The metaverse is still all the rage.

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Take Fluf World, for example. A collection of 10,000 3D, programmatically-generated rabbit avatars, each with unique features and life stories. These avatars are not like the skinned characters that you rent in Fortnight. Instead, they are yours in perpetuity, sellable, they can own property called Burrows, and are managed on a blockchain where the community shares control.  

A lot of doubts swirl around brands and the metaverse. The technology is notoriously inaccessible, and creating a brand presence in a metaverse community can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And is the audience actually there? Not so sure. Getting involved in these initiatives, as Ellie Bamford noted in Ad Age, “It’s not as free as you think.”

These Web3 destinations built on decentralized blockchain solutions are touted as the next big place to build long-term brand engagement. How they actually evolve is still feels like an experiment. Doubts aside, these NFT communities and startups are raising massive amounts of venture capital, and eventually, when access is democratized, things might take off. 

For now, it feels a long way off from being a viable channel for building brand. However, if brands want to be prepared for when the space matures, the experimentation must begin now. Solutions and fads will come and go until the metaverse and web3 finds their level. Mass adoption allowing brands to have the mass reach they want is, well, for now, a lot of fluff.

Clearly, the tech has come a long way since Max Headroom.

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Augmented by machine learning, today’s AI-generated faces are imbued with physical characteristics that engender trust. These synthetic faces are so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from real humans.  

Generated Photos has a bank of many millions of photos of AI-created people leveraging AI and machine learning to train a GAN – or generative adversarial network – on data sets of people allowing it to make unlimited fake people. Need a new unidentifiable, untraceable profile pic? All set.  

Nightingale’s and Hany’s research found that the average rating for synthetic faces was 7.7% more trustworthy than the average rating for real faces, a statically significant finding.

Which raises more questions. Of course, synthetic influencers like Lil Miquela have been around for a while, generating millions of followers and millions of dollars for the companies who created them. 

But recent technical advancements suggest dark implications and present a significant (and not new) ethical dilemma. Think of the consequences of even more sophisticated deep fakes populating people’s feeds. We’re creating a world where the authenticity of any image or video can be called into question, further blurring the line between truth and fake content—a world where any image or video can be faked.

The global political implications are beyond scary, especially in parts of the world where checking content’s veracity is simply not possible.  

This should scare you.

The truth for GenZ? Facebook is irrelevant.

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Meta- the perfect definition of an existential strategy to stave off irrelevance. While there is a myriad of theories around the genesis of Meta (politics, legal distancing, and plausible deniability among them), the imminent death of Facebook seems to trump them all. The truth is, for the emerging demographics, Facebook is irrelevant. Teenage users in the US have declined by 13% since 2019 and are projected to drop 45% over the next two years, driving an overall decline in daily users in the company’s most lucrative ad market. And the younger a user is, the less they engage with the app. 

Facebook isn’t even in the top 3, which is ruled by TikTok, YouTube, and the metaverse Roblox. So if FB is on its way out, it might as well build a new place. ‘Cause their future relies on the young generation, and FB is not getting them. FB just seems unable to innovate.

Enter Meta, and the focus on the metaverse. Makes sense. They can leave Facebook to the Boomers and aging millennials and develop the next place for the new generations? Maybe so.

Gen Z marketing expert Quynh Mai described the appeal well, “The metaverse is a natural extension of the world they already live online. Most Gen Z consumers would first and foremost describe the metaverse as a place where they can be anyone or anything they want. This freedom to interact socially, unshackled by the limitations of gender, race, location, or physicality, empowers them to express themselves in ways simply not possible IRL”.

And for Gen Z, Facebook is frustratingly IRL.

Digital disruption is in full swing across just about every sector.

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Pandemic-driven habits have formed, and they are not changing any time soon, if ever. As a share of total US retail, E-comm increased by $300B in the past two years. While the e-comm retail growth numbers have stabilized somewhat recently, it’s only going to go up. E-comm sales grew from $556B in September of 2019 to $850B by September 2021. And it’s not going back. 

Online grocery shopping has penetrated most consumer segments, with an average across groups of 50% planning to maintain online grocery ordering and delivery; a category projected to double online purchase to over 20% of total sales by 2026. 

Hybrid exercise, combining home and some on-site exercise, will be the norm leaving room for innovation for a brand that can offer both an in-home and on-site experience. Do Peloton and Equinox come together?

The pandemic has forever changed the world and accelerated digital adoption across almost every category. This aligns with the data: a larger percentage of Gen. Z and Millennials feel more like themselves online than offline.

Gonna be some interesting times ahead.

This guy gets the power of brand.

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Rawlson is the guy that engineered Tesla’s Model S and is now the visionary that leads Lucid Motors. Rawlson went on to say, “We’ll need to create a technological tour de force, and I think that’s what we’ve got in Lucid Air.” 

Their first product was not concerned with hitting a specific price point or targeting a specific niche, rather it was targeted at establishing the customer expectations, defining its brand values. Things like quality, attention to detail, and an impeccable customer experience. 

Rawlson understood that Lucid's first product was his best chance to teach the market what Lucid stood for, its core values. Yes, he gets the importance of brand. Rawlinson’s resume is impressive. He worked at Jaguar and was chief engineer of Lotus, His name is on dozens of patents for battery technology or other innovations. Rawlinson oversaw Lucid’s development of the battery used by all the teams in the Formula E electric-vehicle racing circuit. So he’s got some serious chops.

It’s true, figuring out how to get scale and mass-produce cars will be another challenge and, not surprisingly, they are yet to be profitable. But understanding that building his brand and establishing the brand’s position of superior quality will catalyze the market and define the knowledge base around the brand. As quoted in Road & Track, “Lucid’s posh quarters make a Tesla’s interior look like the mismatched Tupperware in the back of your cupboard.” That brand perception of quality will trickle down to lower-priced models and will, undoubtedly, serve Lucid well.

Smart dude.

Ah… no. Not so fast.

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While there is something exciting about the concept of a metaverse, it is, at the same time, deeply disturbing. If you watched Zuckerberg’s video on Meta’s vision for humanity, then you might feel similarly. And in truth, it remains only a concept. (It is, however, a clever and timely diversion for Mr. Zuckerberg.)

Let’s acknowledge that, for the foreseeable future and given the digital divide, the metaverse will not even be understandable, let alone accessible, for a vast majority of the population. It’s hard to imagine that avatar interaction can supplant human interaction. Especially given the technical limitations… are we all going to wear an Oculus headset all the time? It’s just not viable. Fantasy, yes. Viable, no.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the New York Times that, “Meta's metaverse would be a massive factor in replacing human relationships. Not only would it threaten or endanger human interaction, but it could contribute to people choosing more of the AR world rather than the real world outside the lenses.”

Elizabeth A. Segal, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona State University is clear regarding Meta’s metaverse, “Metaverse cannot replace real human connections. People benefit from technology to stay connected with others, but there are limits to how well it can build human connections. Metaverse should not be confused with real human connections.”

Proceed with caution.

Marketing And Mind Reading

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Neuromarketing loosely refers to measuring physiological and neural signals to gain insight into customers’ motivations, preferences, and decisions. These tools use tech like EEG, biometrics, and eye-tracking, and AI to measure neurological reactions.

As reported in Business insider, in a recent campaign for Extra Gum, Mars says it used a neuroscience tool called ACE to cut a two-minute-long video and that the resulting 15-second video was among the company’s top 10% performing ads of all time. In 2020, it used ACE to shortlist “Band Aid” as the TV ad for its cat food brand Sheba, which it says resulted in an 18% sales lift for the brand versus the 14% sales lift of the last campaign. So this tech can work.

While the whole idea can feel a little insidious, it’s not new. Brands have been manipulating consumers since, well, since there were consumers. And the field of neuroethics is growing in importance as technology evolves, and the techniques become more mainstream.

The biggest concern is ensuring transparency to understand how we’re being manipulated, such as when Facebook manipulated nearly 700,000 users’ mood states in 2012 by altering their newsfeeds without informing them. Cerf goes pan to say, “A portable, affordable fMRI would be a total game-changer”.

And scary as hell.

As influencers go, Estée Lauder hit the jackpot.

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In this age of shallow influencers coming at us with a sea of undifferentiated drivel, Amanda Gorman comes along and shows us what an authentic influencer is really has, and what Estée Lauder wanted: 

  • Substance, salience & integrity

  • Talent, a gifted voice and presence

  • And a globally appealing and focused personal brand.

In Ms. Gorman, Estée Lauder hit the jackpot. In what could be a potentially colossal partnership, Ms. Gorman will be Estée Lauder’s first “Global Changemaker” and far more than an influencer. She comes at a time, as Vanessa Friedman of the New York Times eloquently put it, when “substance is particularly prized, as for-profit companies feel an imperative to prove they stand for something more than simply — well, profit.” Given Ms. Gorman’s personal brand today, she could well emerge as the brand’s inner voice. She has that kind of character, that kind of presence.

Overwhelmed by the vast opportunities thrust upon her after her reading at Biden’s inauguration, Ms. Gorman took time to purposely create and choose a path that would allow her to channel her gifts, voice, and platform to drive meaningful change. Making this decision, taking this leap with Estée Lauder took courage and a willingness to embrace new challenges of overwhelming proportions. With opportunity comes challenge. In any case, one must try.

But as her quote shows, this is a woman of courage who saw her path and took it. And you know she is all in, with every part of herself. As she herself put it in Friedman’s piece, “I’m never just lending my body or my face,” Ms. Gorman said. “They are getting my spirit, my breath, my brain.” 

For Estée Lauder, she is a significant win that aligns well with their brand CSR objectives. Ms. Gorman adds considerable intellectual and spiritual muscle to the brand’s voice. As a brand asset (sorry, that sounds cold), she is money. Ms. Gorman is a “wish list” ambassador who can be exactly whom she wants to be while building Estée Lauder’s brand equity and value. Brilliant.

Are carbon offsets/removal the latest form of greenwashing?

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Are carbon offsets the latest form of greenwashing? Don’t be deceived by a brand’s attempt to mask not making tangible and meaningful changes to their carbon footprint by focusing on carbon offsets through carbon removal efforts like planting trees or sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation. Carbon removal can’t come close to the impact of moving to clean energy. But offsets can look good for a brand.

Many corporations are leveraging carbon removal/offsets to position their businesses as contributing to being carbon neutral. A bit of a farce? Many studies confirm that carbon capture will only provide incremental help, and the bulk of the effort will be in reducing emissions. “It is now set in stone that the overwhelming majority of the EU’s mitigation efforts will need to be done by reducing emissions, with carbon removal helping to go the extra mile,” wrote Frances Wang and Mark Preston Aragonès, both of the ClimateWorks Foundation.

As a result, Climate Tech is the next big investment frontier aiming at decarbonizing the planet. It impacts sectors including transportation, real estate, and agriculture, and the industry encompasses startups focused on renewable power generation, electric vehicles, cellular agriculture, and forestry management, among other areas.

The space is attracting serious investment dollars. So far in 2021, global investors have already closed as many climate-focused funds as were raised during the previous five years combined. (PitchBook data 2021) In many ways, finding viable and scalable (forget imminent) investment opportunities feels like a “throw it at a wall, and see what sticks” situation. No single solution will solve the climate crisis. But we gotta start somewhere.

Office or WFH? Maybe we need some need both?

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This is a big statement. There is no shortage of debate around the WFH issue. Many feel culture, creativity, and collaboration suffer. Other disagree. There is little data to prove that productivity increases in an office environment, or suffers from remote work. While collaboration tools have become better during the pandemic and remote work is more facilitated than ever before, there certainly remains a range of conflicting opinions.

But maybe it’s no so much about trying to assess productivity, rather more about what happens around human energy and face-to-face interaction, about the water cooler, and discussing the score of the game last night. What do humans need? What really contributes to employee satisfaction?

Do human interpersonal interactions stimulate ideation? Do we need in-person relationships to innovate? Maybe the answer is “sometimes”. Which might suggest a conclusion that we need both. That in-office and remote work can nicely co-exist?

So why do so few leaders commit to viewing their brand as an asset that requires investment and maintenance?

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So why then, with all the proof, do so few leaders commit to viewing their brand as IP? As an asset that requires investment and maintenance?

Why are there so few brand strategists on boards?

Companies that dominate understand the undeniable competitive advantage of a strong brand. These companies are lead by believers, people who get it.

They are believers in brand as a holistic concept that builds love, preference, and performance; they're building long-term relationships.

They understand relationships are emotional and necessarily reciprocal; you have to give to get. The return on this commitment is the reward of loyalty and advocacy and a host of benefits across the enterprise and in the market.

So give me the believers in brand, of the intangibles and the unmeasurable.

These believers know the power of brand to drive financial outcomes and ROI. These are the winners.

Right behind those colonizers will be the brands. Where man goes, capitalism is never far behind.

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Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Does Mars have rights? Can it be owned? Who should own it? Does whoever gets there first own it?

Will brands have rights? If SpaceX arrives first, what rights does the brand have? How will it be positioned? What's bigger than a global brand, an interstellar brand?

As Adam Mann wrote in his recent New Yorker article, “Critics suggest that, in space, we risk repeating the mistakes of the colonial past, in which exploration was often a cover for the exploitation of native beings and environments.”

Right behind those colonizers will be the brands. Where man goes, capitalism is never far behind.

Crypto is in full swing.

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Crypto is rockin’. As of today, Bitcoin is over $63K with a market cap of $1.184 Trillion.

The entire DeFi space is hot. Right along with NFTs.

With a particular focus on the financially underserved, the rush of cryptos in full swing around the globe, and no one is sure of the long-term nature or impact of the disruption.

But you gotta believe it’s coming.

And there is a lot of concern with China’s announcement of the digital Yuan, and all that implies.

And what could happen to the Dollar and its role as the world’s reserve currency?

Predictions and prognostications?

I’m not sure why this is lost on so many.

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This simple, profound statement by Sir John Hegarty in Campaign last week is at the heart of what’s been forgotten in the industry.

The power of a brand is echoed and amplified by those who recognize the position and meaning of a brand, whether they are actual customer or not. 

We wear brands as badges. Brands reflect taste, choice, and personality.

And the fundamental impetus of a brand is that other people understand what they mean. What is says about someone.

This awareness feeds brand growth. It is what many in the marketing world have deemed unnecessary in this age of digital targeting and performance-based thinking. 

 How wrong they are.

Because building brand is what sustains long-term financial value.