I know what you are thinking. However, since you will not admit it publicly (what contemporary marketer worth their salt would?), I will come out and say it in your stead. This ‘Metaverse’ thing is a confusing jumbled mess, albeit a very trending one. From a marketing point of view, the whole movement is abuzz with pretentious jargon, high-touch-low-substance PR releases, and dodgy ROI. Every brand wants to ‘do a Metaverse play’, but we don’t know how… or why. I like to think of myself as fairly tech-forward, so I am going to try to break it down here. But bear with me if I fall prey to the same trap as other marketers and spew out the same circular logic.
The underlying concept of a Metaverse as a virtual space that mimics our physical dimensions is not new. Science fiction writers have been dreaming it up since the thirties. But it was only in 1982 that the word was coined by author Neal Stephenson as part of a novel called Snow Crash, where the story’s characters use a virtual reality experience to escape their totalitarian reality.
Cut to 2022, and the world falling apart is no longer fiction. Deadly pandemics, environmental anxiety and crashing economies mean we still need an ‘out’, and perhaps it’s time to escape again to a reality that is a little less dreary than ours.
The technology has been building up for a while. If you remember going to the Venturer motion-simulated experience at Sindbad in the nineties, you can chalk that up as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the Metaverse. Then came Web 2.0 and the age of social connectivity. Now you have a virtual placeholder that can represent you in the digital world. The movement still doesn’t have mainstream traction, but if you can remember Dwight Schrute from NBC’s The Office playing a game called Second Life, where his digital avatar is far more superior than his real-life persona, you can say you have a glimpse of the Metaverse potential early on.
The landscape changes with VR headsets and an American technologist called Palmer Luckey, who intends to launch his first consumer-grade product via Kickstarter in 2012. The Oculus Rift was not the world’s first or best virtual reality headset, but it arguably became the most notorious after an acquisition of Luckey’s company by Facebook in 2014 and here is where it becomes interesting for marketers.
Facebook in 2014 is just hitting its stride. It has a billion users and virtually unlimited cash, as it finally begins to accept its position as an advertising access juggernaut rather than a social connector (mission statements be damned). Previously limited to an endless scroll on a tiny screen, virtual reality environments open up the possibility to monetise space in a richer environment. More than ever pixels, are dollars. This starts Facebook’s journey towards embracing a socially-connected virtual reality world as their true calling, eventually culminating in renaming themselves to Meta Platforms in 2021 and selling Oculus headsets at a massive subsidy to encourage greater adoption.
Be advised though. Facebook – or rather, Meta – does not ‘own the Metaverse’, even if their company is now named as such. The Metaverse is a concept, and not yet a widely accepted singular platform. Dubbed Web 3.0, other players can, and have, contributed to creating spaces and assets to populate their own spaces in a similar style. As we stand today, there are three stages of entry into the Metaverse.
- Define Your Metaverse Self: The first stage involves creating or purchasing an avatar. There are now countless freelancers and agencies that will help you create a realistic avatar of yourself and place it in the Metaverse space of your liking. This allows brands to deploy mascots and anamorphic products into the Metaverse as characters that you can interact with.
- Express Yourself: Once your base avatar is defined, you can customize it with clothing, accessories, and other items. This presents a significant opportunity for fashion brands to offer virtual versions of their products in the Metaverse. For example, brands like DKNY and Charles & Keith have already started offering Metaverse-wearable digital versions of their popular accessories.
- Build a Digital Lifestyle: In this stage, users accumulate assets and experiences to enrich their digital lives in the Metaverse. This includes collecting tools, artworks, and other virtual items. Some users even invest in virtual land within the Metaverse. Brands are also participating by releasing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and creating immersive Metaverse experiences for their customers.
While the Metaverse holds great potential for marketers, its success depends on the accessibility and advancement of hardware technology to provide immersive experiences. VR headsets and augmented reality filters on smartphones are some of the entry points into the Metaverse. As technology continues to evolve, brands will have more opportunities to leverage the advertising space within the Metaverse.
However, it’s important to note that the Metaverse is still in its early stages and faces challenges such as the lack of mainstream traction and standardization. It remains to be seen how the concept will unfold and impact marketing strategies in the future.
