Storytelling for Web3 and the metaverse
Creating the foundations for immersive digital experiences...
For forward-looking brands, any new opportunity to engage and astonish their customers is one to explore. The rise of the metaverse, Web3, digital events, and NFTs provide yet-untapped opportunities to create memorable and distinctive brand experiences.
(Start here: Discovering Web3 and the Metaverse for Jewellery and Luxury Brands)
Even in the earliest days of these technologies, brands are exploiting a myriad of ways to capture the imagination, and attention, of their audience.
And at the heart of them all? Storytelling.
Storytelling has long been a powerful tool to connect and align with an audience. (Read more: What is brand storytelling?)
Storytelling allows jewellery businesses to create and communicate the intangible value behind their products and brand. Brand storytelling connects the various facets of a business, putting the audience at its heart.
In this emerging world, storytelling connects new experiences to existing values. It creates the foundation for immersive spaces and events. It unifies platforms, and bridges the remove between audience and brand.
Storytelling for jewellery NFTs
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are digital-only creations owned on the blockchain. These digital assets can be collected, as you might a piece of art, or ‘worn’ in virtual spaces such as games, the metaverse, or social media.
With no physical entity, the value of a jewellery NFT is created by design and story. High jewellery houses have been exploiting NFTs to explore fantastical concepts, indulging in feats of imagination.
Jewellery brands have long used collections to tell individual stories, creating ranges of pieces inspired by a specific theme or concept. Jewellery NFTs can be used in exactly the same way. Without the limitations of manufacturing and cost, brands are able to explore more esoteric or topical inspirations, pushing boundaries in both design and storytelling.
For many buyers, the value of the NFT relates to identity and community. For digital natives, whole lives and identities are constructed online. How a person presents themselves on social media, on Zoom, in virtual spaces or communities, is as important as the way they present themselves in ‘reality’. Ownership of NFTs can indicate belonging to a community or movement. NFTs often include usage rights, allowing the owner to set the image as a social media profile or virtually wear the item.
For others, the value of an NFT is created by the brand alone. The cachet of owning an item from a prestigious heritage house or an exciting emerging brand is the draw. For these buyers, the coherence of the NFT with the brand’s style and story is vital.
Storytelling for immersive and phygital experiences
A novel experience captures the focus of both new and existing audiences. Immersive, digitally powered events are the latest trend in marketing and brand building for luxury and jewellery businesses.
As the name suggests, phyigital experiences combine the physical and digital.
Tiffany’s 2022 “Vision & Virtuosity” exhibition was a journey through the brand’s design history, with pieces of jewellery displayed in a physical journey through the ages. In addition to digital artwork and projected storefronts, the exhibition used AR (augmented reality) to leap into the future. Allowing visitors to ‘try on’ extraordinary pieces of jewellery, including the priceless Tiffany Diamond, flexed the traditional boundaries between audience and brand.
Such events give jewellers the opportunity to tell their story in new ways. A brand’s history may be set in stone, but its story can shift. Storytelling reflects the changing desires of its current audience and time. Technology is new and different, capturing attention in a world where focus is hard to secure.
At the September 2022 Vicenzaoro show, Rebecca Foerster of Hearts of Fire described the upcoming generation of diamond and fine jewellery customers as a “phyigital consumer”. Gen Z, the first generation of digital natives, expect to move “seamlessly between the online and physical world”. Storytelling creates a thread between platforms and worlds, helping create the foundation for those seamless, authentic experiences.
Digital events are also an opportunity for brands to collaborate with artists and innovators. Collaborations have always been a tool for creative brands, a chance to share audiences and inspire new perspectives. Digital and phygital experiences create new routes for complementary skills and ideas to blend.
Bulgari called on the vision of Refik Anadol for their Serpenti Metamorphosis exhibition. The resulting digital art drew on Bulgari’s rich history and reputation, reframed for a new world and audience.
At Paris Fashion Week 2023, models shared the Coperni runway with Boston Dynamics’ robot dogs. The pairing bewildered some commentators. Were robot dogs an attempt to provoke the same viral response as their 2022 airbrushed dress, technology for the sake novelty? But by weaving a “modern fable” around the show, the designers blended concept with spectacle. A “story about relationships between humans and robots” reinforces the self-described “innovative and digital DNA” of the Coperni brand.
Storytelling for jewellery in the metaverse
The metaverse creates a whole new world in which stories can be told. Until now, an in-store experience offered the most fully realised version of a brand. Now, an immersive brand experience can be created online.
By creating branded virtual worlds, jewellery businesses can tell their story in space they truly, holistically, control.
A branded world can be based on a business’ history or mythology, or could reflect current design styles and concepts. Creating a world that users can explore deepens the connection between consumer and brand. Combined with an authentic narrative, these worlds are engaging and memorable, prioritising experience over advertising.
The metaverse allows brands to push the limits of their storytelling. As a single destination, in-store spaces must reflect the core of the brand’s story and market. Spaces in the metavese can explore the furthest reaches of a brand’s story, exploring in real-time which facets of their story engage their consumer the most. Virtual spaces can shift with seasons
As with digital and phyigital events, the world of the metaverse creates immersive and engaging experiences. The value can be brand-building alone, or creating an interactive online sales space. Combining digital technologies allows brands to communicate their history, inspiration and values while creating a sales journey. A metaverse experience can culminate with augmented reality to sell physical pieces, or the sale of NFTs.
Demonstrating a commitment to technology beyond experiences, Bulgari and Tiffany both launched NFTs in 2022 – Bulgari’s Beyond Wonder and Tiffany’s NFTiff.
Jewellery storytelling: the foundation of immersive experiences
Storytelling is the power behind jewellery brands’ use of technology to connect with their audience. The metaverse, Web3, digital experiences, and NFTs provide opportunities for sales, marketing, and brand-building. Crafting compelling narratives and immersive worlds, brands can use these tools to create engaging and memorable experiences for their customers and community.
The headline for digital storytelling is coherence. Storytelling is inherently fluid. The ability to modernise and react is a vital part of modern brand storytelling. But coherence to core values and narratives is vital for memorability and understanding.
The opportunities presented by digital technologies are limitless. Creating events and products. Collaborating with other artists and users. Building communities and spaces. But however a brand chooses to exploit these opportunities, it must ensure consistency with its core brand narratives.
Brands without the strategy or resources to immediately exploit Web3 technologies can lay the foundations now by looking to storytelling. By defining their brand story and voice, luxury businesses create a framework on which digital experiences can be built.
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