What is the metaverse? Can the metaverse already be experienced? What potential for new business is there in the metaverse for brands? What new opportunities does this new technology bring us? These are some of the issues that were discussed in an exciting debate on the metaverse in this new meeting of the cycle of talks "Building futures" in La Roca Village.
The fifth talk of the cycle, had as protagonist the topic of fashion: the Metaverse. A talk moderated by the journalist Bibiana Ballbè, with 5 great professionals from different disciplines to give a more complete vision of the subject: Julio Obelleiro CEO of Wildbytes, Xavi Simó, founder and president of Inlea, Estel Vilaseca responsible for fashion at LCI, José Ramón Ubieto clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst and co-author of Welcome to the Metaverse?, Mariola Dinarès, journalist specialized in the digital world, and Elena Foguet, business Director Value Retail Spain of The Bicester Collection.
The metaverse is a concept that is on everyone's lips, but very few know how to speak and explain it professionally. It is a subject that also generates insecurity due to the unknown, and we do not always fully understand its scope or foresee the impact it will have on our lives. One of the industries that is exploring this new tool the most is fashion, with pioneering brands such as Nike, Gucci or Louis Vuitton.
Faced with this great ignorance, Ballbè began with a very simple question: “What is the metaverse for each one of you?”. Julio from Wildbytes was the first to break the ice: “The simple answer is to say that it is the evolution of the internet. Web1 was a text page, with Web2 images and videos were added, Web3 is the evolution to immersive virtual environments. 3D spaces where you can have an avatar that represents you.” Estel Vilaseca was a bit more poetic adding: "I would speak of a world of experiences, a world to explore the possibilities of creativity at an experimental level", for Xavier Simó the metaverse is "a possibility of putting a community at the center of a experience, and have direct contact with all of them. Instead of interacting through a social network or a website, you interact directly with the follower and build things around them.” From a more psychological point of view, José Ramón Ubieto sees it more as a laboratory of the "I": "a surface where you can have a lot of fantasies with all kinds of consequences, both positive and more worrying." For Mariola Dinarès, digital journalist "the Metaverse has a lot of marketing, it is a place where everyone wants to be the first to be there." For her, what is also interesting is that it is an immersive space that, unlike Second Life, digital experiences can be certified, that is, that it gives value to what is digital. For her part, Elena Foguet explained for the first time that The Bicester Collection group wants to start experimenting with the metaverse in 2023, an evolution of the virtual shopping that they already have established.
Bibiana Ballbè continued with a study that says that in 10 years we will be able to live in the metaverse. For Xavi Simó it could come even sooner. The first thing we will experience is a boom in augmented reality and the push of the younger generations will make everything speed up much more than we think. For Estel Vilaseca, a specialist in the world of fashion, we are living in a moment in which the content generated by a brand is almost more important than the product itself. We are stopping talking about customers, to talking about followers, and it is a great opportunity to create culture and a community around the brand. Julio from Wildbytes insisted on this point: “Large luxury brands are promulgating the idea that what is relevant is generating consumers, not customers. That people see the brand as more than just a product. Whether through content, or experiences in virtual worlds. These content consumers end up being the prescribers of the brand.” Along the same lines, Xavi Simó affirmed that luxury is, in the end, culture. Luxury is no longer having things, it is living experiences. With the metaverse, a huge range of possibilities opens up to generate these experiences.
Bibiana pointed out that Goldman Sachs expects the metaverse economy to move between 2 and 12 trillion dollars during this decade, while Morgan Stanley places it above 8 trillion dollars, and took the opportunity to ask the speakers if the metaverse is a real business opportunity. Julio also added that according to a study by the consulting firm Mckinsey, it is expected that 5% of the turnover of fashion brands will come from what we call the metaverse. In Roblox it is estimated that, last year, there were about 600 million dollars in sales of fashion accessories for avatars. This is because in virtual worlds you can have, for example, 10 avatars with a wardrobe of 200 clothes each. An idealized, evolved or changed version of oneself, created for every world and every occasion. For Xavi Simó it is one more layer to reach the public of the brands, to give them something more than the physical product. It is entertainment that is taking up more and more space, and one thing that the pandemic taught us is that this entertainment could be consumed from home.
In the world of marketing, one of the most important values is engagement, that is, the time a user interacts with a brand. In Wildbytes they were responsible for the concert that Niki Nicole did in the Metaverso for Pull and Bear, and they managed to get the public to spend an average of 11 minutes, a milestone for users of Social Networks. This shows that the new generations are consumers of this type of content. José Ramón Ubieto added that "Our vision could be that young people stay less, but what happens is that they stay less in the real world, instead, they spend much more time with their friends in the virtual world."
Before ending the session, Bibiana Ballbè asked the protagonists for a headline on the metaverse. Mariola Dinarès was the first to conclude that: “We are talking about something that you think we are very early on, but in reality it has already existed for a long time, although it sounds contradictory. In addition, very creative things are being done in the virtual world.” For José Ramón Ubieto: "The need of the human being to imagine alternative worlds is ancestral, in Plato it was already there." For him, the metaverse is like a Moebius strip: you enter through the outer surface (the presence) and suddenly you have already entered the interior without realizing it. It is a hybrid reality that cannot be understood as two separate blocks, you go in and out with a sense of continuity, something that the new generations have understood perfectly. Xavi Simó, on his side, wanted to make the following point: "There is a lot of noise, let's remove the noise and try to understand that we want to interact with something we like directly." For Estel Vilaseca: “It is a way for creative people to show what they are capable of. The dialogue that is being established between the real and the digital is very interesting, and how digital is already influencing trends and design.” Julio from Wildbytes wanted to point out that we are experiencing a historical event and we are not realizing it “when we look back we will see a paradigm shift. Now we see it as sensationalized media noise, but it is a real and profound change. In the future, we will look at the 2020s as the time of this revolution.” Before saying goodbye, Elena Foguet wanted to say a few words full of hope: "the creativity that this new technology can bring can contribute to a happier virtual world, if not to a better real world."
While we wait to experience the metaverse firsthand, we are eagerly awaiting the next “Building Futures” talk at The Apartment in La Roca Village.
