Preparing for the metaverse today

THE metaverse is poised to be the next big thing in technology, and it has already brought real-life benefits for early adopters. According to McKinsey, the metaverse has the potential to generate up to US$5 trillion of market value and presents a myriad of opportunities for businesses, consumers and creators. It’s understandable why businesses might take a wait-and-see approach, as the metaverse is still being developed. However, what we do know is that the future of customer experience will be more immersive and the time to prepare is now.

Metaverses and other immersive experiences are the new wave of digital interaction. By 2030, more than 80 per cent of commerce could be impacted by something consumers do in the metaverse. In Singapore, 78 per cent of executives surveyed by Accenture believe the metaverse will positively impact their organisation and almost half (47 per cent) believe it will be breakthrough or transformational. Indeed, we can discern that businesses anticipate metaverse and immersive experiences to be the new frontier of the digital economy.

Create immersive experiences starting today

As the digital-first world gets more interactive, customers will expect businesses to deliver digitally led, immersive experiences. Investing in 3D and immersive content creation today can help businesses build competitive advantage in customer experience and enable workers to get ahead of the skills curve in immersive content creation. The pandemic has highlighted the benefits of 3D creativity in product design, marketing and e-commerce – businesses who made early investments could create 3D-rendered photorealistic product images remotely, without a photoshoot.

Leading brands such as The Coca-Cola Company, Epic Games, Nascar, are already taking the first step toward 3D content creation, e-commerce, and portable immersive experiences. Like every technology and social medium, success is determined by their manner of utilisation. The sooner businesses build expertise, experiment and learn from their experiences, the more likely that they can create immersive experiences that resonate with their customers and the community.

Adopt a strategic approach for better business outcomes

There are many ways to approach the metaverse, but not every aspect of the metaverse will value-add to businesses. Therefore business leaders must consider their approach and develop a clear engagement strategy in this new digital platform. Senior leadership must take the time to consider all the potential benefits and implications of the metaverse for their business in order to realise future returns on investment. It is equally important that the metaverse strategy aligns with the business’ core strategy and meets customers’ needs.

Marketing will be critical. The metaverse will fundamentally change how businesses attract and engage customers, which can significantly impact the customer journey. Creating value for customers in the metaverse will depend on the business’ ability to understand and adapt to new customer behaviours as they emerge.

This will be a challenge that businesses will need to address. Today, businesses are already grappling with existing data silos, data deluge, and continually evolving regulations. Immersive experiences in the metaverse will mean an additional layer of data that must be captured securely and compliant with data governance and existing data privacy and security regulations. For these reasons, businesses should accelerate their journey towards becoming a data-driven organisation with privacy compliance policies, to get ahead of emerging data privacy laws.

Preparing to unlock opportunities ahead  

A subject of much debate in recent years, governance of content and data is especially crucial in today’s digital world. This will become even more critical with immersive experiences in the metaverse involving digital personas and personalised assets owned or created by users. Most users desire a personal connection to their virtual possessions and the ability to trace these creations back to original creators they admire. In this respect, the provenance of virtual creations, including how the asset was created, should be clear to all.

An extension of this is trust. Businesses must establish credibility in the metaverse, enabling users to distinguish legitimate business platforms from fake ones. According to the Adobe Apac Trust Report, 2 in 3 Apac consumers say they will stop purchasing from brands that breach their trust. If earning consumers’ trust is already a challenge in today’s digital world, it will certainly continue to be an uphill battle in the metaverse.

SEE ALSO

The open road to the metaverse

Luxury brands Gucci, Tiffany dive into NFTs despite slump

When the initial e-commerce boom changed the business landscape, stragglers were left behind. Now is the time for businesses to prepare by building a strong foundation of knowledge and technologies that will help them navigate this exciting new world and unlock the immense opportunities ahead.

The writer is managing director, South-east Asia and Korea, at Adobe.