In March 2023, Cadastra Live held an event discussing the New Economy
The Future of Commerce at Samsung KX, London.
Consumer expectations are ever-shifting, and the pandemic has only accelerated this new normal. Advancements in digital experiences, such as the metaverse, are only going to see behaviours shift once again, so in this chapter, we’ll seek to understand the shift in consumer behaviours in and out of the metaverse.
The metaverse isn't a single destination, place or platform (in fact it doesn't exist). Where do you see the most obvious opportunities for brands to dip there toes in the water?
How organisations enter this new space will become pivotal to their success, and Annie Siara, founder & CEO of the luxury phygital marketplace LUNIQUE believes businesses should build a Metaverse strategy, not unlike a marketing strategy, beginning with KPIs and working backwards. As a first step to developing a Metaverse
strategy, Annie asks businesses to consider what they are hoping to achieve. Is it going to be a PR exercise, a sales initiative or perhaps part of an integrated campaign
covering online and offline. Your next step is to consider your audience, as different
worlds appeal to very different groups of society, Dencentraland for instance has a
very different user base to Roblox.
Facebook and Microsoft both have their own Metaverse worlds, and then there
are a host of others. How do you see the future of consumer engagement cross-
world?
According to Annie, one of the biggest challenges with the Metaverse at present is interoperability which extends to purchases of all kinds, and this, on
top of clunky headsets represents two of the biggest friction points for the medium. But, in the early days of the world wide web we had multiple internets there too, so the hope is that we start to see platforms begin to streamline.
What can we learn from the adoption of mobile and how can we apply that to
seizing opportunities in the metaverse. What needs to happen for the metaverse
to go from a test bed for exciting ideas, to ubiquity?
The Metaverse has been around for a long time and grew out of gaming, but to reach ubiquity Annie feels it needs to provide more day-to-day utility to a broader cross-section of society. And this is happening slowly across industries such as travel,
healthcare, education, and real estate.
Should brands have a metaverse strategy and who should lead that?
Lunique, the business Annie Siara founded, helps luxury fashion brands get a foothold in the Metaverse and because of this they are used to dealing with businesses that have have a defined roadmap for the channel, and have been active within it for some time. But beyond fashion, Annie believes that if you are a consumer brand then you
need to have a Metaverse strategy. And, if you don’t have one you’re in fear of getting left behind!
Also, should brands be a bit braver when it comes to the Metaverse?
Annie leans into the fact that brands need to be more digitally curious (Andrew Grill), and as the space is still quite nascent it’s the perfect time to run test campaigns and learn from your mistakes. But, it’s Alan who nailed this question by raising his earlier point that, not only do organisations have an opportunity to build communities from scratch in a new digital environment, but those communities are in a space where brands can have a relationship of complete immersion with their customer.
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