Web3 Is Real, But Learn from the Mistakes of Web 1.0 -- Media Metaverse with Minsky

This was the era that was widely referred to with the often and in a way overused clichamp233 as quotthe Wild Westquot Nobody knew what they were doing Investments were made on visions Pricing was literally arbitrary and forget about data accountability or ROI It was an era when sellers were bilking millions of dollars from corporate America CEOs and CMOs with the dream of digital gold but with the shortterm reality more like wooden nickels The sell was simple and for a short period it was accurate Announce a digital deal with AOL or one of the top digital players and your stock price would go through the roof more than covering the cost of the actual dealIn general the deal commitment had to be in the 10mm20mm range to move the needle Typically these deals were cut on beautiful spring days on only the best of golf courses After a few beers and a nice meal a handshake agreement was set and the deal done Well almost amp8230 because therein after I and some of my industry peers were generally called in to make sense of the deal and find the value We were quotthe fixersquot And our task was impossible The value simply wasnamp8217t there Not by a long shot At most the 15 million deals were worth maybe 1 million Tops The result Hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing spend evaporated without much impact and in the year 2000 those stock prices came back down to Earth with a giant sucking sound as the bubble poppedWe are again at an inflection point of digital media and marketing With the rollout of 5G edge computing and the growing adoption of gigpersecond broadband connections along with the digital transformations brought about by the pandemic the next evolution call it quotMetaversequot or quotWeb3quot has begun This evolution driven by AR VR AI NFTs and the Blockchain promises wonders and transformations on economic health personal and societal levels only imagined by the best scifi authors and filmmakersI am fully aware how hypefilled that last sentence sounds and I am equally aware that if we donamp8217t screw it up how actually understated that sentence will prove to be The timing of these benefits will depend on the degree to which marketers chase shiny new objects versus identifying and investing in the building block foundational elements of being a Metaverseready company and developing a clear valuebased strategy that sees the endgame clearly and works towards that goalSo how do we avoid the mistakes of the past How do we get past FOMO and build a strong foundational strategy to evolve and transition to the next level in 2022 and beyondHere are some suggestionsStep 1 Accept That This is HappeningThe cloud is built The connectivity has started to rollout Consumers are buying new devices and upgrading to 5G This is real This is not an incremental but an exponential shift In the early Web days there was a tremendous amount of skepticism and denial that there would be a digital evolution quotWho would want to spend so much time in front of a screenquot they said Yeah Exactly Each evolution of the web has been predicated on a leap in bandwidth and we are currently in the middle of the biggest leap yet as we move into a 5GGig per SecondEdge Computing worldThe limitations that you as a marketer have been restricted by bandwidth and processing constraints are becoming a thing of the past And with hyperbroadband we39ll be leaving the flat 2D nature of the web into immersive 3D This year at CES LG set up a virtual 3D immersive experience to be able to view and explore their televisions on a desktopmobile in 360 PampampG created the LifeLab immersive experience an extensive avatarcentric desktopmobile experience for CES that allowed visitors to communicate in real time avatar to avatar with PampampG brand representatives as well as experience different worlds highlighting various PampampG brandsStep 2 Develop a Metaverse Strategy with a LongTerm VisionIf some current tactic makes sense within your overall strategy media or otherwise then great Go for it Test learn deploy Make sure you put KPIs to measure its effectiveness and contribution to ROI But if you39re doing it to check off a quotHey we39re coolquot box please think long and hard on whether it really is the best allotment of time and dollars However now it is extremely important to be investing both time and money to develop your Web3Metaverse strategy That was a critical error in the first goround that to some extent we are still paying for today Many companies built around the technology that was available quotin the momentquot and did not think about what the future would hold Giving just a bit of thought around what might be and how you can architect a flexible strategy that will allow you to adapt those new features easily and within a bigger framework without having to tear down and start over will help you avoid what VR pioneer Jaron Lanier calls quotlockinquotStep 3 Democratize the ProcessThe biggest mistake IMHO during Web1 was the fact that partnerships and investments were made generally by a single team or even a single individual whether it was a marketing team or an eCom team As everyone has since learned every aspect of your business from RampampD product development HR CRM communications advertising sales etc is impacted by these moments in time Establishing a working group with everyone allowed to have input and participate is essential and will minimize digital transformation blind spots which can later turn into all out internal frictionAlthough it can also be said to an extent about the web at large VR and XR both critical components of the Metaverse bend geography in much deeper ways than Zoom Google Meet or Microsoft Teams The quotsense of presencequot is palatable and it absolutely changes the persontoperson dynamic in addition to allowing retailers to reach customers far beyond their realworld boundaries Walk into Horizon Venues or Worlds the Meta social platform and youamp8217ll be standing next to chatting with and highfiving people from across the globe As you develop your Metaverse strategy in particular as a global entity ensure that the regionalglobal representatives within your organization have a voice in the decisionsStep 4 Drown Out the HypeCollectively when the media starts to talk about something new it39s a good signal that something is a brew in the ecosystem However on a microlevel an individual story can elevate a company or tactic far beyond its real value The hype machine is currently full throttle talking about millions of dollars paid for an NFT a brand purchasing a piece of virtual land on The Sandbox or Decentraland or whatever the new hot flashinthepan Metaverse is today In the past month the gaming acquisitions of Zynga by TakeTwo Interactive and ActivisionBlizzard by Microsoft have dominated the business pages And of course the real shift to Meta from Facebook and the subsequent refocusing of the company has signaled real investment in making all this a reality But for all the Microsofts TakeTwos and Metas there are a huge number of highrisk or vaporware companies pitching themselves as Metaverse In every media era or era of social transformation there are charlatans ready to take advantage of ignorance Buyer bewareStep 5 Start with the FundamentalsEach company of course must work on both a futurefocused endgame while maintaining their business of today One of the biggest and most notable differences in Web3Metaverse versus our current web experiences is the move to immersive and threedimensional experiences I am not solely talking about VRARXR or anything that would require a headset or eyewear although I do believe that is inevitableThe first step to becoming a Metaverseready company is to understand in which areas you are already behind The most obvious one is how we display products This is 2022 not 1998 And yet for some reason having nothing to do with connectivity or bandwidth eretailers and product manufacturers are still displaying their goods and services on their websites or other digital distribution channels in flat boring 1994ish 2D photos Is that how we shop in the real world Do we not pick up goods read the labels examine clothing and luxury items from every angle 3D digital twins which are hyperrealistic renders of products not cartoonish or animated are available today giving consumers the ability to inspect products as they would in the real worldThe Khronos Group is a 3D image standards organization which counts major tech companies Microsoft Google Apple Intel Qualcomm Samsung Nvidia Facebook and Shopify and retailers such as Target Wayfair Ikea Adidas Ashley Furniture and more as members In 2021 they finalized and released the 3D Commerce certification which lays out a set of standards to create 3D image files that will look consistent across browsers and devices Invrsion a 3D digitization and VRready retail simulation company based in Milan has been digitizing high quality photorealistic 3D digital twins and enabling shelf yieldoptimization for retail over the past seven years for CPG manufacturers such as Nestle Ferrero Mondelez and PepsiCo They also work with fashion and real estate organizationsStart your journey by catching up and incorporating elements of the Metaverse that we know will are fundamental to the experience and put your products in the best light 3D digital twins and retail simulations that are ARVR capable but also scalable on desktop and mobile is a good place to beginStep 6 You Cannot Make the Intelligent Decisions if You are Not Experiencing ItSo many of those early mistakes were due to gross inexperience of marketers with the media outlets in which they were investing If you had been an active web user you would have recognized that many online services were using a technique called a quotserver pushquot to rotate ads within chat and email dramatically decreasing their branding impact and artificially inflating their inventory And where was the bulk of the inventory on a plan in those early days In email and chat And yet because marketers didn39t spend time on the system they had no clue that this was happening and made critical errors in their investmentsFor those involved in developing a Metaverse strategy an investment in equipment and experience should be a top priority Buy the team members a VR headset 299 for a Quest 2 which even with 20 team members seems like a good way to save hundreds of thousands in misallocated funds In fact get a range of headsets especially the higher end ones like Varjo not for each team member to get a feel for what the future will bring Insist that anyone looking at cryptobased immersive worlds CIWs spend time in those worlds They don39t necessarily have to buy anything but should look to see if what takes place in those worlds will enhance or detract from their brand and whether there is scale opportunityDon39t just look at it through a marketing lens but a holistic business view Go into social areas at different times of the day or week See who the users in the social areas are and who they aren39t You may be surprised especially in areas like Horizon Venues or Horizon Worlds where there always quite a number of young children This might be a red flag for your brandStep 7 Take Intelligent Risks to Learn Knowing It Isnamp8217t About ScaleWhile overinvesting without some rationale of current business impact can be a foolish move doing nothing if you have the resources is also a mistakeI am very onthefence on the whole desktop immersive worlds definition of Metaverse Roblox The Sandbox and Sensorium are just the latest flavors of MMPORGs Massively MultiPlayer Online RolePlaying Games You might get press for launching a luxury product in Roblox but chances are the 1012yearolds that make up a good portion of the participants are unlikely to afford itThat doesn39t mean that they donamp8217t provide interesting areas for brands to experiment if it39s in line with your audience targets and your brand strategy and the financial outlay is reasonable For example the trends to hold concerts in the Metaverse makes sense especially as there are still major challenges for artists to gather large audiences in person in the real world due to the pandemic It is a global medium so the opportunities to reach millions of people are there It keeps artists especially new artists front and center Warner Music Group39s recent announcement to launch WMG Land on The Sandbox and create immersive musicbased experiencesamp160 is both in line with the need for Metaverse companies to draw attendance through cultural touchpoints and gives Warner Music Group a way to globally highlight new and existing artists in time period where live realworld concerts are still subject to the whims and risks of the pandemic Additionally as NFTs could provide an interesting new revenue stream for the music industry itamp8217s an appropriate place to test and learnDon39t make these decisions solely off spreadsheets but a combination of quantitative and qualitative experienceStep 8 Get Started NowFortune 500 companies are gathering intelligence forming committees and developing their Metaverse strategies This is a good thing Web3 and the Metaverse are happening There is no doubt about that The players to fund and ensure that the technologies develop and scale are in place and they are not just VC gamblers but the top revenue generating media and technology companies that have the deep pockets to see this through Top marketers who have longterm and deep relationships with Meta through Facebook will naturally gravitate towards them for guidance and opportunities There is nothing wrong with that But Meta is not the Metaverse Their recent stock drop will not stop the momentum of the Metaverse There will be several ecosystems hopefully interoperable but likely not And beware the high price tags that the bigger players will ask There is no quotmust buyquot especially in these early daysFinally if you do have a Quest 2 please feel free to friend me with my username mediawhiz I am in desperate need of some new opponents in Beat Saber to thrashFull Disclosure The author has a consultative relationship with Invrsion in the USClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Web3 Is Real, But Learn from the Mistakes of Web 1.0 -- Media Metaverse with Minsky

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Jeff Minsky

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Web3 Is Real, But Learn from the Mistakes of Web 1.0 -- Media Metaverse with Minsky

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