Slim Jim Meataverse

Client:

Conagra / Slim Jim

Agency:

180NY

Production:

UNIT9

Role:

Creative Director

Year:

2023

Slim Jim wanted to enter web3 without leaving anyone behind. No crypto wallet required. No gas fees. No knowledge of blockchain necessary.

Just a free membership to the most ridiculous digital universe a meat stick brand has ever created.

The Meataverse was Slim Jim's first-ever digital membership club, built around 10,069 procedurally generated NFTs called GigaJims, each one a unique character assembled from visual attributes drawn from five years of Slim Jim's social media mythology.

Members claimed their GigaJim free on a first-come first-served basis, then grew it over time by earning S.A.U.C.E., the Meataverse's in-world currency, generated by scanning Slim Jim barcodes in the real world, completing challenges, and engaging with the brand.

With over 10 million possible GigaJim combinations and a public leaderboard ranking rarity scores, the experience gave the brand's most devoted fans a reason to keep coming back, and keep buying meat sticks.

Results

10,069

GigaJims

Distributed

At Launch

0$

Gas Fees

10

Million+

Possible

Combinations

Awards

FWA

FWA of the Day

How was it made?

Slim Jim Meataverse Landing Page

Making web3 accessible to everyone

The central design challenge was making web3 genuinely accessible, not just in theory, but in practice. Most brand NFT projects assumed users already had crypto wallets and understood gas fees.

Slim Jim's audience didn't, and shouldn't have needed to. The platform was built with a custom wallet creation system that set up a Polygon wallet for new users in minutes, with Slim Jim covering all gas fees. The barrier to entry was essentially zero.

10,069 characters, none alike

The procedural character system generated 10,069 unique GigaJims, each one assembled from a library of accessories and visual attributes built from Slim Jim's brand history.

But the characters weren't static. Members could upgrade their GigaJim by collecting and combining S.A.U.C.E.. Five basic types that could be mixed in combinations of three, each formula unlocking a different modification to the character.

That layered combination system is what produced the 10 million possible variations across the collection, and gave members a reason to keep coming back.

Slim Jim Meataverse S.A.U.C.E. Mixer
Slim Jim Meataverse Barcode Scanner

Earning currency by buying meat sticks

The physical-to-digital mechanic was the most direct product integration: S.A.U.C.E. was only earned by scanning real Slim Jim barcodes.

The Meataverse lived online but its economy was powered by purchases in the physical world, a loop that made the experience feel genuinely connected to the product rather than just branded on top of it.

Keeping the economy honest

Keeping that economy honest required real rigour. With a theoretically infinite supply of Slim Jim barcodes in the world, the system needed to stay balanced, rewarding without being exploitable, and keeping rarity meaningful over time.

We brought in economists to design and stress-test the mechanics, modelling earn rates, upgrade costs, and inflation scenarios to make sure rare GigaJims stayed genuinely rare. It was the kind of design problem that doesn't usually come up in brand campaigns.

Slim Jim Meataverse Character Browser
Slim Jim Meataverse Lore Page

The world of the Meataverse

The art direction was led at UNIT9 by Krzysztof Rejek, with illustrator Riccardo Carussi hand drawing the visual language of the Meataverse: a retro sci-fi world built directly from Slim Jim's brand mythology and the Long Boi Gang community's existing culture.

The characters, environments, and narrative were designed to feel earned rather than imposed. The community's response, primarily on Discord and TikTok where Slim Jim's audience lives, reflected that.

The world landed because it was built for the people who already cared about it.

Gallery

The Slim Jim Meaterializer
The Slim Jim Lab
The Slim Jim Landing Page
A section of the Slim Jim Homepage

Zlaten del Castillo

Creative Director

London, UK

Brussels, Belgium

Available globally

All work shown with permission. All rights belong to the respective clients and production companies.