Meta-culture will change the game for brands

Strategy Leaders
Brands should remember culture is driven by and linked to both community and commerce, especially when it comes to the metaverse, says UM’s EMEA strategy chief.

For decades, the Holy Grail of marketing has been for brands to shape popular culture in their favour. Today, however, it’s never been harder for brands to make an impact in this space.

Liberation through technology, democratisation via social media and our insatiable appetite for the new is accelerating the speed of culture.

So much so that it’s outpacing brands’ ability to keep up. Gone are the days where one of episode of a sitcom can cement itself in culture for the long term. Aligning with or hijacking culture is now a short-lived strategy.

However, one insight remains true. Culture is created from the ground up, crafted by those communities which come together to shape and move their culture forward. The arrival of the metaverse has thrown this into sharp relief.

Two Cs affect the third

If we look at community, commerce and culture as the “Three Cs” that provide value to consumers and enable brands to drive total growth, then the last of the three has to be driven by and linked with the first two.

Simply trying to affect ‘culture’ on its own was already a losing proposition long before the metaverse became the next big thing.

Brands looking to affect popular culture instead should look at how to support the communities within; using them as the catalyst for change.

Look at how Disney has embraced Star Wars communities to relaunch the franchise or how Wendy’s grabbed the attention of Fortnite gamers by smashing freezers.

Cultural experiences also need to link to commerce-led initiatives, because what we buy says a lot about who we are – and that will remain true whether we’re looking at the real or the digital world.

In fact, the coming of the metaverse will also hasten the growth of self-selected and self-segmented audiences, potentially making the planner’s job a little easier.

What we need to rethink in the meantime is what we mean by ‘culture’ as a concept – because it’s clear the old grand cultural narratives of the twentieth century are going to be replaced by something smaller and much more personalised.

Meta culture will change the game

It’s still much too early to know what the common threads of metaverse culture will be. The decentralised nature of the virtual world is so appealing to many that they’re unlikely it will reflect the same cultural characteristics as the real one.

Will traditional brand tie-ups have the same impact in a virtual world? Does a legacy brand with vast cultural clout, a Disney or an Adidas, still have that same currency in the metaverse?

Probably not.

Tom diSapia

There’s the small matter of a lot of those common cultural threads simply not existing in the global metaverse.

Even if we look at the world of online gaming, the metaverse’s stage one, your nationality and your appearance are meaningless. Your status, location and sexual orientation are irrelevant if you’re a warrior panda.

Brands can affect all culture (real or virtual) by targeting communities.

They might shift as the metaverse draws closer, and some communities based on real-world factors may even fade away, but similar groups of people with similar values and interests will still want to come together.

These early communities of the metaverse are the ones who will shape it for generations to come. They’ll create the codes and the stories.

Brands should empower them to accomplish this and align to the stories and codes that they share – not impose on them.

They’ll create real value by integrating themselves into the meta culture as it is being built from the ground up.

And when the time comes that the virtual world and real one is indistinguishable, who will win? Most likely, those brands that have created real value for the communities within.

Tom diSapia is chief strategy officer EMEA at media agency UM

Strategy Leaders: Mediatel News’ weekly bulletin with thought leadership, news and analysis dedicated to excellence in commercial media strategy.
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