In the metaverse marketing space, first-mover Absolut has seen value in experimenting with Web3 activations, despite some marketers’ mixed feelings about investing such experiences. In an article for PRNEWS, VP of Marketing Matt Foley discusses the brand’s metaverse strategy, approach to measurement and the company’s plans for the future

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Chief Marketer’s monthly Industry Pulse Survey polls our audience about some of the marketing industry’s most buzzworthy topics. The topic for January was the Metaverse. Though 60 percent of marketers have not yet activated in the Metaverse, 58 percent are somewhat or very interested in the topic.

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Like all brands within the spirits category, Johnnie Walker is accustomed to marketing around life’s celebratory cultural moments. But when it came to the emerging, disruptive culture of Web3 and collectible NFTs, the whisky maker lacked influence.

“This was an area of culture that we really weren’t playing in, and it was becoming one of the biggest disruptions we were going to see in digital experiences going forward,” said Sophie Kelly, SVP of Whiskies at DIAGEO North America. “So we started our adventure not by setting up wallets and everything corporately, but coming into the landscape and attaching ourselves to a community—and bringing value to that community.”

Following is our conversation with Kelly about Johnnie Walker’s entry into the realm of Web3 experiences and digital creator collaborations, how the brand is connecting with new communities and the business benefits of diving into the world of NFTs.

CM: You were just down in Miami at Art Basel with multiple activations, including in Web3. How did your journey into marketing with Web3 experiences begin?

Sophie Kelly, SVP of Whiskies at DIAGEO North America: I run all the whisky portfolios, so I have a lot of brands talking to different consumers, attaching to different cultural moments and turning up in different occasions. We took a step back about 10 months ago and said, our brands survive and thrive when they’re running alongside of culture and playing in it in a way that adds value. We generally turn up at moments of celebration, when people are enjoying themselves. But this was an area of culture that we really weren’t playing in, and it was becoming one of the biggest disruptions we were going to see in digital experiences going forward, whether it be NFTs or Web3 experiences.

So, we started our adventure by not setting up wallets and everything corporately, but coming into the landscape and attaching ourselves to a community—and bringing value to that community. Our first collaboration was with VeeFriends, Gary Vee’s collection, where we went into that Gift Goat community, which has 555 token-holders. They get a gift every six months, so we custom-made a Johnnie Walker bottle that became one of them. That was our entry into NFTs and Web3. And then we went to VeeCon and created an experience for those Gift Goat holders where they got their custom bottle.

CM: Were these new consumers that you were connecting with?

SK: We also started a relationship with BlockBar, which is a marketplace where you can create experiences around spirits that are beyond the bottle. It offers you a platform to auction these rare liquids and experiences and also collaborate with creators. What excited me about this platform for Johnnie Walker was the ability for us to tap into a whole new kind of luxury consumer. If you look at NFT collectors, they are high-net-worth consumers that we weren’t speaking to. And we’re a company that has more collectible and rare spirits in whisky than anyone else.

The second thing we did in the space was the launch of our Ghost & Rare edition, which is liquids that come from distilleries that are no longer operating. They’re orphan barrels that can never be got again. For this one, we had the actual NFT bottle. We had Emma Walker, our head distiller of Johnnie Walker, create an educational NFT. And then we partnered with Web3 creator Ivona Tau, who created AI artwork based off the concept of Ghost & Rare. We had this huge consumer experience where we released 75 of them.

CM: Did this benefit the brand beyond creating buzz?

SK: We usually go to market at about $220 a bottle on those. We released them auction-style and they ran out in 12 seconds and sold for a lot higher price point, up to about $700 or $725. Normally, when people get these rare bottles they sell them on the secondary market. Nobody benefits from that sale. Now, you can track that: The artist and you both benefit from the increased long life.

We also did a release of our rare 48-year on BlockBar, and that sold in seconds. We’re starting to get a sense for the experiences we can create, whether it be collaborating alongside a community like Gift Goat or actually getting into the private marketplace and creating our experiences for a luxury consumer that we weren’t talking to. Then, it’s about how we match the digital and the physical.

CM: And that’s where your activations at Art Basel come in.

SK: We know that Art Basel is going to have a huge presence with Web3. We know that some of the communities we’ve already started playing with, like World of Women, are going to be down there. We partnered up with Vandy The Pink and gave consumers the opportunity to customize their own Johnnie Walker Blue Bottle. He had various designs that he was playing with. And then at the actual event in Art Basel with Vandy you saw the voting in real life. It’s a unique experience with the product and design at the center of it, but ultimately crowdsourcing to create something that is unique to that community and that has both a physical and a digital experience.

CM: How do these Web3 initiatives help the brand from a business perspective? What do you gain from them?

SK: Culturally, we are aligning and learning about a new community that we don’t currently have thinking about or enacting with our brands, in particular the high-net worth of the NFT collectible community. We have a rare and collectible whisky collection that they don’t know about.

The second part of it is that we can create value beyond the bottle itself. Normally, we’re marketing so people buy the bottle. But in this environment, we can create artwork and educational experiences which people feel are valuable, and a new life cycle of emerging digital experiences that can go alongside our brands.

CM: You are responsible for Johnnie Walker’s whisky portfolio. Are other brands getting involved in Web3?

SK: There’s an experience that we just released on Crown Royal, which is another first. That brand is all about inspiring exceptional generosity. There is a purple bag associated with the product that it comes in, and we have a purpose-driven program where we stuff them with essentials and send them to the U.S. military. On Giving Tuesday, we went to market with a Web3 experience where you could gift a Crown Royal to someone in your life who you believed deserved rewarding because they had done exceptional things.

Then on their behalf, we packed a bag and sent it away to the military. We worked with Salesforce to develop the infrastructure so that people who were not in Web3 and didn’t have wallets and people who were already in Web3 could both come into the activation. There’s two parts of it: We used the Salesforce NFT cloud and then the CrossMint platform, which allowed us to bring in plus-21-year-old consumers who were not in Web3. We’re merging both those communities. It also started a CRM relationship with new consumers where we didn’t have one before. Now we have them in the system and can continue to have a dialogue with them.

CM: What are your brands doing in the space in the coming year?

SK: Across whiskies, we are going to continue to experiment and get feedback from consumers. We’re going to continue to have a long-term commitment to the communities we’ve already entered into. World of Women are key partners that we’ve established. We’re also going to work with more creators and bring them into our experiences and hopefully develop out this whisky luxury marketplace with BlockBar. The most exciting thing is the two-way feedback and the fact that you’re developing your programs alongside creators in this new emerging area. We’re also going to continue to extend “That Deserves a Crown” for the Super Bowl.

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Continued disruption within the beauty industry and the steady influx of new technologies have forced marketers in the category to become early adopters in digital. Virtual try-on technology, for instance, now enables customers to experience products virtually, thereby overcoming the confines of a physical retail store.

An example of a company leading the charge is Orveon Global, parent company of beauty brands bareMinerals, Laura Mercier and Buxomhas, which has integrated the technology across its websites. Recently, the company’s Chief Digital Officer Salima Popatia ushered Laura Mercier into the realm of the metaverse. Sister pub AdExchanger chats with Popatia about the virtual store experience, future iterations, live shopping events, and more.

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While Halloween is typically celebrated as an in-person, trick-or-treat affair, several consumer brands are going the digital route with experiential activations and crafting spooky metaverse experiences this year–from Cheetos’ Chesterville to Urban Decay’s Cryptoween to Hot Topic’s gamified collection drop. Sister pub Event Marketer has the roundup.

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Last week we unveiled metaverse marketing strategies from iHeartMedia and State Farm executives, who dished on co-creating a new activation on Roblox, leveraging synergies between the two brands, the future of music in the metaverse, and more. Following is part two of our conversation with these trailblazers, where they delve into the challenges each brand has faced while building and marketing a metaverse activation, advice for businesses seeking to get jump into the space and the marketing initiatives coming down the pike for both.

Chief Marketer: What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered while creating experiences and engaging consumers in the metaverse? What advice do you have for brands looking to get involved?

Alyson Griffin, Vice President of Marketing at State Farm: I have to give a shout out to Chipotle who had a really cool activation. They had their actual chef talking about a recipe in the metaverse. A user could learn to make it and grill it, and then go taste it in real life down the street at your local Chipotle. I thought that was super cool, talking about their new product and driving real-world revenue from a fun little activation in the metaverse. That kind of “retail”… is easier to think about. For an insurance brand, that’s not the case. That’s where we leaned into the assets that we’ve spent decades and billions of dollars creating value for in the real world and thinking creatively about how to have them show up.

That’s why that initial NBA2K entrance for State Farm with Jake was really important, because we can test and learn and see, and now we know what we have in that asset. It’s thinking differently about the current suite of assets that a brand has at their disposal. Even the sonic [aspect]: On Roblox, in order to get the best viewing platform for the concert, you “jump” on our logo, and every time you jump on it, our “like a good neighbor” jingle plays. So, it’s being open and creative to thinking slightly differently about the wealth of assets that any brand has and being willing to try it. And if it doesn’t work, it’s okay.

Gayle Troberman, CMO of iHeartMedia: My advice would be similar. The collaboration is king, and particularly important when you’re trying new things for the first time. For us, it was a collaboration with the Roblox and Fortnite development teams who are experts in building gaming experiences. And then collaborating with brands that understand how their brand should show up and what makes sense for their consumers. And then collaborating with the artist community, with every artist thinking about what they want to do and how they want to show up. You have to be willing to be a little fearless.

It’s so much easier for brands to come in and partner with people, so we’re all playing different roles in this equation. A lot of brands do everything on their own. We put on thousands of concerts a year. Putting on concerts in the metaverse is different, but it’s still core to what we do. We’re already collaborating with the artists and their management and we know when their music’s coming out and what’s important to each artist at what point in the calendar. And we know how to promote each artist, whether it’s a hip hop artist or a pop artist or country artist.

Marketers love to have complete control, but when you’re taking a leap into the metaverse, you need to give up control and collaborate. And then you need to listen and learn and see what consumers are doing and what they’re loving and what they’re not loving. And then be willing to adapt and keep building. This is probably the most organic, living project we’ve ever created. It’s all about collaboration and learning.

CM: What are the specific strategic marketing goals for this program?

AG: Marketers are moving more and more into data and insights and testing. Creative is still very critical, but understanding all the different things that you can measure and how engagement happens and why is really important. From my perspective, especially in the metaverse, it’s all those new levers: engagement, dwell time, interaction, length… all of these different vectors that we’ve never had to measure before or paid attention to will inform what we do and how we change activations in the real world and virtually moving forward.

So, as marketing is pushed as a function to deliver—not be a cost center, but to be a revenue generator for any enterprise—it’s more and more important to understand all those levers. That’s part of the learning agenda that we have at State Farm for marketing: capturing current demand, generating future demand, and looking at the retention and loyalty of our in-book customers. To prove our value as a function, we are going to need to get more and more deeply integrated into the insights.

GT: For us at iHeart, our mission is to provide access to every audience, for creators and for artists and for brands. We go wherever the fans are. We try to create the best, most engaging experiences, and we always invite brands in from the very beginning to build with us and to co-create and collaborate. So far, every signal we have says we’ve got a hit with iHeartland. The fans are engaging, they’re playing, they’re interacting. The time spent is phenomenal. The number of engagements and actions people are taking, the social engagement and sentiment is incredibly positive.

The next step is, how can we scale this and keep listening and learning and building with more of our brand partners? A scalable way to engage and reach millions and millions of fans every day in an entirely new way without all of the costs and complexity that you face trying to put on events in the real world. We think it’s a powerful form.

CM: What’s coming down the pike for both of your brands in terms of marketing initiatives?

AG: We just launched personal price plan into the market. We think timing-wise with the macroeconomic trends going on, bringing the power of price in a personal plan helps our customers across the country not pay for things they don’t need. That’s where we’re focused: the value of our 20,000 agents across the country.

GT: We’ve always got tons of stuff going on at iHeart, but we just had our big AudioCon event a couple weeks ago with thousands of marketers, and we’re launching our new B2B marketing campaign to help marketers understand the power of audio. Consumers are spending a third of their media time now with audio. Broadcast is part of that, and podcasts and streaming are another huge part. We are launching our “Access to All” campaign that’s about educating marketers about the power of audio, how to do great audio creative, how to plan audio and how to measure audio. Consumers are spending more time there, but marketers are spending much less than a third of their budgets on audio. So we think there’s a huge opportunity there.

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Consumers may not initially equate live music, gaming and the metaverse with an insurance brand—but with its recent launch on Roblox, State Farm is looking to change all that.

“We’re in a category that not many folks wake up thinking about every day,” said Alyson Griffin, Vice President of Marketing at State Farm. “It felt like the right next steps… showing up where our potential and future customers will be in new, interesting ways—but that are authentic to how they think about us in the real world.”

That’s the idea behind its new metaverse activation iHeartLand, a music-themed interactive experience on Roblox created in partnership with iHeartMedia and Intel, featuring live, virtual concerts, gamified music composition, branded worlds from State Farm and Intel, and much more. We spoke with Griffin and iHeartMedia CMO Gayle Troberman about the value the experience is creating for the companies involved, the advantages of cross-brand promotion, the importance of collecting data and insights through testing and advice for brands who are looking to build a presence in the metaverse.

Chief Marketer: There’s a lot of talk about the metaverse at the moment, but not every brand is participating quite yet. Why is that important for your brands to get involved?

Gayle Troberman, CMO of iHeartMedia: At iHeart, we believe in democratizing access between fans and artists and brands and podcasters at scale. We’re always about testing and learning in new spaces, to go wherever the fans are, and to try to create those once-in-a-lifetime experiences and moments. As we saw how big the numbers were, particularly the metaverse gaming platforms that already have high usage and hundreds of millions of consumers engaging on a regular basis, we thought what a perfect place to create new experiences that bring music and gaming together, which is a new space for us. We believe in going everywhere fans are and figuring out what the right experiences are between the fans, the brand and the artists. And that’s exactly what we’re in the middle of with our friends at State Farm.

Alyson Griffin, Vice President of Marketing at State Farm: For State Farm, I’ll just lay it out there: We’re in a category that not many folks wake up thinking about every day. And I’m saying it with a huge smile on my face. Not only that, but we are not a global brand. We operate only in the United States. And just like for every business around the globe, the buying power of the under 40 crowd is immensely important to all brands globally. So we are trying to think of interesting, exciting, unexpected ways to show up to generate future demand. When Gayle started talking to us about this opportunity with iHeartLand in the metaverse, I jumped in really fast because we can replicate what we do naturally in the real world. We show up with stadium sponsorships, for example, naming rights and gaming. We’ve been in gaming for over a decade and we are a big sponsor of audio, with iHeart as an example. It felt like the right next steps… showing up where our potential and future customers will be in new interesting ways—but that are authentic to how they think about us in the real world.

CM: Using your mascot, Jake from State Farm, as a way to engage with players seemed like a smart choice.

AG: We were fortunate to have a little bit of learning here. Jake was the first non-playable-character in NBA2K, maybe a year and a half ago now. We did a lot of learning and testing. Will people approach him? If they do, how long will they interact with him? If they interact with him, will they spend their money on a skin, which is khakis and a red shirt? All that kind of stuff. So when we were talking to Gayle and the iHeart team about the metaverse, it was a no-brainer that we would want to put Jake in it.

And then the final act that we have is literally the words “like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” but also the notion of what it means to be a good neighbor. Jake’s able to represent that good neighbor spirit in the game.

CM: There are some synergies between your brands. Can you talk about the value of cross-brand promotion here?

AG: For State Farm, we were already good partners with iHeart. And what I mean by that is a partner who understands our culture, understands what matters to us, has worked with us and activated for a long period of time and knew what our brand safety guidelines were. That really matters to State Farm. So, right out of the gate, there was a trust with iHeart in particular. We were both jumping in, and I think I can say for both of us, this was a leap—no small amount of money here. So the synergy there, at least to start, was: At least we are doing this with someone who understands how important our brand safety and attributes are.

The other reason that iHeart was a really great choice for us was the scale. They’re reaching nine out of every 10 Americans, and the media mass network of broadcast and podcast, where we are already enjoying a lot of benefit, is something that was important to us. Again, because we are not a global brand, and to surround people in the United States with our message is difficult [when you] just have the power of one country. This reach that iHeart has was really critical to agreeing to go into it.

GT: You see a lot of brands jumping into the metaverse or opening their own parks or land, but it’s a real commitment to program new content and new experiences on an every day, every week, every month basis. The equation is great for iHeart and for the brands and for the artists who perform in the metaverse at State Farm Park and iHeartLand because we have the promotional power to go on iHeart’s broadcast radio stations, across iHeart’s podcast network and our streaming platform. And we can rally users and tell consumers every day about what’s happening in Roblox, in Fortnite, and we can pull consumers in on a regular basis. And there’s consumers who may not even go to iHeartLand in Roblox, but will know that those things are happening and they’ll hear about State Farm Park and then they’ll understand the brand is about innovation and engaging consumers in new and fun ways where music and gaming collide.

CM: Music and sound branding are key features of the activation. Do you see audio playing a pivotal role in the development of metaverse activations moving forward?

AG: Yes, audio will be part of the metaverse. And music. My guess is that it’ll be fully immersive. One of the interesting things is that we have stadium rights in the real world. And if Charlie Puth was playing a stadium, maybe he would do multiple days or he would have to go on a world tour to hit the number of people who attended the State Farm Park iHeartLand concert that he just did in one go. That notion of democratizing access to these famous artists is really appealing to us. And I think that the metaverse provides that opportunity. I don’t have to get on a plane. I don’t have to pay for this huge ticket. I don’t have to wait until the summer—whatever it is. I can just attend in the metaverse.

GT: If you’re Charlie Puth or Lauv, which are the two concerts we’ve done to date, as an artist it’s an amazing experience, too. Charlie got to perform once, and that concert was probably the equivalent of doing 50 to a hundred sold out shows in Madison Square Garden. So all of a sudden he’s got so many of his fans, as Alyson said, who can access a new experience. Now, how concerts evolve and what exactly is the interaction and the interplay between the music and the gaming experience, that’s one of the big new questions that we’re all just learning about. But the music community is equally interested in figuring out the right interaction between a performance and their music and the games and the experience. It’s a whole new way to see a concert and not just be sitting in a seat.

AG: This is just pondering the future of the metaverse, but it occurs to me that it could potentially be the present-day radio or television, where it’s a gathering place for the family as well, depending on what is happening in the metaverse. Most people think it’s the kids and they’re putting on a headset and stealing themselves away. And maybe some of that is true, but with these kinds of experiences evolving, I think families can participate together and talk and discuss—the way the radio and the television changed family dynamics when they were each introduced.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our conversation with iHeartMedia and State Farm, to come later this week on Chiefmarketer.com.

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After a three-year hiatus, big tech brands once again erected sprawling beach activations at the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, designed to entertain, educate and inspire advertisers, marketers and creatives attending the week-long event. One such standout was Meta, sporting a (relatively) new name, several immersive, metaverse-inspired activations, a vivid, colorfully-designed footprint and a fresh outlook as a fully experiential brand.

“We’ve had some pretty big changes over the last year,” said Julie Hogan, Meta’s VP of Global Experiential & Industry Marketing. “Our experiences make up a huge component of how we represent Meta and how we want people to engage with our products and services.”

At this year’s festival, which took place from June 20-24, those experiences included a Reels SuperStudio, a Horizon Worlds experience via Meta Quest headsets; VR-driven immersive learning; a Ray-Ban Stories demo; and, for the first time, a showcase of WhatsApp’s features for businesses. Check out what Meta Beach had to offer in Event Marketer’s festival coverage.

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Metaverse activations allow marketers to tap into new retail channels within immersive experiences while simultaneously building stronger relationships between brands and consumers. Here are several issues marketers should keep in mind while testing out the metaverse, according to a piece in Multichannel Merchant, from balancing between branding and performance campaigns to developing new metrics to building secure experiences.

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When it comes to building metaverse experiences, marketers are advised to lead with a business objective first, a clearly-delineated purpose and an eye toward building customer loyalty and nurturing connection among attendees. But what about the revenue piece? Multichannel Merchant looks at five ways ecommerce activations can drive revenue in the metaverse, from pre-sale events for loyal customers to a digital storefront featuring NFTs to embracing the sale of virtual real estate.

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