Metaverse Fashion Week 2023: on trend or out of touch?

Visitors to Clarks Arcade were granted access to themed arcade games, a gamified amusement park crafted in the likeness of the brand’s headquarters, dance battles between digital avatars, and opportunities to win unique digital wearables (offered in the form of NFTs).

 

Leveraging the experience to promote its 2023 collection, Clarks claims to have taken inspiration from its product features to build its metaverse activation (including geometric shapes and patterns that represent the shoe brand’s signature fob, featured on each of its shoes).

“Being part of Metaverse Fashion Week not only allows us to highlight our products, but it also enables us to immerse our fans in our brand in a way like never before," Tara McRae, chief marketing and digital officer at Clarks, said.

2. There’s a greater push for interoperability

Since NFTs have entered the vernacular of marketers, the concept of interoperability – whereby a digital asset or system can operate seamlessly across different platforms – has been discussed in tandem with dialogue about the application of Web3 technology in marketing.

Benefits of interoperable assets include added accessibility for users, easier cross-platform collaboration and increased ease in how users can securely transfer information from platform to platform.

Ad industry figures, including Brent Koning, global gaming lead at Dentsu Gaming, have remarked on NFT technology's capability to build greater brand loyalty.

Other major brands, including Salesforce and Starbucks, have also recently claimed to be rethinking their approaches to Web3 technology, noting its ability help them develop effective loyalty schemes (Starbucks has launched its own blockchain-powered loyalty programme, where users can 'unlock' benefits and experiences through ownership of a unique NFT).

In an effort to further promote the interoperable capabilities of NFT technology, Decentraland collaborated with additional metaverse platforms Spatial and Over for Metaverse Fashion Week 2023 – enabling all digital purchases to be transferable and wearable by avatars in all three applications.

3. Interest in the metaverse has shifted

Falling on the heels of Facebook’s rebranding to Meta and ‘the metaverse’ being hailed as the latest hype tech, last year’s show – which was the first of its kind – was marketed by Decentraland as a breakthrough event in the global fashion industry.

However, Metaverse Fashion Week 2023 ran within a very different climate – where major brands have made recent headlines for scaling back investment in metaverse-related products and sentiments about metaverse marketing seem to have shifted among advertisers.

Meta, whose Reality Labs division (responsible for its VR and AR technology) posted a loss of $4.3bn in the fourth quarter of 2022, recently announced that it would be ending its work on NFTs. Since September 2022, the tech giant has undergone two rounds of mass layoffs (resulting in over 20,000 job cuts).

Disney, which also recently underwent a major restructuring process, announced that it would be shutting down its dedicated metaverse division, cutting roughly 50 jobs.

Interest in the event, from both brands and visitors, also appears to have waned.

Over 70 brands participated in 2022’s event, while just over 60 brands participated in this year’s event – roughly a 10% decrease from last year’s count.

Less than 50,000 unique users were also reportedly in attendance – a sharp decrease from a headcount of 108,000 visitors last year. As of March 2023, the average active population on Decentraland is reported to be 810 a day.

The metaverse has also recently become the subject of scrutiny by ad industry figures. Speaking at the Data and Marketing Association’s Data 2023 conference, Leila Seith Hassan, head of data science and analytics at Digitas, suggested that the metaverse is ‘just not relevant’ for all brands.

Guy Futcher, regional creative director at VCCP, also claims he has often seen brands jumping into the metaverse with “average” ideas.

“Most companies haven’t thought about the most important thing – whether customers want to spend time there,” he said. “Which means they end up creating expensive digital ghost towns.”