We’ll miss you next week, snackers! That’s right, we’re taking a short break.

But don’t worry. We’ll see you again in April. 

In this issue: 

• how a yoga sanctuary won Roblox
• marketers on “community” 
• print marketing goes viral

EXPERT Q&A

How to draw 20M+ visitors with a branded metaverse experience

Have you visited the Alo Sanctuary? 

It’s a mindfulness retreat, sponsored by athleisure brand Alo, where you can do outdoor yoga classes and mini-meditations in peace. The only sounds on the island: birdsong and a waterfall.

Oh, and it’s in Roblox, a gaming platform — slash metaverse — with 54M daily active users.

It feels like everyone has a theory about what metaverse marketing will look like, thanks to the Meta rebrand. But why theorize when you can talk to the people already pulling it off? 

We asked the creative directors behind the project — Kimb Luisi and Dan Young of Sawhorse Productions —  for their road-tested metaverse marketing tips. 

Create a social experience. 

Users go to Roblox to socialize, especially with friends who can’t meet up in person. 

“It offers a lot of opportunities for people to experience things together in a different way,” Luisi said. 

Brands need to make space for virtual socializing — so in the Alo Sanctuary, avatars do yoga together.

Compress that virtual commute. 

When they took a first pass at the Alo island’s design, Young and Luisi’s team made it  “cinematic” and “huge,” Young said.

Too big, their gamer colleague told them. Users would feel lost and leave.

So Young and Luisi shrank the island to keep the walk from the entrance under 20 seconds, creating “a cleaner, smoother, more clear experience.”

Don’t skimp on metaverse merch.

Roblox users are “very motivated by how their avatar appears,” Luisi said, so merch is big. 

In the sanctuary, users earn Alo merch by doing daily meditations — and their avatars can wear that merch in other Roblox experiences.

A complication: Many avatars aren’t humanoid, and a dragon tail won’t fit in leggings! So the merch shop offers accessories, from hats to an Alo-branded “aura,” for irregularly-shaped characters. 

Align digital and IRL activations. 

Alo launched its Roblox sanctuary during New York Fashion Week 2022, where Alo hosted a slew of in-person events. 

The sanctuary mirrored Alo’s IRL activations in New York — even offering Roblox versions of popular Fashion Week merch — for “people that couldn’t necessarily make it there in person,” Young said. 

More and more, he sees “real world and metaverse experiences going hand in hand.”

Our takeaway?

Metaverse marketing is already in full swing. To do it right, make sure your experience fits your brand and the platform, like the Alo Sanctuary. 

It makes Alo’s core product clear and spreads awareness of a brand pillar: mindfulness. It’s also social and compact, with virtual merch that fits the Roblox culture. 

No wonder it’s been visited 20M+ times!

TWEET TREAT

3 lessons from Parachute’s chaotic catalog

Last week, Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz tweeted about a weird catalog cover and got over 2K replies.

It was print marketing gone viral, without a QR code in sight. And despite Lorenz's criticism, it worked for Parachute. Let’s dive into three lessons we gleaned from print’s viral moment. 

1. “Chaotic marketing” gets people talking. 

The Parachute catalog struck brand consultant Michael Miraflor as part of a shift toward “chaos” in marketing. 

Think, Sweetgreen ads, which feature a person eating a salad on an open copy machine, or Mejuri’s content, which pictures jewelry floating in Lucky Charms. 

2. Social listening tools help brands act quickly.

Parachute immediately responded to Lorenz, and even offered her “some goodies.” But Lorenz’s original tweet didn’t tag the company.

Social listening was probably the secret sauce, MarketerHire’s organic social lead, Ivory Bandoh, said. These tools can find content “even if you're not directly tagged in anything.”

3. Cross-promotion doesn’t always work. 

In the brand’s first reply to Lorenz, Parachute tagged Dyson. But the reply felt artificial, at best, and reminded some of Dyson’s controversies. 

Eventually, Parachute apologized for tweeting before researching. 

Our takeaway?

A slightly unsettling image paired with a responsive social media team is sometimes all it takes to make print marketing go viral — and make it trackable.

SMALL BITES

Old logos, chip robots, and bike-fluencers…

Andre 3000 has a lesson for marketers. 

Apparently, consumers want NFTs and finance talk from brands on Twitter. 

Netflix hopes to turn Tour de France bikers into influencers. 

Glossier “[sold] a feeling,” but the brand couldn’t pivot from beauty to tech. 

Millennials and Gen Z tried to identify a 1900s logo. 

Starbucks has a pickup problem. 

V8 wants to be known as “the original plant-powered drink.”

Nando’s Chicken is participating in the vaccination conversation. 

The Ukraine-Russia war has impacted the content Russian TikTok users see. 

Chipotle named its tortilla chip robot “Chippy.”

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DATA SNACK

3 reasons DTC brands lost steam in 2021 — and the playbook for 2022

Marketers LOVE branded community — a rare, sticky feature that competitors can’t easily copy, The Hustle’s Ethan Brooks told MarketerHire.  

Communities have vast potential reach, too: About 50% of U.S. consumers participate in a community, according to The New Consumer’s 2022 trend report, based on a survey of 3,000+ Americans. 

Before investing in a digital or IRL community, though, consider your target demographic. Different generations find community differently.

Try a digital community if you’re targeting Millennials. 

Millennials find community only online more than any other generation. 

Gen Z has a chronically online reputation — but only 43% of Gen Z participates in community exclusively online, compared to 47% of Millennials. 

Go IRL if you’re targeting Boomers. 

In 2019, the average Boomer household was worth 12X the average Millennial’s — so this a demo worth targeting.

But the vast majority of Boomers — 63% — find community only offline. 

Or consider a hybrid community!

Each generation above — except Boomers — is made up of two separate majorities: one that finds community online, and one that finds it offline.

The majorities overlap in the “both” category. 

This makes hybrid communities look the most generation-agnostic for brands — think a Facebook group that hosts monthly happy hours, or a private Slack plus an annual conference. 

Want to learn more about why marketers obsess about community? 

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