Amalgamation Of Metaverse & Brands To Forge New Stories

At the BW Marketing Whitebook Summit 2022, marketing leaders from across sectors brought to the spotlight how the market landscape has undergone an evident change with the metaverse in play. 

In one of the sessions, we were joined by Rahul Talwar, CMO, Max Life Insurance, Manik Mahajan, Director – Digital Marketing and Ecommerce, Phillips DA, Siddhartha Butalia, Chief Marketing Officer, AirAsia India, Bhuvana Subramanyan, Chief Marketing Officer, Ranstad India, and Ruchika Gupta, Marketing Director, Beam Suntory India, with Sonali Malaviya, Managing Director, Essence India as the session chair.

Butalia shed light on how there is a disruption to the conventional methods of marketing with metaverse in the picture. He said, “To be relevant to the consumer, you need to be an experiential brand which is offering something of substance. Agreed that maybe for the next 10-20 years, the metaverse cannot afford to offer something like this because they haven’t got to that level of technology yet but that disruption can happen very fast. With the pace that the world is moving towards it, surely shows potential in Metaverse.”

Talwar added, “Customers today are demanding customisations. In terms of standardising the brand engagements, or this entire experience, the success is going to be measured in the form of the ability to deliver personalisation and remaining within the umbrella of standard brand engagement. So, the future marketeers need to maintain a balance between data, data mining and brand identities.”

Mahajan focussed on the importance of adapting to Web 3.0, which can provide better solutions to the consumers. He asserted, “For us the consumers, convenience is foremost. And in this case, what we mean by convenience is not only how easy our appliances are to use but also how easy they make the lives of the consumers. Hence, we are amalgamating web 3.0 into our products for the same.”

Subramanyan advocated, “I feel metaverse is a new shiny toy as on date, rather than something that’s here to stay for long. However, having said that, I also believe that it's one of those Lego toys that you can use to build something up. It has a lot of scope and we should definitely try exploring whatever best we can leverage out of it”

Gupta shared, “Metaverse is definitely the future of social media because we want to be where the consumer is and this is emerging as a top choice for them. So, we should also explore opportunities like what Nike and the likes are doing.”