The Inaugural Metaverse Beauty Week

Published 29 June 2023

Author

Brynn Valentine

4 min read

Leveraging interoperable platforms and enhanced audio-visuals, the very first Metaverse Beauty Week (MVBW, June 12-17) delivered a 150% increase in dwell time compared with beauty e-commerce sites (MVBW, 2023) despite current lack of full shoppability. Organised by British creative agency Cult, and featuring international brands, it ran across three virtual worlds: Decentraland, Spatial and Roblox.

Key Stats

150%	User dwell time within the proto-metaverse worlds (Decentraland, Spatial and Roblox) saw an impressive 150% increase on traditional beauty e-commerce websites
13	Despite the Metaverse Beauty Week having fewer brand partners than Metaverse Fashion Week, dwell time in the Decentraland activations was almost double: MVFW hosted users for an average of eight minutes, compared with MVBW’s 13 minutes
68k	Within its first 48 hours, Metaverse Beauty Week saw more than 68,000 interactions in Decentraland alone
23%	On Decentraland, 23% of the MVBW attendees joined as guest users, indicating metaverse novices eager to participate
81%	The Roblox activation for MVBW received an 81% approval rating from participants upon review

The Key (Mostly Interoperable) Platforms: With two of MVBW’s worlds – Spatial and Decentraland – operating on the blockchain, visitors could seamlessly move their avatars between them. Originally conceived as an arts-and-culture-focused platform, Spatial is increasingly working with fashion and beauty brands. Decentraland is the reality-mimicking virtual world where users can buy plots of digital land and create and sell clothes with cryptocurrency (MANA). Both can turn their in-game digital collectables into non-fungible tokens (NFTs), wearable on either platform.

American skincare brand Neutrogena, and eco-beauty giant Lush and wellness platform Clementine (both British), created activations on the two platforms, whereas budget make-up brand Lottie London hosted a game on Roblox, challenging players to win digital accessories for their avatars. Although Roblox is a “closed-circuit” platform without NFT compatibility or interoperability, its advantage lies in its 66 million daily users – Decentraland currently boasts only 10,000.

Metaverse Beauty Week

Lush’s Audiovisual Ambient World Looks to Convey Scent: Tackling the challenge of communicating scent digitally to sell fragrance online, Lush hosted an activation on Decentraland and Spatial, in partnership with British design studio Vegas City, where visuals and soundscapes reflected the scent of Lush products.

Avatars entered three digital rooms, each themed according to a specific Lush bath bomb. For Rose Jam, the room contained visuals of soft pink skies, floating rose petals and sounds of Latin American and Western acoustic guitar melodies. For the lavender and tonka bean fragrance of Twilight, dark blue skies met slow jazz instrumentals. Meanwhile, Lush’s earthy-oak-and-grapefruit-scented Rave line’s ambience was denoted by a dark, misty room with green clouds and light beams, enhanced by the pulsating beats of low-fi techno.

Although the activation didn’t offer in-world shoppability, visitors could click through to the brand’s website – a service now available on Decentraland for all brands.

For more on the metaverse’s elevated sensory experiences, read Mapping the Sensorial Service-Led Metaverse in Digital Commerce: 9 Trends & Opportunities, 23/24 and The Olfactory Metaverse Emerges in CES 2023: Retail & Media. Also, see Selling Scent: New-Wave Seduction.

Lush's Rose Jam, on Spatial

Lush's Twilight, on Spatial

Lush's Rave, on Spatial

Lush's Rose Jam, on Spatial

Lush's Twilight, on Spatial

Lush's Rave, on Spatial

Clementine’s Meta-tation: Catering for the growing wellness trend for mind-altering beauty (see here), Clementine hosted free guided meditations on Decentraland and Spatial. Founder Kim Palmer led the prescheduled four-minute live sessions, broadcast on a screen avatars could gather around. Avatars could also communicate via chat and express animated responses known as “emotes”.

Clementine’s in-world activation wasn’t shoppable, designed solely to showcase the power of Web3 in democratising wellness experiences.

For more on guided wellness in the metaverse, see The Psychedelic Renaissance in Retail & Media’s New Wellness Narratives.

Clementine's Guided Meditation, Decentraland

Neutrogena Pushes for Play to Boost Interactivity: Decentraland head of partnerships Emma Mansfield noted that Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW), hosted in March and discussed here, saw lower attendance than MVBW due to a lack of interactive experiences: MVBW’s activations on Decentraland boasted an average dwell time of 13 minutes, compared with MVFW’s eight minutes.

Neutrogena’s Decentraland and Spatial activation addressed this by incorporating gamification. Participants completed challenges about skin stressors (travel, caffeine) while learning about relevant Neutrogena products.

Neutrogena, Decentraland

Flannels X IRL Event Connects with Offline Audiences: To attract non-metaverse enthusiasts, a free in-person beauty event at Flannels X (the luxury multi-brand retailer’s London flagship) featured an augmented-reality (AR) exhibition powered by international XR studio FFFace.me. Visitors could see themselves on large-scale screens with digital make-up overlays from AR make-up artists, including Paige Piskin and Ines Alpha. Additional screens showed MVBW’s Decentraland and Spatial activations in real time.

MVBW x Flannels X