Chief Metaverse Officer : Fad or Fundamental?

Capitalizing on Culture

Though blue chips have made significant investments, real returns aren’t so clear. Nike might be an exception. After acquiring virtual-goods company RTFKT (pronounced “artifact”) in 2021, the sportswear giant has made some of the boldest metaverse moves to date.

By November 2022, the company launched the NFT and metaverse platform Swoosh and a few months later opened up a way for fans to design their own wearables. 

It also has an active and seemingly successful Nikeland destination built in Roblox, which the Drum reported in September had 21 million visitors. Nike’s digital division includes its SNKRS app and websites, so it’s unclear how much revenue is derived from the metaverse. But according to its most recent quarterly earnings report, digital is the fastest-growing segment of Nike’s revenue, growing 34%. 

Other returns are easier to quantify. In late 2019, for example, Nike was issued a patent for blockchain-based virtual sneakers called Cryptokicks. When they finally launched in 2022, Cryptokicks sold for $7,500 to 9,000 each (one designed by Takashi Murakami even sold for $134,000) and totaled $185 million. Notably, of the four people listed on the 2019 patent, two hold a metaverse or gaming leadership role at Nike today.

Knowing Nike’s ability historically to track and capitalize on cultural movements, these moves should make other brands sit up and wonder: Do I have people with their eye on this prize?

The Metaverse Skill Set

To wrestle with the question of adding metaverse leadership, we have to understand what a chief metaverse officer really does. “The role of Chief Metaverse Officers is part marketing/communications expert and part business strategist, and part technologist,” writes Cathy Hackl, chief metaverse officer at Journey, in her new book, Into the Metaverse.

The role’s purview should include virtual and augmented-reality experiences (like gaming, entertainment and education), virtual world building and virtual goods. It’s important to note that these are all things that are available to consumers right now.

Metaverse debates often center around whether the reality of a fully interoperable first-person immersive environment is really here. It’s not. Or whether people want to live in VR headsets all the time. They don’t. (For an approachable explanation of a fully realized metaverse, read part one of Matthew Ball’s book, The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything.)

Consumers are already purchasing 3D objects, virtual goods, virtual clothing and accessories, avatars and branded virtual environments. Content containing these elements can be used for everything from gameplay and events to thought leadership and training.

Furthermore, the access points for this kind of content are not limited to gaming consoles. Simple 2D browsers and local apps on phones and desktop computers are capable of displaying navigable 3D worlds. Despite the compelling immersive opportunity presented by VR, there’s actually no dependency on that hardware, which still struggles for mass adoption. There are other ways people can engage in these experiences.

And they do engage, especially Gen Z (basically teenagers) and the growing Generation Alpha (anyone born after 2010 or so). Roblox’s daily active users have risen steadily every single quarter but one since Q4 of 2018 through 2022, according to Statista’s most recent data.

Gauging from the profiles of current chief metaverse officers (CMOs) today, required skills appear to include: business strategy, marketing, product strategy or human-experience strategy and design. Another big part of the role is identifying the partnerships needed to achieve results in a landscape that is changing all the time, with new entrants touting new capabilities.

I’d add one more requirement: an ability to galvanize interest and support across the organization. Done well, a good metaverse strategy involves not only marketing, but product and services development. It can impact the events team, the digital team, the loyalty team and the product group that makes physical goods. The most critical thing for metaverse leadership is to be able to move across these different practices and foster collaboration. 

Justifying the Job

Chief metaverse officers haven't existed long enough to have any real track record. Hackl opens her book by mentioning she’s one of only six people she knows with the title (at the time of writing). Though a quick LinkedIn search suggests more people since then have started to claim it.

As one herself since 2020, Hackl fiercely defends the need for it: “I wear it as a badge of honor because I believe it forces us to start a conversation about who will guide companies internally as they enter this new era.”

Statista predicts the revenue for the metaverse market will show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023 to 2030) of 37.1% in the U.S., reaching $159.2 billion in 2030 (globally $490 billion). Given the financial potential in embodied experiences, itself a rapidly changing space, it seems like the time is right for certain brands to make their moves.

On the other hand, for many companies, a C-suite-level title may be overshooting things. The metaverse may someday be understood as just another experience type (or product type, in the case of virtual goods). And the work might simply be delegated to the other chiefs in marketing, technology, product, digital or experience departments. 

What’s in a Name?

The nomenclature doesn’t help. While the “chief” part is wrong, I’d argue the “metaverse” part is wrong, too. It’s already worn out — and not just because fewer people are searching for it. When Facebook announced its rebranding to Meta, it simultaneously birthed the hype while killing the term.

After Facebook co-opted the term, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, said in an interview, “I always think it’s important that people understand what something is,” adding, “and I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is.” Perhaps why they were Googling it in the first place.

Where ''metaverse'' might eventually fall out of favor, the notion of embodied and immersive branded experiences — both B2C and B2B — as well as virtual goods seems very much here to stay. Statista’s conservative scenario suggests the “addressable market” for the metaverse in 2030 will be almost $1.2 trillion (the optimistic scenario predicts nearly $4.5 trillion).

My personal favorite title for a metaverse leader? Michael White’s at Disney: EVP, next generation storytelling and consumer experiences. And they all lived happily ever after (especially the ones who got a piece of that $1.2 trillion).

Emily Wengert leads experience innovation globally at Huge.