The idea of the metaverse has captivated the attention of the tech industry and pundits over the past two years, hitting a fever pitch which drove brand after brand to race to stake their claim and establish a presence in the virtual world.

Adidas sought built OzWorld, a virtual world which sought to bridge the gap between sport, fashion and innovation, where users could experience the a world that blurred the line between fantasy and reality, all inspired by the new Ozweego line. There was just one problem, how do we get people to visit?

To promote the metaverse destination, we took a page from the book of a more traditional industry- the travel industry.

We bridged the meta-world with the real world and did what any real-verse destination does to promote itself these days, we sent some influencers to experience it and show off our destination. Only this time, we had to send our influencers from the real world to the Ozworld where they would capture content for the duration of their visit.

While brands everywhere were harping on about the metaverse, audiences were reluctant and slow to move. After the initial commotion died down and excitement dwindled, the metaverse seemed to be left as an abandoned ghost town of worlds created by brands.

Audiences on the other hand were not on board. Many didn’t quite understand what the metaverse actually was or how to access it, and many of those who did just weren’t motivated to take action.

Just as with every innovation and new behavior, it is the early adopters who are influencers and pave the way for the masses.

We selected 4 key fashion and music influencer, as each one of them was shooting what appeared to be regular content on a live video, suddenly a portal opened up mid-stream no explanation, they investigate the strange portal, enter, portal closes, stream ends... And now they’ve vanished.

Then this started happening to many different influencers, synchronised all at the same time. Afterwards they disappeared for real from social media- no videos, no posts, no content. And just as their fans started wondering where they had disappeared to, they made contact from a mysterious new place- from Ozworld.

Their digital avatars started posting from the metaverse decked out in the new Ozweego collection and showing off the mind-blowing visual world of Ozworld.

Our Ozworld collection launched in the metaverse became a hit in the real-verse.

The campaign performed incredibly, sending over 12,000 fans to OzWorld. We also recieved views +200% above Average Adidas campaign performance and engagement +58% above Average Adidas campaign performance. It surpassed planned reach by almost double and organic reach doubled our paid media reach.

But perhaps best of all, we not only surpassed the target number of visitors to Ozworld, the sales of the Ozweego reached 34% higher than projected.