Into the ‘potential’ Metaverse Universe

“Really Zuck, you could have worn ANYTHING, and you chose this?” tweeted an observer about Mark Zuckerberg dressed in black jeans, white sneakers, and a long-sleeve navy t-shirt, as he launched Meta (the rebranding of Facebook), in the virtual himself (avatar).

And why not? This is a valid observation to make. In the virtual universe, you can be anybody and make a new fashion statement, whenever you wish to. The typical rules don’t apply, so you can explore as much as you like. ‘Metaverse’ is a new dimension that might slowly (or is already) blurring the lines between the physical world and the virtual world.

No doubt then that it deserves attention and thus became an apparent choice for the first 2022 PRPOI session, especially on Clubhouse. Speakers on this session were – Anjali Malthankar, National Strategy Director at Tonic Worldwide; Maneet Jolly, Founder & CEO, Imagined Reality; Abhinay Bhasin, VP, Data & Product Solutions (Asia Pacific), Data Sciences, Dentsu International.

So, we kickstarted with the obvious question – what does Metaverse mean to you (and how would you rather explain this to others) – for our panellists.

“A cyberspace or virtual world where people would interact with each other in virtual space. An experiential web, with mixed reality as VR, AR and the physical world blend together. A balanced combination of experience and a whole aspect of the unknown. Actually, it is a virtual simulation of the real world, where everything that physically limited us as humans goes away and allows us to experience things that we would otherwise only dream of” – came the cumulative responses from our speakers. Slowly, this is how we transcended into our metaverse discussion.

As a communications professional immediate instinct would be to look at ‘Metaverse’ as a new-age media tool or platform. Something that would enable increased opportunities to build stories for people and brands. For the unknown, innumerable brands have already curated a significant presence for themselves by designing experiences in this meta-universe. Yes, similar to the physical world, this digital land is also built on an important premise – build memorable experiences for the end-consumer.

In April 2019, electronic DJ Marshmello became the first musical artist to hold a live virtual concert inside Fortnite, a battle game. While this was first for Fortnite, many live concerts have been streamed virtually, such as U2’s performance on Second Life, a decade ago.

Then there is Nikeland, a partnership between Nike and Roblox, where Nike gets an opportunity to showcase its apparel to a larger audience. What stands out is the entire ecosystem for players to create their own designs and obstacles too (in the yard).

When the world was struggling to not gather at huge on-ground events, Verizon picked on a virtual experience to highlight the strength of their 5G services. They bought alive the first 5G and mobile edge compute (MEC) – enabled mobile game for fans in-stadium at Super Bowl LV, called NFL Ultra Toss.

Slow-down. Remember there is a flipside as well – just like the physical world – where some virtual brand campaigns were complete misfits. But this shouldn’t come as a surprise, in fact learning for communication and brand professionals to build ‘virtual communities’ on authentic and relatable brand experiences.

Hence, when entering the metaverse, brands should carefully harness this opportunity as first-movers, whilst building similar experiences in the physical realm (bread and butter, always). Use social listening, data science and analysis to constantly understand how brands can curate immersive campaigns. Be cautious to not get into the virtual universe, because others seem to be drowning themselves into the same. Don’t get gimmicky, ever, as that will be forgotten sooner than you can imagine.

“Explore how much time can audiences spend in the metaverse. Figure out the element of delight, the element of breaking away from limitations in a world, where one is unable to taste or feel and only view”, simple and surprising facts that Maneet Jolly highlighted, as we discussed the possibilities for brands.

Transforming legacy media

The natural progression from building campaigns, often ends in our absolute favourite query – how do we measure the success of a campaign? Now that we are thinking ‘Metaverse’.

The responses surprisingly are similar to what all of us anyways evaluate – the objective of the campaign, what is the brand really seeking from the campaign and customizing campaigns for the audiences. To this, Abhinay Bhasin added, “Although clear benchmarks are not yet in place, which is a similar case to what the social media (digital platforms) were, 15years back. So, fundamentally (for now), evaluate the basis of the campaign two crucial parameters – enhancing engagement and driving commerce – for the brand. In essence, it completely depends on how the brand is learning and evolving.”

This is when everyone in the audience got curious to understand if this virtual world is governed by any rules, yet. These virtual immersive experiences have been catching a lot of attention, where cryptocurrency, bitcoins, NFT’s – all of them are slowly making their presence felt. But it still seems to be in the initial stage for governance regulations. “This aspect will need some time. A lot of debates, explorations, future prospects, will contribute to how one sets some scrutiny into this virtual universe. We will have to bring many more heads together to discuss better possibilities”, expressed Anjali Malthankar. Conclusively, we all agreed that just an hour is probably not enough for discussing everything “Metaverse” and hope to plan more sessions. On a parting note, the panellists recommended interesting campaigns to explore. Non-Fungible Tokens piece that Coke created. Balenciaga Autumn Winter 2021 fashion show. The VR campaign by New Zealand tourism. Of course, stay tuned to catch all the action from the virtual rallies -the ‘Green-rooms’ – at the upcoming Elections!

About the author

Pooja Trehan, Co-founder, PRPOI