Luxury metaverse workshop at Innocos Monaco

Équité x Innocos hosted a metaverse workshop in Monaco. Here are some of the key implications:

“My three word feedback: time well spent!” - Workshop participant, Luxury Skin Care Brand CEO

During the Innocos Beauty Summit in Monaco Équité organized an exclusive metaverse workshop. The focus was on implications, opportunities, and pitfalls for brands in the Web3 and how brand strategies and messaging need to be optimized to be competitive in the new reality. Some of the key findings included:

• The metaverse is not just a hype, but will profoundly change the way people interact with each other and with brands. As people will spend more time in immersive digital worlds, it will become dramatically more challenging to reach them and to communicate the key message of the brand.

• The increased “noise” means that brand positioning, storytelling, and messaging need to be radically sharpened. This does not mean to “relaunch” brands, rather to “translate” the intended brand vision into a tangible and authentic storyline, which is one of the most difficult tasks. Yet, it is critical, because the brand story carries the brand value.

• Brands today are already feeling the pressure of hyper change, driven by new expectations of their digitally native Gen Z customers. With up to 95% of purchase decisions driven digitally, there is no room for error.

• Équité presented real-life examples of today’s brand stories of a series of luxury beauty brands and the key finding was that they practically undifferentiated. This means, that there will be client confusion and difficulty in breaking through the noise, especially as the complexity of digital and social media channels is increasing at accelerating pace. Many brands are already in a strategic disadvantage without even knowing.

• A significant part was spent on key insights into the pricing mechanism of NFTs, which most brands underestimate given its complexity. DAOs as the new client communities were presented including strategies how to be able to create lasting value with digital assets.

• One of the key messages was: be maximally intentional with your metaverse projects. While experimentation is part of every new technology, you are selling assets. If clients are disappointed, your brand equity is at risk.

• An extensive Q&A allowed the participants to get insights into their day to day challenges with metaverse projects.

Named one of the “Global Top Five Luxury Key Opinion Leaders to Watch,” Daniel Langer is the CEO of the luxury, lifestyle and consumer brand strategy firm Équité, and the executive professor of luxury strategy and pricing at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He consults many of the leading luxury brands in the world, is the author of several best-selling luxury management books, a global keynote speaker, and holds luxury masterclasses on the future of luxury, disruption, and the luxury metaverse in Europe, the USA, and Asia. Follow @drlanger