Unlocking the Metaverse's $ 1T Opportunity Requires Speed, Clear Expectations and Content
● Accenture's Maria Mazzone unpacks whether the metaverse is really as big an opportunity as it sounds.
Is the metaverse really as big as it sounds or will it turn out to be a big bubble?
“We believe it will be as big as the internet was in the 1990s or social and media in the 2000s,” said Maria Mazzone, managing director, innovation at Accenture, speaking at the WWD Metaverse Symposium.
The main difference with those earlier revolutions is that the metaverse is a change that everyone can see coming, with organizations already designating an executive to lead the coming transformations or building business groups to explore the ramifications for their business.
She cautioned that the industry would “not have 10 years to adapt to it — we'll lucky if we get 10 months.”
The impact of the metaverse will be no less than “everything,” changing every aspect of the business, from customer interactions and the kind of products and services offered, to the way work is performed and how companies operate.
The business opportunity that it represents is huge, Mazzone said, with global metaverse revenue expected to be around $800 billion by 2024 and up to $1 trillion by 2025, although figures are complex to tabulate.
By comparison, the pre-pandemic foot traffic to Milan's luxury district was 22 million visitors a year, while some of the platforms represented during the symposium received 50 million users every day, she continued.
In this context, the age or purchasing power of these visitors is of little importance. “It's a brand's job to turn these [50 million] opportunities into whatever you want: revenue streams, contacts, new segments, new market, brand visibility,” Mazzone said. “Opportunities like this don't come along often and this is happening now.”
That said, “no great opportunity comes without risk,” she later answered to an audience question on assessing and mitigating risks ranging from cybersecurity, intellectual property to financial crimes.
“In order to mitigate these risks, you need to be very present as a brand…this makes it much more difficult to copy you, hack you or go around you in some ways.”
Could the metaverse ever replace “real life,” aka the physical world? “The quick answer is no, of course not. This is not the Matrix,” she said, explaining that both would eventually need to be enmeshed.
Seeing these new spaces as a place that doesn't exist or another channel that can be integrated into current omnichannel strategies would be a mistake, given the time and money currently invested by individuals and organizations as well as future “multisensorial” developments such as the integration of touch and scent into virtual reality.
She also touched on unanswered questions, such as responsibility and pointed out the importance of the persistence build into the metaverse, where experiences could remain accessible even after an event has concluded.
Building blocks she highlighted were the notion of identity, possibilities to evolve product into experiences and services, spaces without physical constraints that boosted creativity and the importance of content.
“Content is king in the metaverse…and requires new skills,” she continued, noting that this explained why platforms like Second Life had not taken off in the early 2000s.
Asked which ones were required to succeed in the metaverse, she pointed out it would be “a really varied set of skills,” covering fields from technology and experience design to psychology and even policymaking as regulations around norms and identities will also become necessary.
More immediate choices awaiting companies will including whether to sell digital goods or NFTs — “you could and probably should do both,” was her take — or offering products versus experiences.
Mazzone said “there [are] no limits to the opportunities and scenarios” unlocked by the metaverse, highlighting possibilities like engaging consumers through experiences and even co-creation possibilities, or fostering an “omnireality” ecosystem bringing together the physical and digital retail experiences. Likewise for internal processes, where immersive learning, virtual prototyping and enhanced operational management could emerge.
Before entering the metaverse, companies should question their timeline and expectations, be it garnering revenue immediately, finding new consumers or building brand visibility. Her top recommendation was to “experiment to stay competitive” to let the market see movement and making that testing meaningful to inform a long-term vision.
“The big question is really why will people go to your place, your metaverse and what would they find that they can't find in other places,” she concluded.