished contracts,
interviews, exposées, legal proceedings, handwritten letters, and
other unique materials relating to contents and subjects throughout
the General Media library of magazines, including some of the most
recognizable figures in 20th-century history.
- Thousands of hours of original video taken by the creative
groups at General Media and their associated magazines,
Penthouse, OMNI, Longevity, and
Viva.
Commented Creatd's Founder and Executive Chairman Jeremy Frommer, "We have long waited to
recognize and unlock the tremendous value embedded in the OG
Collection, Inc. Due to particular accounting guidance, this
collection has never been carried on our balance sheet. Spinning
off the asset is the only way for shareholders to be rewarded. This
one-of-a-kind collection can unlock tremendous value from my
favorites, such as retelling the OMNI stories and
reimagining the film Caligula in partnership with the Creatd
Studios pillar."
The market for NFT membership and use case projects continues to
expand as Reddit, Snap, GameStop, and Universal all push
forward with bold new NFT initiatives to support creators.
In addition to the vast physical components of the media
library, the OG Collection, Inc. maintains a Web 3.0 portfolio,
primarily created during the significant pull-back in asset prices,
the portfolio includes:
- Metaverse plots in Decentraland, a 3D virtual world
browser-based platform for digital assets, to digitally house the
OG Gallery, NFT portfolio, and experiential event hosting
- The internally created OG Gallery NFT portfolio was established
at minimum cost given the ownership of the underlying art by the OG
Collection.
- In addition to the proprietary collection, its externally
created NFT portfolio consists of artwork from creators, brands,
and artists the Company is inspired by and associated with,
including influencers under Creatd's WHE Agency. These NFT assets
were purchased at floor and early-stage level during the recent
significant pull-back in NFT asset valuations.
- The Company additionally purchased cryptocurrencies including
Ethereum, Polygon, and Mana to fund the OG Collections' future Web
3.0 initiatives.
The OG Gallery sets the standard for the synthesis of e-commerce
for physical art and the inherent benefits of an NFT linked
directly to it. It is a new era in our Web 3.0 strategy, where we
look to find further connectivity between the physical world and
the digital one through the use of smart contracts, unlockable
content in the experiential space, and membership/loyalty programs.
The six Decentraland locations, owned by OG Collection, Inc., will
begin development and design later this fiscal year and will offer
experiences in the metaverse where the Company can showcase its
collaborations with creators from musicians to digital artists.
About Creatd
Creatd, Inc. (Nasdaq CM: CRTD) is a company with a mission to
provide economic opportunities to creators and brands by
multiplying the impact of platforms, people, and technology. The
Company has four main business segments, or 'pillars': Creatd Labs,
Creatd Partners, Creatd Ventures, and Creatd Studios. Each pillar
is characterized by a distinct revenue model, while operating on a
shared-services structure and proprietary data collected from our
multiple technology platforms. Creatd's pillars work together to
create a flywheel effect, supporting our core vision of creating a
viable and safe ecosystem for all stakeholders in the creator
economy.
Creatd: https://creatd.com;
Creatd IR: https://investors.creatd.com;
Vocal Platform: https://vocal.media;
Investor Relations Contact: ir@creatd.com
Forward-Looking
Statements
Any statements that are not historical facts and that express,
or involve discussions as to, expectations, beliefs, plans,
objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but
not always, indicated through the use of words or phrases such as
"will likely result," "are expected to," "will continue," "is
anticipated," "estimated," "intends," "plans," "believes" and
"projects") may be forward-looking and may involve estimates and
uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ materially
from those expressed in the forward-looking statements. We caution
that the factors described herein could cause actual results to
differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking
statements we make and that investors should not place undue
reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Further, any
forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such
statement is made, and we undertake no obligation to update any
forward-looking statement to reflect events or circumstances after
the date on which such statement is made or to reflect the
occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events or circumstances.
New factors emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us
to predict all of such factors. Further, we cannot assess the
impact of each such factor on our results of operations or the
extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause
actual results to differ materially from those contained in any
forward-looking statements. This press release is qualified in its
entirety by the cautionary statements and risk factor disclosure
contained in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/creatd-assembles-elite-advisory-board-for-its-og-collection-as-it-further-prepares-to-spin-off-its-physical-media-library-and-web-3-0-assets-301587927.html
SOURCE Creatd, Inc.