Mining Gold

Though grooming brands are no longer taking the Metaverse and the digital skincare sandbox with a pinch of salt, Do-XX Studios’ Head of Activation Stefan Lim discusses how to take it from an arid field of ideas to a lush utopia for everyone and anyone.

-  Bryan Goh

To start off, do you think a grooming brand’s presence on the Metaverse necessarily generates sales? The term “Metaverse” has loosely grouped the NFT space, virtual worlds, AR technology, and 3D scanned environments together which makes it hard for discussion because of a need to focus on the specific area of use. For brands with physical products (grooming, clothing, food, etc), there are no replacements in the virtual world that can represent the product better than in real life unless technology advances towards more sensory capabilities. For example, a computer is able to produce smells or your VR device has sensory gloves that can mimic feeling textures. Overall, “Metaversing” is an unavoidable technological and cultural wave that, like it or hate it, is here to stay and will change many aspects of our daily lives. For brands to start having a presence in any form in the Metaverse is a good early move for companies to have branding and awareness of their products and services.

Grooming and beauty brands have always focused on creating campaign visuals that make an impact on print and in recent years, they think about how it looks on Web2. What do you think will make a successful campaign visual in terms of Web3? When the world was still in Web2, anything showcased using Web3 technology, even at its most minimal, opened eyes and drove discussion. Why crack brains trying to impress your customer when all your competitors are using the same tools? Because Web3 is barely ventured into, it can certainly provide a whole new range of campaign possibilities that marketing teams can toy around with to help come up with another great idea and moment.