On June 18th, 2022, during a live event on Instagram led by Eva Chen, Head of Fashion Partnerships at Meta and Mark Zuckerberg himself, Meta announced the roll out of an online store for its Avatars to be used across its different platforms. They presented a series of six outfits worn by their own avatars, designed in collaboration with some of the biggest names in fashion: Prada, Thom Browne, and Balenciaga.
Interestingly, the designs are from the latest collections and quintessential of the identities of the brands, from Prada’s skirt and tank combo from the SS22 collection, Thom Browne’s tuxedo and Balenciaga’s serigraphed sweater. The only thing these outfits do not carry is the hefty price tag that comes with the real life items.
In fact, the items are priced from $2.99 to $8.99, wanting to address a larger market and democratize access to luxury items. For the brands, it is an opportunity to reach an audience that cannot afford the real deal but who want to engage with the story of the brand. In short, it is an expansion of “extra soft luxury”, or low priced items that represent the entry point to the world of a brand for consumers.
For Meta, it is a way to ensure a source of revenue in the future of the metaverse given the expected shift in the way people consider their digital presence. In fact, future generations are likely to give more importance to their digital identity than physical ones in the years to come. ”Digital goods will be an important way to express yourself in the metaverse and a big driver of the creative economy.” says Eva Chen.
Therefore, the democratization aspect seems to be the key driver of such strategies, but in fact, the end point is creating engagement with an ever increasing audience in order to convert it to a sticky, devoted community that not only consumes but advertises, offline, and more critically online. No other platform but Instagram has been able to capitalize on this aspect of the luxury industry, often at the expense of both brands and social media users.
Undoubtedly, Meta is feeling the shift in dynamics within younger audiences, along the development of the blockchain technology, the metaverse and shifting value systems. The crux of the question is if selling cheap uniforms is the way to cater to this new demand…
Indeed, the power of the digital is its ability to expand creative possibilities and think beyond the physical limitations, to create unique and truly personalized experiences and identities. Selling a few formatted outfits does not sound like being the best way to help expand creativity online. It sounds like an outdated marketing campaign where brands were siloed, here, even once you own the assets.
In fact, true fashion, the one that is still best expressed in the streets, is about mixing and matching pieces from different designers, adapting them to one’s body and preferences, accessorizing, adding fabric, removing buttons and so on. My point is, the missing link is personal sense of expression, which paradoxically is what Meta is trying to offer. Truth is, we are still very early in the process for brands engaging with the metaverse and its possibilities for their businesses and communities (consumer will indeed become an outdated word within the industry). Therefore, most brands are engaging in trial and errors. This looks like an error.
What is more surprising, is Meta’s inability in understanding the core structural shift that the blockchain technology is creating for the stakeholders in the tech industry. Indeed, community is poised to become an even greater element of business and marketing strategies, but its aim is to be decentralized and allow users and actors to regain control over their digital presence and creation, as opposed to their own business model.
Therefore, the paradigm is truly demand driven instead of offer driven. Consumers are actors instead of being manipulated by marketing strategies trying to understand them. Blockchain allows consumers to share what they want and how they want it instead of being presented what businesses think they want.
In other words, Meta should focus on offering tools to and listen to its communities of users first rather than making it so overtly about luxury brands’ marketing revenues. That does require letting go of their hegemony and questioning their business model and revenue stream, heavily (not to say exclusively) relying on advertising.
Blockchain technology enables authenticity, exclusivity, and ownership of digital assets. These three principles are at the heart of the luxury industry so there is no doubt it is a space that is poised to grow significantly. But what sets brands apart, beyond their products, is storytelling and retaining ownership of the narrative, therefore, the projects that will add real utility are those able to provide tools and platforms that bring physical worlds within the digital realm fulfilling a real need rather than creating one.
In fact, it looks like the three brands have given Meta the leadership on how to engage with their own communities of consumers, adding a layer between the brands and the consumers that creates noise within an already crowded marketplace. Instead of creating their own words to express their brands identity, these three labels are sold under the Meta umbrella, hindering their ability to speak to their communities in a unique voice.
In a digital world already crowded with advertising, consumers already feel like brands are all presenting the exact same campaigns (BCG and Comite Colbert 2022 Report), they therefore need to create their own NFT projects to stand out.
Discussing the rollout with my network, I realized I am not the only one failing to understand the utility of those “skins” for Instagram. Indeed, skins were introduced for avatars that were part of an exclusively digital platform: games, adding a functionality. For a platform that was created to record and share real life experiences without the additional fictional character defining video games, the use of avatars and therefore the use in dressing them fails to materialize since there is no added value within a highly physical-asset led platform like Instagram. In short, avatars are not cross-platforms, and without a Meta metaverse, their use case within the Meta ecosystem remains limited.
There are therefore several pitfalls in Meta’s engagement with luxury brands strategies to crack the metaverse, but they are exploring several alleys, including supporting the sale of NFTs on their platforms. This has tremendous potential to the extent that the communities of buyers and sellers as well as their areas of interests are already mapped, meaning a marketplace for digital visual assets seems like a perfect opportunity for Instagram offering tools rather than products. Additionally, this strategy is in line with the Instagram marketplace that is already being adopted and used, despite deceiving rates of adoption.
mabou 