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Metaverse Marketing |
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Tuesday, June 21, 2022 |
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Welcome to Ad Age’s metaverse marketing newsletter, featuring news gathered by Ad Age Technology Reporter Asa Hiken, standing in for Garett Sloane, who is out in Cannes. Every week we explore how brands are playing in the metaverse and how virtual worlds are transforming the advertising marketplace. You can sign up here to get updates delivered to your inbox.
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Virtual Cannes
Meta tops the list of marketers drawing interest in the metaverse at this year’s Cannes Lions festival. The tech giant recreated the scenic landscape of the French Riviera in a world called “Cloud Island,” where visitors can play volleyball as virtual avatars or simply take in the view, Ad Age’s Garett Sloane reports. Meta also announced new partnerships with guitar-maker Fender and car company Mini, both of which unveiled virtual experiences in Horizon Worlds (also the home of “Cloud Island”).
Meanwhile, McCann Worldgroup revealed a virtual gallery housing its top campaigns to serve those who were unable to physically attend Cannes. The activation is called “MWverse” and will showcase ads like General Motors’ “Dr. Evil” Super Bowl spot and L’Oréal’s “Women of Worth” campaign. McCann teamed with virtual tech company Journee for the experience, as well as Meta, because who else.
Other agencies have also brought the metaverse to Cannes, including Wunderman Thompson and VaynerX, and even Lowe’s showed off its virtual strategy.
Read more about Meta's 'Cloud Island' here
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The market for crypto domains
How much would you be willing to spend on your company’s domain name on the Ethereum blockchain? Nike’s Web3 brand RTFKT paid $38,000 for “dotswoosh.eth,” Budweiser paid $90,000 for “beer.eth” and Chipotle forked over $3,000 for “chipolte.eth” (not a misspelling).
Brands are buying their crypto domain names, which function like domains for traditional websites but for crypto wallets, for a variety of reasons. “You would be silly to not own it right now,” said Gregg Lester, chief digital officer at brand consultancy Troika Labs.
But buyer beware: The secondary market can be tricky and may require some skillful negotiation if someone else already owns the name you want. If you really tick them off, they could even burn the name, which means sending it to an inaccessible smart contract where it is lost forever.
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What we’re reading
Fox Corporation, Universal Pictures and Snoop Dogg’s Death Row Records have teamed with crypto startup MoonPay to launch an NFT platform built for minting at scale, per CNBC.
CoinDesk reported that Ukraine sold an esteemed Crypto Punk NFT for $100,000. The Punk was donated to the struggling country back in March, when it was worth closer to $260,000.
Venture capital investor and Web3 evangelist Chris Dixon told The New York Times’ “Sway” podcast that crypto is entering an “incubation phase,” not a death spiral.
Eighteen workers spent a week in the metaverse and did not have good things to say about it, according to a study reported on by Business Insider.
TikTok in the metaverse? The short video app’s owner, Tencent Holdings, formed an extended reality (XR) unit to explore opportunities in the metaverse, per Reuters.
The Washington Post is unimpressed by Meta’s virtual headset prototype, Starburst. Even Zuck himself admitted the technology is “wildly impractical.”
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Web3 fail of the week
French clothier Lacoste had its Discord server hacked by a phishing scam when a malicious user hijacked an admin account to promote a fake NFT mint. The hack came merely a week after the brand’s Discord officially opened. Read more about it in Ad Age’s NFT blog.
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Meta data of the week: 13.2K
That’s the number of likes, at the time of writing, on BobbyHundreds’ viral tweet of an anti-crypto protest outside of his pop-up in SoHo for the NFT collection Adam Bomb Squad. The protest turned out to be a marketing stunt staged by Bobby and his team, he told Ad Age, but many were still debating in the comment section as to the picket's legitimacy. Read more about the stunt in Ad Age’s story here.
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Meta's Nicola Mendelsohn discusses "immersive" virtual Croisette, while guitar-maker Fender and Mini, the car company, open new worlds.
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Read more >
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A short suffix could make a big difference for marketing in Web3.
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At Cannes, Lowes shows off new platform for creators to use its digital products in virtual environments.
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Co-founder Bobby Hundreds said he wanted to exploit the line between skeptics and enthusiasts.
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The space will house the agency's top campaigns.
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This comes after the holding company unveiled a new chief metaverse officer, which is actually an avatar.
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Interbrand identifies breakthrough brands, from Arcadia to Youthforia.
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