Metaverse ! Beautyverse ! What's this ?

Metaverse ! Beautyverse !

You may have heard of this more and more around. But what exactly is it, and how will it shape the future of beauty?

As a large part of Cosmetics and beauty sales already moved online, accelerated by COVID time, is this parallel world populated with avatars the very next step of consumption habits?

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What’s this ?

The metaverse is a virtual reality world where users can interact, play games and experience things as they would in the real world.

One may say it’s a kind of parallel virtual world, or one other may just say that’s another social media more high tech, as you can see on the poll's result :

Anyway, using tools as AR or VR tech and via an avatar, users can immerse into this world and interact with objects or people in this virtual projection.

And of course Facebook company, recently renamed as META, brings up automatically spotlight the METAverse too somehow.

We even see the term used as Beautyverse as simply the combination of Beauty on Metaverse.

This virtual world uses even its own currency NFT, yes, another barbarian word !

NFT, “Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) are interchangeable digital assets traded over the internet. NFTs are generated and traded in cryptocurrency which is digital cash with an encrypted key often in the form of a random string of numbers.”

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What’s in it for the brand ? …

First of, let’s be clear, branding and marketing in the metaverse is still in its very beginning not to say exploring phase of course. That’s just normal as it has to start somewhere. That being said, it seems very exciting (or scary for some) with the endless possibilities this virtual world can offer.

The pro’s are definitely the catch of being a pioneer in this virtual promising world where communities grow, enabling brands to target more accurately to their precise audience thanks to all these massive data generated by users and so well collected by social media as you are well aware of.

Metaverse could also soon transform purchasing habits for beauty and cosmetics products and beyond (fashion…). As mentioned in the introduction, sales are moving a lot to e-commerce mainly as well as the development of new purchase behavior as with social shopping.

Social shopping is simply a shopping experience online where potential customers are from a social network community. Challenges for the brands here are to develop interaction and immersive activities to engage their followers.

Recently some brands made a “Défilé” online where viewers could directly purchase items on this fashion show with links to their TIK TOK product page and as such generate revenue. In addition this event creates exposure, engagement to the brands and the feeling of being exclusive to their followers, not to mention an innovative aspect of shopping.

Similar to a physical store, some “Meta-stores” comes up such as the Dermalogica’s one.

So Metaverse follows the path of the so called omni-channel strategy as one more potential distribution channel.

AND it is indeed a huge opportunity for brands to have their physical store digitalized with the interaction and the view, already available using current VR and AR material, but later with more features (scent… read in some lines below) having a complete real shop fully transposed digitally open for business, reachable anywhere anytime.

And so, several challenges appears where physical meets digital with technical challenges … which leads me to mention the con’s.

The con’s for beauty brands wishing to make their mark in the metaverse are clearly the exploring phase, the costs and the need to tailor their marketing for this “media” and its new technical aspects.

For example, communities there are a lot Gamers. It will spread to wider audience, but for now it is widely Gamers or Geeks. And I am totally sure that Women are far more represented in it than what we may think. But these worlds has their own codes that Beauty brands will automatically need to integrate in their way to communicate and approach them, while remaining true to their brand positioning.

So far, many old ways to simply sponsor events, have been applied such as Charlotte Tillbury sponsoring the Girl Gamer Festival in 2021; L’Oréal-owned YSL Beauté partnership with streamer Talia Mar for a sponsored stream promoting the Black Opium Fragrance; and Estée Lauder’s microsite Anrcade, where users play arcade-style minigames and learn about the brand’s Advanced Night Repair serum.

In my opinion, even if sponsor are nice moves, the brands able to catch the immersive interaction and community aspect of it, will actually gain far more credibility to the audience’s eye. ?

… And the consumer?

“The metaverse is starting to be adopted by beauty consumers, but this adoption may be as small as using an AR filter. At the other end of the spectrum, they might be ready to buy an NFT from a beauty brand,” says Abi Buller, foresight writer at The Future Laboratory, a strategic foresight consultancy based in London.

It says it all from the point of view that, as always, with new coming technology, the equipment is crucial to spread the usage. Just makes sense !

But the consumer may see in this META world, Meta means BEYOND in ancient greek by the way, cool new advanced shopping experience BEYOND current possibilities seen within off/on-line shopping.

Metaverse personalizes the experience which is actually one of the core pillar since its creation, and so is the case of the customer experience. In addition of enjoying the possibility to personalize their avatars and live totally unique experiences such as “Gamified” consumption or personified service wherever you are at anytime. ?Certain brands can also conceive customized product testing or demonstrations in virtual or augmented reality for consumers equipped with special headsets.

With the innovation having sky as the limit, soon, you may scent perfume tester from your headset.

“Digital smell technology” research is actually developing a digital scent technology, meaning that it is possible to sense, transmit & receive smell through the internet. Rather small amount of smells for now, but on the way.

As such, Metaverse clearly becomes another tool to engage and follow up customer relations to entertain viewers and soon more than their eyes.

The con’s is a real downside actually. Indeed, we know already today that with the usage of social media comes some deviance behavior (stress…). So how would it be when this parallel world would become technically reachable for the most.

Not mentioning privacy and protection of people’s data.

Let’s hope competent authorities will framework all this clearly.

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To conclude,

Whether it becomes the future of the internet or just another tech buzzword, like AI or blockchain, METAVERSE remains to be seen.

BEAUTY–VERSE is actually just around the corner, and all these opportunities pave the way for many experiences that can help evolve customer service, all while maintaining an augmented “human” approach through a virtual media.

What’s your opinion about this Metaverse ?

Do you think Beautyverse will bring revolution to consumption?