Metaverse branding’s success depends on its underlying purpose

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The grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the meta­verse is dri­ving brands from across sec­tors to build a pres­ence in the space.

The move to the meta­verse is under­stand­able, giv­en that Gart­ner pre­dicts around a quar­ter of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will be spend­ing at least an hour in the meta­verse every day for work, shop­ping, edu­ca­tion, and enter­tain­ment by 2026.

Meta­verse brand­ing is not only a chance for com­pa­nies to engage with their clients but also anoth­er mar­ket­ing avenue and a source of revenue.

While what com­pa­nies get out of a meta­verse pres­ence depends on their val­ues and objec­tives, Raj­pal Rekhi, man­ag­ing direc­tor at RA Repub­lic, an agency that helps with meta­verse brand­ing, told Cryp­toSlate in an inter­view that for com­pa­nies that val­ue cus­tomers, the meta­verse presents unlim­it­ed poten­tial and opportunity.

Rekhi said:

“The meta­verse is a per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to not only cre­ate an avenue for con­nec­tion, but it can also be a place where they can express their cre­ativ­i­ty, build new cus­tomer expe­ri­ences, build new ways to inter­act with their audi­ences as well.”

Yet, just like in the offline and online world, meta­verse pres­ence does not equate to success.

The difference between success and failure

Accord­ing to Rekhi, meta­verse brand­ing can lead to tem­po­rary suc­cess for the wrong rea­sons, but such suc­cess may not last with­out a well-thought-out strat­e­gy and purpose.

Rekhi said:

“The longevi­ty of suc­cess comes down to whether or not they thought about what are they going to do in terms of pro­gress­ing this great oppor­tu­ni­ty they have.”

In Rekhi’s opin­ion, the brands that have “real­ly thought about” the brand, the char­ac­ters, the world they’re design­ing, the pur­pose behind it, and the expe­ri­ence they want to deliv­er, are like­ly to be more suc­cess­ful than those seek­ing short-term gains.

Rekhi said:

“If they [the brands] can cre­ate some­thing that’s quite cre­ative, some­thing that actu­al­ly speaks out to the cus­tomers, some­thing that is quite engag­ing, and that there is some sort of pur­pose to it and there’s some sort of replay val­ue to it, and it gives cus­tomers a rea­son to go back to it,”

those brands are like­ly to be more suc­cess­ful than others.

Besides, there are some com­pa­nies that are like­ly to ben­e­fit more from a pres­ence in the meta­verse than oth­ers. This means that meta­verse brand­ing is not for everyone.

This is because even in the dig­i­tal realm, there are cer­tain brands that are more suc­cess­ful online because of the nature of their prod­ucts and services.

“I would always say that cer­tain busi­ness­es would def­i­nite­ly ben­e­fit from the meta­verse, but oth­er busi­ness­es, they might not because their audi­ence might not be look­ing for those experiences.”

Rekhi said. So if the cus­tomers of a busi­ness are not dig­i­tal­ly savvy and if the brands can­not pro­vide any addi­tion­al val­ue by cre­at­ing a meta­verse pres­ence, then it “makes no sense” for the brands to ven­ture into the meta­verse, Rekhi said.

The challenges of building a brand in the metaverse

For RA Repub­lic, build­ing out a meta­verse pres­ence includes build­ing the char­ac­ters, nar­ra­tives, the world, the land­scape, and oth­er assets. But part of the process is fig­ur­ing out how the dif­fer­ent assets can be used to cre­ate util­i­ty and the kind of expe­ri­ence they can offer customers.

Jaasir Ali, co-founder and chief oper­a­tions offi­cer at RA Repub­lic, told Cryp­toSlate in an inter­view, that this involves get­ting to the depth of the company’s vision for the brand. He added:

“The key for us is to build out a util­i­ty-based meta­verse which isn’t lim­it­ed to an online por­tal and tran­scends into oth­er aspects of the busi­ness and brand.  This way the meta­verse and brand become inter­twined which opens a whole new oppor­tu­ni­ty to deliv­er cre­ative experiences.”

Ali said that this also helps ensure that the brand’s val­ues and cre­ative goals are at the fore­front of any strate­gic deci­sions regard­ing the build of the metaverse.

But trans­form­ing the brand’s long-term vision for the meta­verse into tan­gi­ble mile­stones is a chal­lenge in itself, Rekhi said. Addi­tion­al­ly, brands can also face a chal­lenge try­ing to con­vey their meta­verse pres­ence to their cus­tomers with­out cre­at­ing con­fu­sion, he added.

Brands have to think about how to effec­tive­ly mar­ket a new cre­ative prod­uct across mul­ti­ple touch points to a cus­tomer base already famil­iar with the ser­vices, Rekhi said.

Rekhi added:

“Keep­ing things clear yet cre­ative is one of the biggest chal­lenges for any mar­keter. We have the chal­lenge of iden­ti­fy­ing and fur­ther seg­ment­ing audi­ence pools to ensure that the audi­ence right peo­ple are hit with the right material.”

Rewards at the end of the road

While build­ing a brand in the meta­verse can be exact­ing, if done cor­rect­ly, it can yield gen­er­ous returns in the future. Brands can increase their rev­enue through the sale of non-fun­gi­ble tokens or by pro­vid­ing dif­fer­ent util­i­ties. Guc­ci, Louis Vuit­ton, and Coca-Cola are just some of the brands already exper­i­ment­ing with the meta­verse to increase rev­enue or brand awareness.

Rekhi said:

“There’s a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties for rev­enue to be gen­er­at­ed for a busi­ness as long as they’ve clear­ly thought about the rea­sons as to why they’re doing it and what they’re try­ing to achieve, and what con­nec­tion they’re try­ing to build.”

Brand­ing in the meta­verse requires sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments toward infra­struc­ture and train­ing. But the return on invest­ment makes the ven­ture into the meta­verse prac­ti­cal­ly sen­si­ble, pro­vid­ed that the company’s cus­tomers are look­ing for a dig­i­tal expe­ri­ence and the brand can live up to such cus­tomer expectations.

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