Opinion: Why Launching A Great Metaverse / Web3 Campaign Requires An Expert

Did you check out MTV's metaverse strategy for the VMAs? A lot of ’experts” discussing how to make it better. Here’s the real skinny on that...

"How could they NOT have done this badass AR idea!"
"It was so OBVIOUS! Why didn't they do an NFT?!"

Before I was working with Subvrsive, I asked the same questions about every major brand, artist, and campaign.

The honest truth is there are only a few teams on the planet who can execute an omni-reality ad/event campaign at a high level...

And those teams only work for a premium because the skillset and service mix is rare and in high demand.

99.999% of brands don't yet have internal process defined for managing and maintaining metaverse/web3 activations, ad campaigns, commerce strategies, partnerships, etc...

That means they struggle to de-risk the investment that this kind of work entails.

And they can also struggle to own the solution creatively b/c they lack those competencies.

Compound that with the fact that many brands are on the "hello fellow kids" path...

Their XR/metaverse/web3 team is mostly a bunch of young professionals w/ 2 years of experience collecting NFTs, attending fortnite concerts, and making instagram filters for fun.

Again, not exactly de-risking the investment.

Sure, you can put together a campaign using 5 different vendors to do 5 different parts of the metaverse campaign.

But that route requires epic project managers and solutions architects who know how that puzzle works when involving multiple engineering vendors.

And a creative director who is familiar with telling authentic brand stories in multiple immersive/web3 formats, then activating that with outside teams.

This is still not easy to do, even for top talent, and again these skillsets are in small supply with high demand.

There's a reason why that "obvious" thing you're seeing is not being done yet. It's because it's HARD to execute on.

Hard technically, hard creatively, hard organizationally, and if you do it with terrible UI/UX then no one is going to engage with what you've built.

That's a big part of why I love working with the Subvrsive team... We actually take on these kinds of campaigns and build them how they're meant to be built across realities.

But it also gives me intimate knowledge of how hard it is to do well, which then answers the question: "Why wouldn't MTV do more XR/Web3 things for the VMAs?"

Next time you're looking at a campaign that actually hits the mark with immersive/experiential/web3 components, keep in mind the level of specialized skill & budget that goes into making that magic happen.

It ain't easy.