The first of its kind in the beauty industry, Metaverse Beauty Week (MBW) is coming to various immersive social platforms such as Decentraland, Roblox and Spatial from June 12-16, 2023.
Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW) 2023, which wrapped up on March 31, inspired creative agency Cult LDN to organize MBW. The event will see the participation of various retailers, well-known beauty brands and niche ones.
Over the week, MBW will provide participating brands a space to host various immersive experiences, inviting consumers to join them in virtual playgrounds and experience beauty in a virtual space unlike ever before.
MBW will hold contests with both physical and digital prizes, and offer wearable NFTs including hair and beauty features and emotes for in-game avatars.
The event will also include more traditional beauty activation elements such as sampling and gifting within the limitations of a digital environment.
Cult has formed a partnership with Exclusible, a Web3 one-stop shop for luxury metaverse experiences. Exclusible will collaborate with Cult’s in-house creative team to design unique and visually appealing spaces in Spatial for the MBW event.
MBW’s vision
Cult has ten years of experience assisting brands in utilizing technologies to expand their reach and engage with new audiences. They have also hosted multiple campaigns for well-known beauty brands, including Coty, Milani, Shiseido, Cover Girl and many more.
Cult began diving into the world of Web3 in December 2021 with an NFT collection. All income from their NFT collections goes to The Turing Trust, a foundation funded by Alan Turing’s family to empower disadvantaged communities using technology.
The agency has also held its own projects in the metaverse, such as Cult x Spatial: Dirty Laundry and Cult x DressX: Infinite Fashion Collection.
Learning from the ups and downs of MVFW, the organizers promise to improve upon them, as they have been planning for this event since the first MVFW in 2022.
“The success of Metaverse Fashion Week was in the gamification. Meanwhile, we are [prioritizing] experiences versus literal replications of real-life shops, which were not as successful [for Metaverse Fashion Week].”
Bridey-Rae Lipscombe, Cult CEO
Interoperability will be Cult’s main focus while organizing the event, enabling multiple platforms to work together, and giving brands and users equal access to the same event.
Despite a lower attendance compared to its debut in 2022, this year’s MVFW still provided a valuable opportunity for brand marketing and data gathering on a younger audience engaging in digital spaces.
MBW might be more suited for events with such a format since the beauty industry is used to fast-paced iteration and testing compared to the fashion industry.
“That iterative culture is just ingrained into the nature of the beauty industry, and its innovation cycle attracts more progressive marketers into the industry,” Lipscombe said.
She also mentioned how beauty brands were sometimes the early adopters of new marketing techniques, and MBW will be an opportunity for brands to test their brand image and marketing strength.
Some examples of unique marketing strategies include Shiseido Group’s Ulé incorporating vertical farming for their skincare blends, NARS introducing virtual brand ambassadors, Estée Lauder launching AI and AR-driven voice-enabled makeup assistant app. Lancôme is also releasing a smart makeup applicator named Hapta for users with limited limb mobility.
For now, no further detail about the event is available as the organizers are testing different event formats with the rapidly evolving technology.
However, guests are welcome to sign up on metaversebeautyweek.com to keep up with all the latest announcements, including tutorials on joining the metaverse and creating avatars.
