Details
Guests:
- Bartek Sibiga, Co-Founder of Fancy Bears
- Travis Wu, Founder of Highstreet Market
- Shashi Menon, Founder of UNXD
Top 5 Key Takeaways:
1. Mainstream Brands recognize the potential of entering Web3 and crypto
To kick off the Twitter Spaces, we asked our guests why brands are entering Web3. All three guests agreed that for a mainstream brand to enter Web3, six different areas of success can be achieved when entered correctly:
- Commercial success
- Positioning success
- Marketing success
- Access to new audiences
- Exploration of new products
- New ways to engage with existing audiences
- On the other hand, brands are not joining Web3 because of the risk it might bring. Specifically, dropping an NFT collection might be risky, and the brand might not know enough about it. In the end, there is still a way to go for brands to enter Web3 fully.
2. The Metaverse will change the way we shop but won't replace e-commerce and brick-mortar – it will be complementary
A new generation will head to the metaverse to experience a place where tech meets fashion. For example, they can own a sweater that will keep them warm in real life, but they will hold that same digital twin sweater in the metaverse that can act as armor for their avatar. It will change how people shop and open up another channel rather than replace e-commerce and other ways of shopping.
3. Culture and storytelling are crucial to bringing brands' physical experience to digital
Storytelling is a crucial element in traditional brands. It's what makes houses create a community and strong brand loyalty. When launching a successful digital collection with a brand with extreme and longstanding values, provenance, digital and physical craftsmanship, multiplatform consumer experiences, storytelling, and community are all key drivers. With these drivers, brands can tell their physical brand story in the digital world. Intimate experiences that are mainly human-led can be replicated and bridged to the digital world in the future if the collaborations focus on making that a priority in the metaverse.
4. The community needs to be put at the forefront
It will be difficult for mainstream brands to figure out how to create a new type of community around their digital NFT collections. Especially with luxury brands with years of heritage and an enate customer base, creating a new community or a new type of digital savviness around the existing community will be critical.
5. There are not enough real-world use cases yet for digital brand success
One thing that has held back digital fashion is that there needs to be more successful use cases. The technology is very forward-looking, but the culture (the real-life use case) still needs to be there. The gaming side is the opportunity to create digital use cases for the brand element. Digital and physical experience need more use cases.
