The metaverse is not child’s play. Or maybe yes. Nike’s top management asked this: under the leadership of the new CEO John Donahoe, who arrived a few weeks before the pandemic tsunami, the sportswear giant has decided to bet on these new environments. “We have accelerated our digital transformation to enable customers to experience immersive experiences at that intersection that already exists between sport, creativity, play and culture,” Donahoe told Vogue America. Thus was born Nikeland, the Nike headquarters populated by a new generation of athletes. Mind-boggling numbers.
Are Roblox
In just under nine months, the online playground has hosted nearly six million users, who entered thanks to their avatars on Roblox. And even the influencers have decided to take up this new challenge: the longtime endorser athlete and world champion of the Los Angeles Lakers LeBron James has created a special project on Nikeland. Objective: to give virtual basketball lessons to the most avid fans who aim to improve the technique in real playing fields. “For most brands, the metaverse is still a confused concept, but it’s already in the minds of all the very young, it’s the new obsession,” Greg Petro recently wrote on Forbes.
According to McKinsey
According to McKinsey’s new report “Marketing in the metaverse”, previewed for Italy in Il Sole 24 Ore, these environments can be interpreted as an evolution of the Internet. A change of center of gravity for users and companies because it presupposes a new relational phase. “For consumers this is a step change in the way they interact with each other and with the brands they love: think for example of the evolution from individual video games to social gaming and now to play in the metaverse, where the experience becomes more immersive, all-encompassing, in real time ”, reads the report.
A growing and not always transversal interest. Because all the indicators register a maximum attention of Generation Z and Alpha. Meanwhile, the numbers tell how only in 2021 the online searches of the term metaverse have increased by 7.200% and how the supply chain linked to these new relationship dynamics has raised about ten billion dollars, more than double the previous year. Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, not only intercepted three billion dollars to finance its long-term strategy, but also announced a partnership with Lego to build the first metaverse for children. Immersive environments, but also new fully functioning virtual economies, often based on cryptocurrencies and digital assets, including non-fungible tokens.
The prospects
All this opens up to different dynamics of peer-to-peer interaction, with transactions and content generated more and more by users. For McKinsey analysts, the winning key to open the doors of these new businesses for companies passes from redefining marketing strategies in the metaverse, identifying more challenging objectives and experimenting in those platforms that offer the best opportunities and best fit the brand. “Consumers tend to see brands in the metaverse as innovative, so the bar to deliver relevant experiences is getting higher. With the metaverse, marketers may need to define new engagement metrics that take into account the typical behavioral economy of the game. It’s all a question of balance between new advertising formulas and immersive experiences ”, highlights the report.