This month Co-Founder, Rachel Clarke, shares part two of the metaverse series – exploring our recommended approach for the digital future.

In The House

Innovations and initiatives from Strat House clients and partners.

• Unilever helping women farmers to grow pineapples and their incomes
• Adidas takes on Samsung’s controversial ‘Night Owls’ ad in women’s safety campaign
• Unilever Study Reveals Influence of Influencers in Sustainable Behavior Change
• Dove are standing up for #KidsOnlineSafety
• Gong cha named best food & drink franchise at the 2023 Global Franchise Awards
• Find out why LinkedIn And Dove Are In It Together To Help End Hair Discrimination

Preparing for the digital future (Hint: you’ll need a strategy…)

Last month, we looked at how people describe the metaverse. This month, we explore our recommended approach to preparing for the digital future. You’ll need a strategy 😊

It’s a strategy of two halves – the first part is asking enough questions to make sure you are playing in the right space, before jumping right in. So first of all, ask yourself WHY? What are you trying to do, why do you want to be there and what will it do for your business? Learning about the space is a valid reason, prepping for future audiences is a valid reason – doing it for the PR is also a reason, although it may not play too well with audiences.

You need to be clear on the WHO. I’d argue that if you are a company selling funeral plans or stair lifts (I work from home, there’s a lot of those ads) your audience (for now) is not on any of these platforms. To create something that will have impact, you need to have a potential audience in place. That will tend to be on the younger side, tying into the business need to be able to know how to connect with them in the future.

Finally, the HOW. This can be budget driven, you may be only able to test a few things out, but you need to know if the tests are going to be how you build a longer term plan, so you can frame them to get the right information to convince yourself, your boss or your board.

My favourite long term example is Gucci. They have a strategy, an approach that they continue to build on. There’s no defined end point because the world changes rapidly, but they knew they needed to do something different, so they built the team, have a test and learn approach and make sure everything they do is rooted in their brand values and their consumer needs

In 2019, they started with Gucci games; they added VR for virtual try-ons in 2020; 2021 was a big year – locations  and items for Zapeto, a Korean platform, tying into real world locations; they created virtual sneakers for use in VR; they sold a video NFT of a new product range and introduced a limited edition of Xbox in real life and created  arrange of clothes with a gaming brand.  2022 has continued this way – a partnership with The Sandbox, NFTs with Superplastic (which included an IRL model),, larger places in  Zapeto and Roblox and Sandbox, more NFTS , they are taking crypto in US stores (not yet online) and have an esports team. As I said, solid strategic approach, testing out what works and leveraging a community rooted in gaming.

Heineken probably falls into the second category, testing some things out but it’s not clear where they are going yet. They built a virtual bar in Decentraland, with a virtual beer targeted at GenZ. This was tied into real bars, where digital tokens were transformed into real beer.   This was all about making noise (their spin was it was a PR stunt) but it gave them a chance to build something, make some PR and learn a little (even with the low user numbers)

Finally, the approach is throwing something out there for PR only, a short lived campaign, you’re trying something new and you want to drive awareness of how culturally connected you are to get the news.  There’s always a time limit here – it won’t be news for long. Which is why some people thought that is what Meta were doing with their announcements on Horizon world, especially with the recent revelations of how buggy it is.

If you make the decision to proceed (and no is still a valid answer, for now), then let’s start planning.

What’s your budget, your timeline, what do you want to learn? There are so many examples out there it may be too easy to ask for “one of those” but it’s important to make something that brings your brand to life in a credible and authentic way. It’s also important to know that something that was successful then, is highly unlikely to be successful now – this is a rapidly changing space that is not settling; innovation sells and things can not often be repeated -the currently lack of activity and news around NFTs tells you  that

Your decisions about your approach will help define the where. There are so, so many platforms. The richest space for both platforms and people is one with no blockchain and no headsets – so we are talking mostly about gaming platforms and digital overlays in the world. Using others are valid learning opportunities, but not if you’re after larger audiences.

You may be on this journey with a partner already, but if not, there are plenty of agencies that will help with everything from strategy to build. Your current one may be able to provide solutions – but I’d check out their credentials versus a more specialised team that may have been there longer (look at some gaming agencies? Regardless of who you work with, we believe the most important thing is to upskill your team, so they know what they are talking about when presented with an option – they can be quite expensive mistakes to make

Finally, be aware of the worries. NFTs come with risks that business needs to be aware of – tax, sustainability concerns, fraud and mainly just sheer complexity for consumers at that moment. But what can be seen as the “safer” spaces still have the people problems – harassment, porn, general safety issues. Virtual spaces are not automatically virtuous ones. Brands have the opportunity to contribute to building the foundations for these future spaces and should ensure they build to prevent the bad behaviour

So, you’ve established the why, you know who you are talking to, you’ve got the internal team set up. What are you waiting for?