Metaverse Activities Impacting Real World Sales for Brands

Gaming platform Roblox has released its annual report, Digital Expression, Fashion & Beauty Trends, a survey of over 1,500 Gen-Z members in the United States and United Kingdom. And it has some interesting implications for the marketing strategies of fashion and beauty brands.
 
While generally speaking activations are not yet generating significant revenue from the sale of digital merchandise—though there are, of course, important exceptions— such activations are, nonetheless, proving invaluable as marketing tools with early data pointing to an impact on real world sales.
 
Physical Crossover

That three quarters of respondents considered wearing digital fashions from a recognized brand as important where their avatars were concerned may come as no surprise. However, 84% said they would be likely to wear that brand in the physical world with 50% saying that they’d be very or extremely likely to do so.
 
The Beauty Opportunity

Over a third of all respondents said it was important to customize their avatar’s makeup whether this be daily or weekly. Likewise hair. Over the last year, users have purchased more than 139 million digital hairstyles for their avatars, (up 20% on the previous year) with more than 7.3 million users investing in five or more.
 
Exclusivity Matters

Final take-out from the report is the aforementioned exception to the current status quo regarding revenue generated by digital items. Just like desirability for exclusive or rare items in the physical world, the same is true in the metaverse.


Source: Forbes