(This post is the Executive Summary of the report “Luxury Marketing, Wine Marketing and the Metaverse” published by VitaBella Luxury Wine on October 2021)
In any brand management meeting a decade ago, there was always some young bright spark who everyone would turn to at the end and ask, “How can we develop that on your social media?” Now those young bright sparks have grown up, are managing the social media content of top brands and have established their role in business strategy. Ten years on and it’s happening again, although in 2021 we no longer talk about social media – it’s all about the Metaverse. For a few months now, we have started to end our meetings by turning to the latest cohort of young creatives and asking, “How would you present what we have just decided to do in our real world in your virtual world?” We are now shifting into a new universe…the Metaverse, a fictitious world first introduced by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash. And this shift leads us to wonder: how can luxury maintain its relevance in the Metaverse?
In the world of wine, this is illustrated perfectly by the initiative launched this week by Dom Perignon Champagne, as publicized by the website ‘La Champagne de Sophie Claeys’: “Dom Pérignon is launching a 100% virtual space, specially conceived to showcase the collection produced in collaboration with Lady Gaga, where 100 bottles are on pre-sale as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. The bottles will be available on the digital pop-up store from 14 October 2021. Each presentation pack bought and paid for in cryptocurrency (Ether) will include a physical bottle delivered to your door and a 3D NFT version to keep. Each NFT will bear an exclusive number making the digital asset unique in the creative universe of Dom Perignon.” Glenfiddich has done the same recently to target luxury consumers.
This collection of digital and tangible objects crafted to celebrate the Dom Perignon/Lady Gaga partnership is a concrete example of a ‘Metaverse’ approach. They might have gone further by offering bonuses, such as an avatar created using Ready Player Me or augmented reality visualizations on Snapchat or Facebook’s Spark AR software, because this kind of campaign can embrace virtual possessions, NFTs, games, augmented reality and more. In a blink of an eye, how consumers make their purchases and voice their opinions has moved online, and the Metaverse promises immense opportunities for communicating with shoppers in an inclusive way. And it also offers new sources of revenue for brands…Just look at Zepeto or Bitmoji. And brands, such as Nike and Off-White, are there already. Tomorrow, physical realities will be augmented and overlaid by digital experiences and services. Soon, marketing in the ‘unreal’ world of the Metaverse will be just as crucial as marketing in our real world. So if cryptocurrency, blockchain, cloud computing, gaming and digital design are virtually meaningless to you, now is the time to start genning up.
(Guillaume Jourdan wrote this post. You can reach him via LinkedIn)
