Is Sabrina Carpenter’s Venture into the Metaverse a Mistake?
What do Mark Zuckerberg and Sabrina Carpenter have in common? A very recognizable head of hair and, as of two days ago, a metaverse partnership. And naturally, I have some thoughts.
The Summer of Sabrina
I’m working late, ‘cuz I’m a singerrr. If you’re like me, you just sang that sentence in your head and immediately recognized ‘Espresso’, Sabrina Carpenter’s recent bop. And let me tell you (as someone who saw her live at Coachella recently), a bop it is.
Although she’s been a music artist for 10+ years, she exploded into the mainstream pop scene this summer and is now dominating the charts. It’s clear her label is amping up the marketing efforts to ride this wave of success. She is all over the radio, billboards, talk shows, live performances, you name it. None of that surprised me, except for the recent announcement of a Sabrina Carpenter VR concert in, you guessed it, the Metaverse.
A Strange Collaboration
The Sabrina Carpenter VR concert happened this past Friday, July 19 exclusively in Meta Horizon Worlds. I personally found this to be an interesting move for Sabrina Carpenter’s team that I would argue is not the most effective platform.
- The Wrong Demographic
The main reason this collaboration didn’t feel like the right fit is due to the target audience. Sabrina Carpenter’s audience is primarily 18–24 year old females — over 75% of her listeners are female. Most of her fans are caught up on the most recent TikTok trends, taking selfies in 0.5 mode, and binge-watching the latest Netflix series. Compare that with the target audience of the Metaverse, where 59% of metaverse gamers are males with an average age of 27. Sabrina’s target audience is simply not in Horizon Worlds and likely don’t have access to it. The disconnect between Sabrina’s young, female-skewed following and the predominantly male, slightly older Metaverse gamers just missed the mark.
2. A Declining Platform
The Metaverse might have once been hailed as the future of digital interaction, but it hasn’t proven to live up to the initial hype. This could be an entire blog post in itself, but ultimately the platform has struggled to maintain its user base and user engagement with continously declining sales. I’m not here to comment on the future of the Metaverse, but even Mark Zuckerberg has moved the focus away by cutting themetaverse budget by 20%. Previous brands who have poured investment into the Metaverse such as Wendy’s, H&M, and Coca-Cola haven’t seen the return on investment from this platform.
3. A VR Venture Virtually Unnoticed
Both the previous reasons lead into my last point — Sabrina’s VR Concert seemed to pass and go unnoticed. The trailer for the concert generated 15k views on Youtube and under 3k views on Tik Tok. When I searched for ‘Sabrina Carpenter Metaverse’, the most viewed video I found had 683 likes. Compare that with this BBC Lounge live performance from less than a month ago which racked up a staggering 10 million views. The disparity is overwhelming and hard to ignore. It highlights a critical misalignment: while Sabrina’s fans are eagerly consuming her content on traditional platforms, they are barely engaging with her VR endeavors.
While I believe Sabrina’s star will continue to shine and we’ll be seeing a lot more of her, the Sabrina Carpenter VR Concert in Meta’s Horizon Worlds didn’t seem to hit the right notes (pun intended). I commend her team for experimenting with different marketing platforms and trends. Still, I think brands who win are the ones who stick to their strengths, know their audience, and focusing on where their fans are most engaged. After all, you can’t build a fanbase if they’re not even in the same universe.
