Q: What should retailers and hospitality companies think about the metaverse?
Fiona: Everything in the metaverse builds on what’s come before and previous trends and changes in taste. Customers are taking greater control, and greater ownership as participants in the experiences served to them. In the metaverse, they’ll be able to interact with these experiences in real-time and co-create. Suddenly, we’re all creators in this space.
Q: It sounds like what Roblox is trying to do by letting people build stores.
Fiona: Yes, to a degree. But there’s a big misconception that the metaverse is all about gaming. It happens that game platforms have been going for years and already have that head start. I think that brands can exist in the metaverse and not necessarily in a game incarnation or inside a game. So it’s important not to limit your view.
Q: Retail and hospitality, particularly, are very tethered to the physical world. Eating that’s also hard to translate. How do you see these experiences evolving?
Fiona: The metaverse will not replace these experiences. It may instead augment the real world. It’s not only about digital assets and NFTs. Think of it as bringing a higher level of value provided to customers in existing places and experiences. For example, we’ve had large-scale screens in stores for a long time. Soon we might receive data in other modes — on our eyeglasses, on our wrists, in our clothes. This gives us a persistent layer of information. It might be as simple as helping us way find through a city or a store. But it could be presenting extra levels of information and detail about physical products — like, how many gallons of water is used to produce this pair of eco-jeans. People care about the imprint of the products and services they’re purchasing. Bringing that type of learning and that type of information is super important, and the Metaverse is a vehicle for that.
Q: How should business decision-makers think about all of this as they make either investment decisions or strategy decisions?
Fiona: They will need to hire a new generation that understands these underlying technologies — designers and creatives and storytellers and engineers and marketers, and people who are gamers and understand the mechanics of these interactions. It may be better to partner with agencies and third parties initially because the talent pool is still relatively small. These might be niche agencies, but they have already spent time building these experiences and thinking about what the metaverse can be. Remember that the metaverse might be building on the physical rather than on the digital. eCommerce sales went up dramatically during COVID-19, but now people are coming back to physical stores. They like going to places and experiencing the physical. So there is an opportunity to augment the physical rather than put everyone in a headset at home.
Stores will need to hire a new generation that understands these underlying technologies — designers and creatives and storytellers and engineers and marketers, and people who are gamers and understand the mechanics of these interactions.
Q: So, what is your advice for retail and hospitality businesses? How should they react to the metaverse?
Fiona: There’s a significant lag time between what people in tech are excited about versus what’s happening in the world outside of tech. It will take time, for example, for VR headsets to become more mainstream. The metaverse and tools around VR and AR are still a novelty. But brands that want to stay ahead of the curve should start working on something now and start experimenting. It can be something small, but it’s essential to learn how this new space works. Talk to your customers, and understand what they want for the metaverse and these new spaces in AR and VR. Hire an internal champion who can push your efforts forward and be an effective ambassador. And be creative. Try new things. It’s an exciting time. Embrace new possibilities. Then one last point is about social responsibility. Think about everything that’s happened with these big tech firms and beyond over the last decade of the digital transformation. We’re at another threshold. With that comes great responsibility for the implications of what we build for society and the environment.
