Unlocking Brand Value in the Metaverse

Transcript

hello everyone welcome so I'm Matthew cerrity from the sandbox for those who don't know yet the sandbox it's a virtual world based on web3 and the blockchain and I've been working in in the marketing and helping Brands develop their activities with digital for the past 17 years including 12 at Google and I believe that brands are being challenged at the moment because we are at a turning point maybe we can just have a quick survey

who in the room was born after the 1990s all right more than 50 percent so I'm not part of of it and unfortunately but uh more than 50 and uh yes this is actually a revolution we are living for uh the history and also for Brands the fact that digital natives are coming of age and as we've seen there are more than 50 percent of the global population which is now digital native and why it is interesting for brands or what is challenging for Brands is the

fact that those digital natives are not reacting in the same way then the previous generation to marketing activations marketing campaigns if we look at this generation uh we see that almost 70 percent of digital natives find ads disruptive And when they see an ad they just turn to a different screen when ads run so basically buying eyeballs with large media buy is really challenged in in by the fact that those digital natives don't really like ads and moreover two-thirds of this

generation believes that communities are created by interest not really economic or educational levels which means that the traditional way of doing marketing so social demo targeting doesn't really work anymore for this type of for this generation so the question is how do you build how do we build brands in these new digital native era and I believe the answer is around subculture or at least one answer is basically subculture so growing and nurturing communities leads to Brown

building upside but not only in brand building also e-commerce or direct to Consumers opportunities that eyeballs cannot really buy and what brands can achieve with that is basically having credibility among these communities and earn media which is something which is really hard to to to have with traditional marketing and if we think about it and you are I'm sure very aware of that the metaverse and web3 is a subculture if we think about it it has its own value around the centralization around digital ownership it's on wording good morning good

morning uh We've and also communication channels I'm pretty sure everyone is on Discord here so this is um a culture and a subculture itself and for Brands to be relevant to these subculture and more broadly to digital natives I believe it's interesting to a deep dive and understand three major Trends which are parts of those these metadaters subculture the first one is obviously the fact that meta verse is stepping into gaming and gaming is not really a you know a small group of people in in the room in their

bedroom anymore there are more than three billions gamers in the world and a recent studies show that gen Zed is spending more than 12 hours per week on Virtual words on gaming which is more than TV and for our marketers it's really uh challenging because they have been buying you know TV for for years for decades so it's a wake-up call and what we can learn from the gaming is that traditional advertising with very strong match stage around sales is not really working anymore it's more about the creativity it's more about the entertainment it's more about the fun you can get out of it

and as you as we we see we we we have Brands entering the the sandbox tapping into this gaming and very strong storytelling um I know I've got an example here about later everybody everybody knows I see that I need to update just a sec just want to make sure that you've got also the sound otherwise it's not going to be very fun here you are okay

let's try it again can we have the sounds yes no no okay so no big deal I'll do the voiceover with the sound it's obviously better but basically it's Ledger which has a very strong education strategy around the security in the blockchain and basically um they didn't just build their

education around you know online with writing with videos they also tap into the metaverse and Leverage The Sandbox to actually tell their stories and and do a full experience where you have quests to um to to complete so basically by tapping into the creativity the fun the uh the entertaining of the entertainment of gaming they managed to to drive very strong engagement so in average um Browns managed to get 30 minutes of play time in their experience so that's what

you get when you you are leveraging the the uh the gaming and the entertainment of the middle ears so for The Ledger it was even more it was 50 minutes if you compare that to more traditional marketing even digital marketing a couple of seconds on Tick Tock or 20 seconds 30 seconds on TV you can imagine what it means for for for brands then um understanding that this digital native generation is a greater generation really helps understand how to engage them and we've got here a study which was made in the UK and showing that 75

percent of the Gen Zed wants to be Creator when there are adults so basically he wants to be career professional creators creditors meaning you know doing videos Tick Tock YouTube Instagram but also creators in the gaming area and what is important here is the the power of the community for this greater generation and the fact that there is a co-creation with uh this uh this community and what we observe at the sandbox is that we've got very large Brands we've got artists we've got IPS like Care Bears or Walking Dead which are really working with the community of creators

through game jams to actually create part of their of their game and engage with the the community so the benefits of that is definitely that obviously you can create a assets you engage the community but you have a hollow effect you have a kind of an early media in that sense and what we observed is that this engagement Drive conversation Beyond The Sandbox and create a conversation on social media basically you earn media and as an example on the last season at the sandbox there were more than 10 000 hours of streaming only on YouTube and and

a video on on YouTube so that's the power of the the commit finally the other major trend is obviously the fact that digital ownership is the second nature for digital natives the the the they have been investing or buying digital assets for years and there is a change in parting obviously with digital ownership and nfts and it's major Trends and obviously on Art but also on gaming on profile pictures and other things and the Insight here for brown is really understanding that

digital ownership comes with utilities come with comes with the what I call a carrots which is kind of a trigger for for the community to engage with specific assets and at the sandbox obviously we've got millions of of accounts who has these wallets those nfts and this is basically it's a direct relationship that the brands can have with the users the players engaging them directly so to summarize uh We've created a

framework to help Brands actually understand and be relevant to the materials be relevant to the web3 culture which is uh the three C's framework we talked about the creativity uh the community and the carrots the creativity is really Shifting the mindset of Brands basically we we don't talk anymore about advertising it's really about entertainment very scripted narrative um basically bringing fun to um to uh to the users then when we think about traditional marketing obviously we think about audiences customers now in the web free

space we have to think about the Community First so it's not a one-way communication so a top-down messaging but it's really a co-creation we we mentioned game jams before and that's that's the the one of the most challenging elements I guess for bronze it's just to step down and enter the community discuss with the community on Discord co-create with the community is really hard for a brand to do that but that's where you get basically the relevance and you've got uh you earn basically the trust of the committee and finally as a brand of your skin you want to sell straight away but now you have first to bring value before asking

anything it's kind of a social media you know 10 or 15 years ago when you were creating your page as a brand on Facebook or in Instagram obviously you are not pushing straight away your ad to uh to your customers but it was more how can I bring value bring value with the content with exclusive elements uh I don't give elsewhere so that's that's basically the carrot which is here in the web free space um the the nfts and the utilities you can bring around it obviously the benefits of that we mentioned it before is really the engagement the air media and the direct

relationship you have and that's why brands are massively going into the web 3 space in the metal s and also here in the sandbox we've got more than 400 bronze IP artists over the globe joining the the ecosystem and we've got a large amounts also of Partners supporting those Brands and to enter the space all right the sound is still not where it's not working so I wanted to show here basically uh

how brands are celebrated in the sandbox you can recognize the board ape you can recognize other world of women you can recognize cyberkunks here Warner a lot of different oh thank oh thank you [Applause] good nephew no way Paris Hilton oh they let children in here yeah it's a birthday can't you see makes total sense you don't get it do ya who cares let's

go [Music] so yes it's a it's a glimpse of how brands are celebrated in in the sandbox and are part of the culture because the uh they managed to actually leverage uh all those uh insights all those triggers of the web 3 culture it's around entertainment it's around Community it's around bringing value and utilities and as they manage to do that they build for the platform not for them that's how they get the relevance and that's how users are spending ads most as much time in the brand experiences than in other experiences because it's relevant to

them it's fun it's entertaining it's basically parts of the culture they are joining uh why they are joining not again so brands are joining um and I are actually doing different elements in in the sandbox and I put a couple of examples here which uh I feel are relevant uh the the the the main uh common points of all those use case is that brands are entering the sandbox and uh during activation and nurturing their marketing

strategy it's not something out of their marketing plan it's nurturing their marketing plan so for example uh top left hand corner you've got Gucci who actually um did an experience in the sandbox as part of broader media Campaign which is a Gucci also there were an ad campaign there were activation in real life so in nine different places in the world in Los Angeles in Paris in Tokyo in Milan and they extend that for the people who couldn't be there in the sandbox recreating the university we're creating in real life in in their ad campaign so it was supporting basically they are marketing objective

uh to uh to uh to actually position the the the the the Gucci worlds another element is how paracetylton you've got in in the middle is actually leveraging cultural moments that's not something new so she's leveraging allowing she's leveraging uh some Valentine's moments and she's doing things in real life and she extend that also in the metaverse in the sandbox for the people who couldn't join so she's relevant in the cool in their in real life cultural but also in the web 3 space

we've got also companies like carpool who are showing their values how they support ngos here's for to show the buyer to to drive a Warners around the biodiversity of of the bees and they they managed to raise money thanks to their activation in the sandbox so a different use case we've got purely in real life digital event uh collaboration so you've got something in your life you do the same in the sandbox uh you know gamified way for the people who cannot join we've got a ledger who scaled uh basically their activation of Education

in the sandbox we mentioned it before and also you've got Brands which are nurturing their loyalty program strategy how they they managed to to have a very core uh audience engagement and here they are leveraging their Warner pass in the sandbox to bring Utilities in the real life so basically giving access to exclusive concerts uh exclusive merch because of the people who have the past who went up to the end of the experiences those are only a couple of examples and obviously there are a lot to be built together we are just at the

beginning of a broader Journey and that's it let's time let's build the future together [Applause] I guess we've got four or five more minutes if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer how many users do you got and how do you build the you know the number of users that you have of your platform so we've got um 4.5 million accounts in the sandbox so people who created an account in the sandbox and then we look at the Players

so kind of the active users out of those 4.5 and as we are not fully open yet we work with Seasons I can share the number of the last seasons we had 400 000 uh active players unique players during the last season which lasts for 10 weeks what is interesting also for for Brands is and I I can uh build on on on that is basically uh Brands which are entering the sandbox are obviously engaging less people than what you can do uh you know on social media where you've got billions of users but the engagement

you've got is way more stronger 30 minutes in average so you build from there a very core uh very strong uh audience where we and and you are relevant to this audience and then you have the earned media and now and there the media is basically the conversation you've got on Twitter the conversation you've got um on YouTube and so on and that's where you've got the millions hundreds of millions of um of Engagement so it's a kind of a different way to uh to be to uh to do your marketing activation but that's the way it worked best um you mentioned kind of co-creation

with communities being really effective a lot of the examples that I've sort of seen I feel quite still quite like single player in the way that someone engages even whether it was like The Ledger example someone plays the game and then they learn more about Ledger but it still feels kind of one way in that sense what do you think right now and perhaps within sandbox especially are the best ways for communities to almost like hear the voice of the actual community and the community actually start building together with the brand and create more of that co-creation that you mentioned so we we so first of all the corporation is still here maybe uh there are hundreds of experiences out there and the one you

see the most at the moment is the one which is built with the sandbox so we talk a lot about Snoop Dogg we talk a lot about uh Warner we're talking about all those Brands and very large artists but there are also smaller groups medium-sized groups which is with which are building with the community and are running a game Jam contest and it's really something which is well received by the community because they are creators they are Gamers that's the way it works in the gaming industry in the gaming space and so we are only at the beginning of their journey and we only see the tip of the iceberg obviously but

the more Brands will join the more we are going to open the sandbox which is the case at the moment so basically everyone can Bell in in the sandbox the more we all see a co-creation and once again I really like the fact that we compare that to uh you know social media 15 years ago 15 years ago you know Brands were out there pushing their message a bit alone and then if you look at what's happening now it's the co-creation where the creators which are relevant in the space that's the way they get uh you know the trust of the end users uh of on the social platform so it's a question of maturity also I guess we are at the beginning of the

journey and I'm sure we'll see more and more co-creation game Champs in the future yes maybe one more question um I'm just curious because you mentioned this is mostly targeted at younger audiences how do you think older audiences would perceive this and do you think that they would adopt it eventually so that's a really good question so I mentioned or younger audiences younger being born after the 90 uh 1990 so it's not that young to be honest that's number one um and it's representing once again more

than 50 of the global population and number two when we are entering the web 3 space it means wallets it means tokens so it means people above 18. so what we see and what we observe is that most of our users is from 18 to 45. so it's a good a good mix of digital natives uh plus plus let's say kind of players that's it I'll be here right here if you have any question I can answer them thanks [Music]

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