There are 64 Italian companies present in the metaverse, according to one study conducted by the Metaverse Marketing Lab of the Milan Polytechnic. They are mainly active in fashion and entertainment, followed by sports, automotive, tourism and agri-food.
The most used platforms are the Italian The Nemesis, Roblox and Fortnite. Beyond these data, it is interesting to understand what use they make of the metaverse Italian companies, with what strategies they enter and what results they expect.
Towards the metaverse
What changes between virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality
by Emanuele Capone
To learn more, we turned to Professor Giuliano Noci, pro-rector of the Polytechnic and scientific director of the Metaverse Marketing Lab. Starting from what Italian companies are looking for in the metaverse, it is possible reconstruct the situation as a whole: “As it is easy to expect in the initial stages of a great technological innovation, the first initiatives of Italian brands in the metaverse do not allow the emergence of largely dominant approaches. However, the slight delay that Made in Italy has accumulated in comparison with the other major world markets on issues relating to the metaverse highlights the trend to build an experience that is reasoned, more aware and less oriented towards following the trend of the moment”.
Again: “Excluding the big luxury brands such as Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana and Lamborghini, the highly innovative scope of the metaverse has left small and medium-sized Italian companies at the window. Skepticism has gradually translated into prudence, which tends to lead to thoughtful choices. In fact, the design direction that Italian brands are undertaking in the metaverse is shrewd. Three main indications: community building, expansion of the target and strengthening of the brand through new forms of engagement with the consumer. There are 3 aspects that are strongly interconnected and dependent on the use of the metaverse as a channel for approaching the next generation of consumers, a vision of the metaverse and its potential which has little to do with the excessive metaverse buzz of a few months ago and which is based instead on the alignment between strategic vision and technological implementation”.
Companies that face the metaverse are to be considered pioneers, who venture out to understand its potential. Above all, they are prone to innovation: “As often happens, however, the great innovations they are led by companies capable of keeping an attentive eye on the future. Today, many companies are starting to explore the potential of the metaverse as a marketing and entertainment platform, which necessarily leads to greater uptake and, consequently, a Consolidation of what could become a metaverse culture in the future,” Noci explained.
metaverse culture
This leads us to wonder whether a marked culture of the metaverse is already taking shape among Italian companies: “In the business world there is undoubtedly a common tendency towards need to get on board a change perceived as epochaland, and this despite the barriers that naturally limit the so-called entry into the metaverse and which are significant for many companies today. Creating an immersive experience is expensive, complex and still today there is not enough historical memory to fully evaluate the benefits and risks. Nonetheless, on a daily basis we observe a plethora of initiatives by branded companies in the metaverse.”
A culture that is flourishing in the name of a necessity, just as the need to be online has pushed companies towards the Web and towards social networks, which however must go hand in hand with expectations: “There is a very strong, and in some ways immature, expectation around the metaverse even in the world of businesses. However, this expectation also offers fertile ground for experimenting with new business models and improving existing ones. This creative chaos is already known to anyone who knows the dynamics associated with similar technological discontinuities and is fundamentally necessary to understand the evolutionary trajectories of the metaverse. It is necessary experimentation on both sides, businesses and consumers, to reach a proper understanding of how extract value from immersive experiences and the metaverse in general. Consequently – Noci pointed out to us – in the coming years it is likely that the push linked to incredibly high expectations, often unrequited due to an inadequate technological infrastructure, will give way to solid foundations on which to build a so-called metaverse culture , exactly as happened with the Internet”.
Business-to-customer activities
Italian companies are not satisfied with being on the metaverse, they want to test it potential to get the most out of it, also in terms of customer acquisition and retention. This is why they organize initiatives that depend, as explained by Professor Noci, on various technologies: “In the case of third-party platforms for accessing virtual worlds, there are various cases of showrooming, NFT exhibitions and competitions, branded entertainment experiences and access to exclusives. In other cases we make use of technological tools that enable us a greater level of immersion, such as virtual reality viewers, which in the tourism sector allow you to experience what our country has to offer in a completely new but complementary way. Virtual reality also allows you to fulfill architectural objectives, such as the interior design cases of cruise ships. Finally, the inclusion of branded products in third-party gamified experiences, the new frontier of advertising and more, is now common”.
Business to business opportunities
In Italy, companies use the metaverse for marketing purposes marketing e involvement of consumers but something different is emerging: “The scope of marketing will continue to refine and increase the degree of complexity and flexibility of the company-consumer relationship, while the strength of the metaverse emerges in the B2B arena. Also in this case, Made in Italy seems to be a thriving ground for fluidizing processes in the manufacturing and engineering fields from the point of view of management, control and design of production processes. Three-dimensional platforms also represent a new way of professional growth for companies: interviews, networking and staff training are some of the possibilities also offered by some Italian-based platforms”.
The analysis
But is the metaverse really already dead?
by Andrea Daniele Signorelli
Metaverse Marketing
Is the metaverse seen only as an investment or do companies expect profits? “One of the most relevant topics from a managerial point of view it undoubtedly concerns the measurement of the effectiveness of initiatives in the metaverse. There is no widespread belief in the profitability of such investments among small and medium-sized Italian enterprises, while the first results of metaverse marketing initiatives highlight a decisive impact on brand positioning: increase in word of mouth, substantial increase in engagement time with the consumer, multi-channel presence (for example on Twitch, Discord or YouTube) and media involvement. The presence of a company in the B2C metaverse is not, to date, oriented towards increasing sales but towards reaching a new target and creating a new community of consumers: these are therefore brand objectives”, is the final reflection of Professor Noci.
There is one final consideration: customer acquisition is often a cost and the metaverse can compress itjust as it has helped to make the Web in all its forms, from ecommerce to social platforms.