7 entreprises françaises qui investissent dans le Metaverse
Monday, November 21, 2022
The Metaverse seems futuristic for some French companies.
But others have understood the stakes and know that this new virtual world will emerge faster than we think.
(Especially since Facebook became a Meta in October 2021).
In this article, we will discover the 7 French companies that are already adopting a metaverse strategy.
By looking at their examples, you will be able to know if it is relevant for you to invest in the Metaverse.
If you don’t know what the Metaverse is yet, I refer you to our article on the definition of the Metaverse.
Without further ado, here is the program:
- What is the purpose of the Metaverse for brands and companies?
- Carrefour Group and Metaverse
- Casino Group and Metaverse
- Axa Assurances and Metaverse
- Ubisoft and Metaverse
- Havas Group and Metaverse
- Crédit Agricole and Metaverse
- Luxury brands and the Metaverse
What is the purpose of the Metaverse for brands and companies?
For brands and companies, the Metaverse is a new way to promote products: a form of virtual advertising showcase.
Here is what they are looking for when adopting a Metaverse strategy:
- Be perceived as innovative and get ahead of the competition
- Duplicate their activity in the virtual world
- Offer new products to differentiate themselves
- Find other opportunities for growth
We will now illustrate this with concrete examples of French companies in the metaverse.
Let’s start with Carrefour:
1 – Carrefour Metaverse Group
The Carrefour Group has acquired a virtual land on the French Metaverse The Sandbox.
(To discover our comparison of the Metaverse in which to launch when you are a company, go here)
This plot of land was bought for 120 ETH or nearly 300,000 euros at the time of purchase.
It is 36 hectares and is on the site (33,147)
The idea was not to miss the boat on new technologies.
In May 2022, Carrefour developed a virtual campus that allows to exchange with job seekers.
Here’s what the group’s CEO Alexandre Bompard says:
“Conducting a job interview facing the sea in Paris: today I was taking my first steps in the Metavers, under the guise of a funny avatar, with young candidates data analysts or data scientists… Carrefour innovates, learns, surprises!”
The CEO also hosted an online conference only accessible on the Metaverse.
In addition, Carrefour has launched NFBEES, an NFT project with an experiment on The Sandbox.
The goal is to sell pixelated bees and to transfer the profits to the Beefund of the Fondation de France, an NGO that supports the protection of bees.
We can think what we want about Carrefour’s experiments, but we can’t say that they haven’t experimented.
In the long term, the retail giants could align themselves with Walmart’s Metaverse strategy.
The American retail giant has recently developed its Metaverse vision.
The consumer would go into the Metaverse, virtual shopping cart in hand, select the items they need, like in a video game. Then he would wait for home delivery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLcaDStxljw
It is then an improved drive, in three dimensions.
An immersive version of e-commerce.
2 – Metaverse Casino Group
From the end of 2021, the Casino Group has been buying plots on the Metaverse The Sandbox as Casino Real Estate CEO Nicolas Joly said:
“We started buying plots at the end of 2021, but we are running several projects whose goal is to offer a customer experience […] The goal is to create value with these new virtual assets as we do with our real assets.”
Specifically, Casino has developed a gaming experience for Club Leader Price customers.
As they progress, players will earn vouchers or discounts to spend on the Leader Price Club e-commerce site or application.
Here’s a glimpse of the experience:
Through its brand, La Nouvelle Cave, the Casino Group has launched an NFT collection.
If you want to think about it further, I let you listen to the podcast of Stéphanie Zolesio, deputy director of Casino Immobilier, who detailed the challenges and the potential of Metavers for the Group.
I had the chance to listen to it, and I find Ms. Zolesio brilliant and visionary.
3 – Axa Insurance Metaverse
Axa has also set up shop in the Metaverse The Sandbox.
Their idea is to use the Metaverse for marketing and experimentation. Before a real democratization.
To give you an idea, Gartner, the reference consulting and research company in the tech industry, predicts that 25% of the world’s population will spend at least 1 hour a day in the Metaverse by 2026.
Here’s what Frank Devignes, director of open innovation at Axa, says: “First, we’re going to position our brand in the metaverse. We are also starting to work on topics around innovation and the creation of new types of services.”
The objective is to target communities on these platforms.
Axa could then develop different types of services, associated with NFTs for example.
Or services based on blockchain as the insurer is already doing with Fizzy.
Axa also sees the Metaverse as a way to better collaborate with teams around the world, in a more immersive environment than on Zoom or Teams.
4 – Ubisoft Metaverse
Again on The Sandbox, Ubisoft has developed a gaming experience to expand its “Rabbids” universe.
Ubisoft has purchased its own virtual plots and characters will be made available to players and designers to incorporate into their own experiences.
Here’s what Guillaume Mammi, director at Ubisoft announced about this new experience:
“We are excited to bring Rabbids to The Sandbox community. This will allow players to create their own original experiences by incorporating elements from our game IP. We can’t wait to see how they make the world of Rabbids their own. The Sandbox is a fun and obvious new playground to the long list of global Rabbids invasions. It’s a great opportunity for Ubisoft to deliver a meta-versus-brand experience.”
5 – Havas Metaverse Group
Havas has already developed a “Havas By Metavers” offering launched in late 2021.
They have launched a virtual village by purchasing a plot on the Metaverse The Sandbox.
They want to offer an immersive and augmented Havas Village experience.
They’re going to create immersive experiences using the codes of gamification. For example, there will be conferences, events, concerts, product launches.
This fits in well with Havas’ role of supporting brands in their communication strategy and development.
Yannick Boloré, CEO of Havas Grou p: “Our new Havas Village will be the Group’s ‘meta-window’, bringing together our engaged communities in an enriched extension of our real-life Villages.”
The aim of this location is also to attract creative and innovative profiles in promising areas of expertise such as tech and data.
6 – Crédit Agricole Metaverse
The goal was to evangelize their business internally.
With Excelsior, we recreated the Crédit Agricole HQ.
And we imagined a game on The Sandbox for employees.
In the form of a virtual avatar, employees connect and follow quests by talking to different employees.
They learn how to move around their building.
All this in a fun way.
If you are interested in setting up in the Metaverse, we can also help you.
Do not hesitate to contact us.
7 – Luxury brands and the Metaverse: Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent
Finally, I’d like to talk about luxury brands.
The principle of luxury is to create rare and expensive objects.
As NFTs allow to create rarity on digital objects, the big French luxury brands have quickly appropriated this new technology.
They did the same with the Metaverse.
In this article, I told you about the Metaverse Fashion Week in Decentraland.
The goal of the brands was to reach a younger audience.
Let’s illustrate what I just said with initiatives from Louis Vuitton and Yves Saint Laurent:
For example, Louis Vuitton created the game “Louis The Game” to educate their customers in a fun way about the key moments in the life of Louis Vuitton.
In June 2022, Yves Saint Laurent Beauté immersed itself in the Web3 with the launch of an NFT collection called “Golden Blocks”.
These digital assets are intended to accompany experiences such as a partnership with the specialized platform POOLS.
Conclusion: French companies in the Metaverse
Whether it’s to propose new offers, reach new customers, recruit, or raise awareness among their internal staff, we can see that brands are increasingly using the Metaverse.
If, as Gartner says, 25% of Internet users will spend more than an hour a day in the Metaverse by 2026, then it seems reasonable to me to experiment with this new world.
At Excelsior, we can for example help you create your own virtual HQ, your “meta showcase” in less than 60 days.
So don’t hesitate to contact us.
I hope you enjoy this article,
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