How should a brand take its first steps into the metaverse?
( 3 min read )
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LaLiga x Portaventura
The Beat Challenge
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The Beat Challenge
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In many ways, the
Metaverse
has been under construction for a long time. The
fi
rst seed of an
‘alternative’
reality was probably sown a million years back, when our kind came down from the trees and started having more
creative dreams
, as we slept
flat
on our backs on the Savannah.
Press the evolutionary fast-forward button to the early ancient Greeks philosophising their way around the atom and our awareness sharpened: reality as we perceive it has many unexpected sides. Sides roughly explored in early 8-BIT computer games of a distant youth, and exponentially smoothed out when virtual reality exploded into the mainstream. This desire to explore all sides of reality are woven into the very fabric of our consciousness as humans. And, as baby gods learning to walk in a new realm, the first steps are always the most exciting. And challenging.
It was in the context of the fragile terrain of early 2020 – when the world was fighting its way through the first months of the pandemic – that mega-brand LaLiga and entertainment resort PortaVentura were exploring the creative potential of their new partnership. The original launch plans of an in-park
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The big first question:
Our view is that a solid first step starts with defining and mapping out the terrain. Like a good old pioneer, only meta.
When you kick off a creative exploration around a brand partnership, you’re already looking for common-ground in the customer experience. And the same principles apply when moving out into the Metaverse: when laying down the groundwork in a territory that doesn’t yet have an established language or fully defined set of parameters, you can start by demarcating the terrain of the brand experience – the terrain of the emotions invoked by the brand cues (rather than the IRL brand touchpoints themselves).
‘The Beat Challenge’
experience, including a themed restaurant, were slightly up in the air as most of Europe was in lockdown without any visibility of brighter horizons ahead. As the entire collective fan-base was now pretty much glued to screens rather than able to physically get out into the theme park, these fledgling brand partners saw the lure of the Metaverse and its potential reward as increasingly enticing. Yet no less daunting. No longer a supportive element to the launch moment, all business eyes were now on this new uncharted territory, rich with possibility.
The big first question:
How should a brand make its move into this brave new world of the Metaverse? And what does it mean to do it hand-in-hand with a new brand partner?
Our view is that a solid first step starts with defining and mapping out the terrain. Like a good old pioneer, only meta.
When you kick off a creative exploration around a brand partnership, you’re already looking for common-ground in the customer experience. And the same principles apply when moving out into the Metaverse: when laying down the groundwork in a territory that doesn’t yet have an established language or fully defined set of parameters, you can start by demarcating the terrain of the brand experience – the terrain of the emotions invoked by the brand cues (rather than the IRL brand touchpoints themselves).
“So it wasn’t a
graphic visual
space we started with, it was an
emotive
one”.
The Beat Challenge is an arena of heightened emotions if you like. The excitable energy of a theme-park becomes a turbo-charged hit of ecstatic adrenaline when combined with the quasi-spiritual experience of the fans getting close to the LaLiga ‘gods of the game’. Once we’d established this territory, we could then focus on amplifying it through an augmented reality experience that could start at home before these fans had even set foot in the park itself. An experience that (literally) put them in the colossal shoes of LaLiga football gods.
From claiming this home ground, the creative possibility grew continually richer. Together with the project partners – the football-crazy crew at Copa90 and our innovation-slickster friends of Unit9 – we designed an entertainment piece mapped out with experiences that started with customisable avatars (styled with a bit of zeitgeisty fashion flair), various football-related games to play, a meta-version experience of the park, chances of winning prizes and a carefully designed Ecomm funnel gently leading users towards product purchases. All crafted in such a way that the framework will continue to define the territory for the next steps of this brand collaboration, providing a clear path ahead for venturing deeper into the Metaverse.
But all this talk of gods brings us right back to the one thing that makes us human. Our persistent curiosity. Out in the strategic Savannah hinterlands of any new challenge it’s curiosity itself that fires up our creative energy and tickles our toes out of the trees into enticing new realms.
But all this talk of gods brings us right back to the one thing that makes us human. Our persistent curiosity. Out in the strategic Savannah hinterlands of any new challenge it’s curiosity itself that fires up our creative energy and tickles our toes out of the trees into enticing new realms.
