Blue Chip Leaps into the Metaverse
How does an agency celebrate a 40th anniversary in 2022? For Blue Chip, the answer came in the form of a metaverse party. The agency’s principal clients are consumer products companies that haven’t fully embraced the new frontier. So, the leadership team invested money and time to create an agencywide celebratory and learning event.
“One of the reasons we have been a successful company is because we’re always looking to the future to help our clients succeed, especially as consumer habits evolve and technology advances,” said Sarah VanHeirseele, chief growth officer of Blue Chip. “Celebrating our anniversary in the metaverse felt like an incredible opportunity to honour our past, while also helping our employees experience and embrace this new space in a fun and engaging way. We believe the metaverse is the newest channel in the growing omnichannel world, and Blue Chip’s web 3.0 fluency positions us well to help our clients roadmap, plan, design and execute metaverse experiences that will deliver positive results."
To prep for the event, Blue Chip designed and built multiple rooms in a metaverse art gallery featuring the agency’s history, past and current work and 40th anniversary commemorative merchandise. The agency supported their employees by offering training on the creation of their avatars for the event, most for the first time.
More than 100 of the agency’s 150 employees participated in the event as unique avatars. Throughout the party, employees were also able to browse a gallery of Blue Chip’s award-winning work from the past 40 years. Then the avatars showed off their moves on a dance floor and competed for prizes (best avatars and scavenger hunts). The event culminated in a video toast led by Blue Chip CEO Stanton Kawer.
Prizes included gift cards, and avatar winners will be featured on Blue Chip's social channels and post-event collateral. Employees’ avatars are highlighted in the metaverse space, so when clients and prospects enter it for guided tours and education programs they will see avatars by department and winners on a special feature wall (so people can tell their friends they are stars in the metaverse). Blue Chip plans to keep adding elements to the space, so employees can continually develop their metaverse expertise.
“This proved to be a fast, fun way to ensure that our teams understand and are able to bring a brand experience alive in the metaverse,” said Dan Cornell, VP comms and activation planning at Blue Chip, who led the project. “Our digital experience, creative and communications teams are now immersed in platform design, 3-D modelling, video and photographic content, messaging, and overall user experience. People who were uncomfortable at first became proficient proponents. We approached this project as if we would any client project and our teams are now ready to lead clients into this omni-space.”
When Blue Chip CMO Dan Eisenberg pitched the idea to the leadership team as a learning opportunity the agency needed to do, he had no idea how far it could go. In addition to a boost for creativity, capability, and culture, the agency’s metaverse space is turning clients’ and prospects’ heads.
After a brief test and learn with one client, Eisenberg is now inviting in prospects for 30-minute tours that promise to teleport them to one-of-a-kind spaces while they learn what the metaverse is, what brands and companies are doing in these new places and spaces right now, and how their brand can get started.
