3 Brands crushing their entrance in The Metaverse with NFTs — It’s only the beginning…
By Margot Pessy
We are in the merging of two worlds: the physical and virtual. New opportunities are emerging from this collision, and the Metaverse is becoming commonplace.
For example, Fortnite has 350 million registered accounts and is projected to have 1 billion within 3 years. Meanwhile, Facebook has opened its beta for Horizon — a new social VR experience.
There’s debate on when the Metaverse will “arrive”, but the important question is “Will you get left behind?”
WAIT, WHAT IS THE METAVERSE?
It is a “virtual space that blends actual and virtual realities in real-time, and is well on its way to becoming a highly influential platform for social interactions, cultural properties, and economic exchanges.” (Campaign UK)
So which brands are making everyone else play catch-up?
1 | Shopify and its NFT Marketplace
“Shopify has recently announced that it opened its NFT marketplace for people to sell and trade tokens via its e-commerce platform. Through this, the NFT market would be more accessible through a global platform — which most people already have accounts in and would be easier to navigate. Users can also become merchants by selling their digital art.” (Tech Times)
Shopify’s goal, in doing so, is to give sellers and buyers a way to trade with no third party in place and give creators more power and control over their non-fungible tokens. This is a HYPER-CRITICAL business shift: Shopify, one of the widest-used platforms for facilitating online transactions, has already invested in tools to support NFTs.
Shopify is adding trust and convenience to the ecosystem. It’s attracting some big names to the party. The first merchant in Shopify’s NFT marketplace will be the NBA’s Chicago Bulls.
NFTs here are demonstrating no need for third-party intervention, and Shopify’s marketplace is the prime example of it.
How long will it take other major e-commerce facilitators to catch on? I’m guessing right when Shopify’s NFT market dominance finally breaks through executives’ Luddite mindsets and hits their bottom lines…
2 | Coca Cola Auctioning Its First NFT
“We are excited to share our first NFTs with the metaverse, where new friendships are being forged in new ways in new worlds, and to support our longstanding friend and partner, Special Olympics International. Each NFT was created to celebrate elements that are core to the Coca-Cola brand, reinterpreted for a virtual world in new and exciting ways,” says Selman Careaga, President, Global Coca-Cola Trademark.
The inaugural collection of Coca-Cola NFTs reimagines some of the brand’s iconic assets for the metaverse — with dynamic motion, movement, and multi-sensorial elements. This is a way for Coca-Cola to share its values, and history through a new way of story-telling while making it a unique experience for fans and customers of the brand.
Coca-Cola said on its website through its global senior brand director, Oana Vlad, that the company has “been watching NFTs, cryptocurrency and the metaverse, and see this as a timely opportunity to participate and learn from this emerging space.”
The NFT loot box sold for 217 ETH, which is a little over USD $660,000, and was sold on the first and biggest NFT Marketplace yet: OpenSea. From the social media buzz it created to all of the NFT profits going towards the Special Olympics International, Coca-Cola has been in the headlines and is starting to make other brands want to experiment with NFTs.
Just in the last week of July, Dolce Gabbana released its own high-fashion NFT collections and Campbell has now partnered with Sophia Chang to create an NFT celebrating the soup company's new label, with proceeds going to Feeding America.
3 | Gucci NFT and Roblox Collaboration
Gucci entered the Metaverse early on and knew they had to jump into NFTs Back in March 2021. The Italian luxury fashion company partnered with Wanna (Belarus-based fashion-tech company) for its first NFT: the Gucci Sneaker, available for purchase for just $11.99 USD virtually.
Wanna CEO, Sergey Arkhangelskiy, predicts a high growth in AR, stating, “In five or maybe 10 years a relatively big chunk of fashion brands revenue will come from digital products. Our goal as a company is to actually supersede the product photos … and substitute it for something which is way more engaging and closer to offline shopping.”
Gucci goes further with its collaboration with the gaming platform Roblox launching their “Gucci Garden.” Much like the physical Gucci Garden Archetypes installation in Florence, this Gucci Garden immerses visitors in the universe of creative director Alessandro Michele.
The nature of this collaboration highlights Roblox’s capabilities just as much as it promotes Gucci fashion. Roblox is encouraging users to invest in digital items such as clothes. Gucci is operating a revenue-share model with Roblox. “The clothes can be worn in other Roblox experiences and are conceived as collectibles,” says Roblox vice president of brand partnerships Christina Wootton.
It is only a limited time before all luxury brands enter the Metaverse to try and appeal to the young audience and to one that doesn’t always have access to the physical products sold by them. NFTs once again show a way for brands to attract more customers and truly embrace this growing Gen-Z generation that lives primarily in the digital space.
As we can see, more and more brands are entering the Metaverse and are developing their identity in the digital space. Now, we can’t predict what is going to happen, but all we can say is that brands are investing in this digital sphere and there is definitely space for money to grow, starting with NFTs. This might be the sign to say goodbye to the Internet and say hello to Internet 3.0: The Metaverse.
What do you think? Do you think the Metaverse and NFTs are a fad? Or are they here to stay? …
