Help Them Make Things.
Last time we covered how identity works a little differently in the metaverse. The shift from the recorded self to the projected self upends the value of our online identities.
It upends the value of our online identities because they will more quickly accumulate value than they do today. This quickening comes from two places:
- Items for purchase that augment our identities can be made exclusive, and therefore more valuable.
- Through these identities we can add value to the worlds they inhabit when we create with them.
Today we increase the value of our online identities by accumulating followers. Our value has become our ability to reach as many other people as possible. Brands buy this from us. We called it “influence” and the people that were great at it, “influencers.”
Fashion jumped into the metaverse fast, wielding that insight from the web 2.0 world like a hammer. Gucci and Nike — apparel in general — are having a field day in the metaverse.
If you’re a brand that wants to dabble in the metaverse now, this is a tempting area because it’s a familar area. After all, it’s really just merch. The magic of web3 and NFTs lets brands run the gamut on exclusivity. Everything from free and infinitely available to spectacularly expensive and one-of-a-kind can be conjured up and delivered. No sideways boats will be in the way.
But that culture is changing. Maybe it’s because of the rise of the metaverse, or maybe it’s just culture doing what culture does best: changing. In either case the most savvy of the web 2.0 world rightly want to be seen as creators while the era of influence wanes.
The metaverse is a creator’s economy. If brands want to be part of it, the best thing they can do is simple: Help people create.
Help People Create
Help can come in a lot of forms. Immersed.com (disclosure: I work with the Immersed team through an agency contract) for example, has built a working environment in VR that some of their customers are in 40 hours every week. They help by getting builders of the metaverse tools to build while in the metaverse. Some of their customers use it for the thrill of being at the bleeding edge of tech. Still others because it’s a better experience for them because of their ability. One person sharing their experience on Discord told Immersed they loved the software because it allowed them to work flat on their back after an injury.
But what about brands that aren’t necessarily web3 companies?
Open Up Your IP.
All brands have interesting intellectual property (yes, all of them). For every brand there is a creator who can make that IP even more interesting. Web 2.0 showed this when influencer’s creativity amplified products as common as breakfast cereals or as under-considered as blenders.
In the metaverse creators are starting from scratch. Like from-scratch from-scratch. There’s just a big blank room to work in.
A brand’s intellectual property is the building material for these worlds. Material could be as simple as permission to use logos or as complicated as BIM data.
What differs in the web3 enabled metaverse is how much automation can play a role in providing this material to creators. Smart contracts, on a blockchain, have the potential to make it more safe for brands to hand out sensitive information with minimal intervention. They need to intervene less because they know they can revoke access at any time, and thus anything created though that access. It becomes possible to build self-service creator tools that dole out access with little fuss for the brand’s administrators.
Want to shill for Citibank? Sign-up, get access to their creator-kit and go for it.
If you just read “creator-kit” and thought it sounded familiar, then you probably play video games. The community that modifies video games (“modding”) has had access to tools like these for many years. What they create is astonishing in scale in and quality. Whole franchises of games we play today are built on the backs of these “mods.”
So, if your brand has IP (it does) and there are creators that want to work with it (there are) you are fortunate. This is the beginning of a golden age for creativity that you’re going to be able to benefit from at any scale.
Soon.
Today the tech to enable this level of creator-brand relationship is a tough slog. The companies building tools are just getting started. Anyone that wants to build these kind of intricate systems to deliver IP safely to creators is going to be doing so by hand. The state of the art is being built by very talented, dedicated people. Tools to make this easier are few, so the people with the skills to accomplish things are few.
If your brand is one of the lucky ones with the money to throw directly at this talent, anything is possible. But by the numbers, it probably isn’t. So in the meantime here’s what you can do:
- Figure out how your product fits in the 3D, decentralized worlds of the metaverse.
- Learn how your people (audiences and teams) are thinking about and using the metaverse.
- Look at your performance measures of today and extrapolate them into the future where emotion can be targeted in real time.
- Get clear on how you will offer protection for your customers and your business because this is all very new and some of it will go wrong.
Product, People, Performance, Protection
This framework will help you break the big task of getting ready for the future into manageable bits. It will give you relevant tactics for today while giving you a handle on whats to come in the next few years.
See you next time, where we’ll go through each piece in detail.
