During today's Retail Reimagined panel hosted by Avery-Dennison, attendees asked lots of great questions. And we simply didn’t have time to answer them all. This post is my quick answer to: When should brands (and suppliers) take part in the metaverse?
You Asked!
When do you think metaverse will be widespread❓
When should we be ready to take part as brand owners❓
here’s my Answer:
NOW ~ beauty brands and suppliers should explore and inhabit the metaverse now!
Think back to this time 2 years ago, when every brand and manufacturer and ingredient maker jumped in to host webinars on zoom, went live on IG to chat with consumers, and began reinventing their entire digital footprint.
For many months, there was an unspoken grace period when it didn’t matter if you were camera ready, if you had pro-level lighting and sound, or even if your content was neatly produced.
We all had an opportunity then to figure out the technology and how we show up via video in real time, to make mistakes and to learn in a safe space.
NOW is that time in the metaverse. Sure the super-early adopters have been building and exploring the metaverse for years; but that just means you can find good role models if you’d like to borrow best practices and learn from others.
NOW is the time to at least dip your toe in the pool, to be a tourist in the metaverse so you can start developing your vision, start understanding the functionalities, and start navigating your avatar life.
Check out what indie brands and multinationals are doing in various worlds. Look beyond beauty and dream up how your business can make the best use of the metaverse.
And experiment! Use what you’ve learned in the physical and digital marketplace—try building near or collabing with other beauty brands to benefit from their traffic. But get creative too; you can do things in the metaverse that you’ve only ever dreamed about in the physical world or in 2D digital.
Metaversal beauty is already here!
With the help of Fournier PR, for instance, Valdé Beauty launched a new collection in January at Decentraland's virtual Ainsley Gallery. Decentraland is a world within the metaverse and one that’s shaping up to be quite popular with cosmetics and personal care companies.
Honestly there is so much going on the beauty metaverse that I’m going to paste in links to further reading and resources from around the web and let you start exploring:
Check out this June 23 webinar featuring Founders in the Metaverse
Beauty’s Place in the Metaverse by Joan Kennedy for BOF
Future View 2022-2027 a new report from BeautyStream and Cosmoprof Worldwide
Beauty Product Innovation: an Exploration of Ideas, Information, and Inspiration my remarks to cosmetics and fragrance marketing students at FIT scroll to this heading: Top Trends Inspiring Beauty Product Innovation in 2022 (and beyond)
Community, mindset and creativity: Estée Lauder, L’Oréal and Coty discuss future of the metaverse by Kacey Culliney for Cosmetics Design Europe
Gap sets up shop in Roblox to boost teen inclusion, self-expression by Chris Kelly for MarketingDive
this nearly 1h20min YouTube piece from Meta is also a commonly shared resource for people curious to start understanding what the Metaverse is, what’s possible now, and what’s coming next
And I'll do my best to add in a link to the Retail Reimagined event recording when it's available.
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