Does the metaverse need to be part of your digital (transformation) strategy?
No. Probably not.
What is the Metaverse?
The word has suddenly become Googled around the world thanks to Facebook rebranding itself. Rather than focus on the harm that the company has caused through its social media apps, the company is looking to new worlds…
Attributed to a 1992 novel, the metaverse in its simplest form, is the merging of physical and digital experiences. It could be representing yourself as an avatar in a game or a chat-room. For others, the metaverse is an all encompassing merging of carbon based life with digital immersion – think The Matrix…
Facebook (sorry Meta) describes it as…
“The ‘metaverse’ is a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.”
The company formerly known as Facebook…
So more like Microsoft Teams or Minecraft. The statement is not a very visionary version of the metaverse, but in reality it is probably what it will look like in the short to near term.
For the purposes of practical implications for your business, we will confine this article to the current metaverse – 0.9 if you like…
What Does the Metaverse Mean for Your Business?
Well, that depends on your business. If you provide crypto-based assets or can brand virtual clothing, then there might be short-term opportunities. The big winners, in the short term might be gaming chair manufacturers.
Marketing in the Metaverse
Why is Facebook betting on us spending unhealthy amounts of time in virtual worlds? Because where eyeballs and attention go, so do advertisers. As people swapped reading newspapers for social media feeds the advertising dollars followed. If people spend less time in the real world and more time in a virtual world then advertising budgets will need to follow them.
This isn’t a new concept. Red Bull have been advertising in video games since before the internet – and it must have had a lasting impact because I still remember playing the game on my Commodore 64 with a cassette drive!
However, as with all new advertising channels, you need to understand the context of the space… there are some key questions you need to ask before marketing in the metaverse.
Commerce in the Metaverse
Many of the current virtual worlds (games) have their own economies. These might be simple shop mechanics that allow users or players to customise skins, avatars or equipment, or there may be more intricate value systems that include the buying and selling of land and real-world equivalent values of in-world currencies.
You can create virtual versions of your real-world products and sell them to users / players. The most obvious examples of this would be clothing and accessories for avatars, but depending on the world it could also be sporting goods – like a bike or a surfboard.
Technology such as blockchain are changing the way virtual goods are valued. So the concept of scarcity could be applied across the metaverse. Using technology like NFT, you could sell users the right to have a one-of-a-kind ‘painting hanging on the wall of their virtual room. As the image would be unique to that space or anywhere in the digital world it could be sold on.
As the metaverse becomes more of a reality, virtual malls and shops will become a new way for people to shop.
The Future of Work in the Metaverse
Historically, virtual worlds have existed so that socially awkward individuals could role-play and escape their lonely, mundane real-world existence through fantasy. Without the gamification element, people satisfy their most basic needs. However, there could be another use for such virtual worlds or spaces.
The COVID19 pandemic has shown us that people all working together in an office is a hangover from a previous time and exists because of tradition rather than necessity.
There is a version of the metaverse where people work together in a hybrid physical and virtual world. Of course we do this now – through Zoom and Slack and Google Docs and there are some industries like Healthcare where teams collaborate in a hybrid space.
As virtual reality becomes better, these co-working spaces may become more efficient and productive, though the long term effects of people working this way are unknown.
There is a second element to the future of work in the metaverse. That is working in the virtual worlds themselves. This is very Meta, but it’s a thing.
One example is ‘gold mining’. In-world currencies can be obtained two ways – exchanging real world money for in-world money or by ‘grinding’ through quests or tasks that take a lot of real-world time. So it might be more lucrative for someone to grind through the tasks in a virtual world and ‘sell’ the resulting currency than working in an Amazon warehouse.
The man who coined the phrase Metaverse has a great book about it…
Your Metaverse Strategy
The metaverse is not something that should be keeping the CEO awake at night.
For most companies, it is not and should not be a priority unless… you are in the business of competing for people’s time and attention. A certain kind of people’s time.
That being said, the metaverse is an additional channel and maybe if you are in a mature market, there are some growth opportunities.
Keep in mind that as the metaverse gets closer to it’s ultimate aim, it will merge with the ‘real-world’ and therefore there is no real advantage to being there early. Intellectual property rules apply – so someone can’t sell your branded goods without your permission or a license to do so.
What next? Let’s help your strategy team work through some scenarios. We can facilitate workshops and provide training to prepare your business for this and other potentially disruptive digital trends – some closer than others…