ReNFT gives NFT owners a new way to monetize their digital assets, turning passive investments into active vehicles. 

Meta is setting some personal boundaries in its Horizon virtual worlds to keep user avatars safe. 

Video game company Atari is building a cryptocurrency casino in the virtual world Decentraland as part of a district called “Vegas City.” 

South Korea is investing $187M in a metaverse project as part of what the country calls a “Digital New Deal.”

State Farm, the NBA’s official insurer, is turning their mascot “Jake From State Farm” into a digital character in the NBA 2K22 video game.

The metaverse represents an emerging and exciting channel to connect younger, digitally-savvy consumers to brands, their products and values - but brands need to approach with a mix of creativity and common sense.

Most participants, or consumers, today are primarily focused on playing and creating. Brands have a role as long as they are contributing to the overall experience in a meaningful way.

In addition, social interaction and community building within the metaverse show promise. For the moment, there’s more value in brands acting as connectors rather than active participants - and while the metaverse provides unique and imaginative spaces for brand building and storytelling - most consumers still gravitate towards brand experiences that have familiar parallels from the real world.

While virtual world technology and experience remains nascent, there is intense business interest in possible metaverse opportunities. PSFK researchers have already published a report on the retail opportunities but in this sibling-report, our trends and innovation analysts study the new ways brands can interact with their audiences.

The study presents ways that brands can host metaverse spaces for workshops, entertainment and even wellness. Researchers found that game-based challenges encourage consumers to explore brand worlds through rewards and perks. The report also outlines a strategy for experiential activations that simultaneously take place in the real and virtual worlds, and the paper presents a business case for avatar influencers for 1:1 interactions and community events.

In our report series ‘Exploring The Metaverse Opportunity’ we deep dive into the ways brand strategies are being reimagined to deliver immersive, interactive and value-driven experiences across the metaverse landscape. In this report, 'Brand Strategies for the Metaverse' we look at how marketing teams are leveraging platforms like Decentraland and The Sandbox to elevate the brand-customer relationship through the lens of six strategies. You'll learn how brand personalities like influencers and even mascots are coming to life in virtual worlds to engage visitors and see the ways companies are rewarding and engaging their audiences with activations that connect them to social experiences and playable versions of their IP and assets.

Consumers do appreciate how corporations are trying to get involved with virtual worlds. When PSFK asked US adult virtual world users if their perception would change if a brand they knew was operating in a virtual world, 39% said their perception of a brand would be improved while just 6% said it would worsen.

When they experience them in a virtual world, consumers don’t want brands and retailers to be trying anything radically new. In fact, PSFK researchers found that 58% of US adult virtual world users would most enjoy a brand experience that is similar or very similar to the ones they find in the real world.

Brands and retailers need to remember US adults just want to have fun when they log into virtual worlds. When asked by PSFK researchers what they like to do there, the top responses were play (57% of US adult virtual world users), visiting meta-versions of the real world (45%), hanging out with likeminds (38%) or remixing the world they discover (37%). Interaction with companies ranked lower on the list - with 33% interested in testing products and only 20% enjoying shopping.

When it comes to meeting other avatars or players in virtual worlds, PSFK researchers found that US adult virtual world users overwhelming preferred people they know (Friends 57%, Family 37%, Co-Workers 17%) but there is some interest in interacting with avatars that can teach or instruct (fitness & wellness coaches 22%, advisers & mentors 20%). Only 16% would prefer to interact with known social media influencers or corporate representatives.

For a copy of complete survey findings, contact: [email protected]

The luxury fashion house is now the owner of a virtual plot of land in the Sandbox metaverse. 

Samsung unpacks a new experience by virtually recreating New York City flagship store in Decentraland’s 3D virtual world.

Nike is adding a digital layer to the physical shopping experience at the brand’s New York City store on Fifth Avenue through a collaboration with Roblox.

The idea of the metaverse has captured the attention of brands, retailers, media companies, marketing agencies, and technology platforms. Pioneering business leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs see new opportunities to stake their claim in an as yet-to-be-defined space that promises to revolutionize the internet and what it means to be online and completely change the way people work, play, learn, and shop. 

Some imagine virtual reality goggles as the key entry point into immersive worlds that seamlessly combine elements of gaming, social media, entertainment, and retail, where users are embodied as avatars of their own design. Others believe society already exists in some version of the metaverse by virtue of the ubiquity of always-on mobile devices and the ability to tap into digital content and experiences from anywhere at any moment. These opposing points of view begin to converge with the widespread adoption and use of augmented reality and hands-free computing protocols like gesture and voice. 

Whichever vision of the future you ascribe to, it's clear that the lines that delineate on and offline behaviors and physical and digital worlds have nearly eroded, as people slide further into fluid, hybrid lifestyles with many ceasing to make distinctions between the two.

Alongside the excitement and wild speculation associated with the metaverse itself, there has been an almost equally meteoric rise around topics like web3, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), cryptocurrency, and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), which are often hard to separate from the broader conversation. These ideas will most certainly play a key role in shaping how people experience the metaverse moving forward.

As always, PSFK seeks to help frame how our audience understands and thinks about an emerging space like the metaverse by looking at the experimentation taking place, listening to expert POV, and tracking consumer sentiment to identify key insights and highlight emerging trends. In part one of our three-part series ‘Exploring The Metaverse Opportunity’ we deep dive into the ways pioneering companies are reimagining the retail, shopping, and product experience. Through the lens of seven trend-led strategies, our researchers look at immersive commerce on platforms like Decentraland and Sandbox, IRL stores with embedded experiential layers, and the ways digital goods elevate the brand-customer relationship and beyond. 

This report is the first of a three-part series.

- Retail Strategies for the Metaverse

- Marketing and Brand Experience Strategies for the Metaverse

- Infrastructure and Tools Powering Commerce in the Metaverse

To date, most US consumers' experience with virtual worlds has been through video games. 4x as many adult Americans have experienced virtual world spaces through games rather than through a purpose-built metaverse experience.

Commerce isn't a significant reason to attract users to the metaverse. When compared to a list of reasons that people visit virtual worlds, only 26% like to go shopping and only 15% want to run a business or do work. When visiting a business in a virtual world, only 40% go there to shop - and more would prefer to get special offers (51% of US adult virtual world users).

Product trial and education present a significant opportunity to retailers and brands in the metaverse. 50% of US adult users who interact with businesses in a virtual world want to learn about services or try on products.

33% of all users like spending time in the metaverse updating the way their avatar looks (although this figure is less for 'body-less' VR users (29%) vs non-VR users (37%)).

PSFK US Metaverse Retail Experience Survey

The PSFK quantitative survey was conducted February 24-25, 2022. The audience were US adult users of virtual worlds aged between 18 and 65 years old. The survey was a ‘basic census’ balanced in terms of age and gender. The 451 respondents had household income between $0-$200k. #metaverse #web3