Go West. A column by Carlos sanz de Andino for Anuncios.

Go west, young man. In 1865, publisher Horace Greely published the famous call to move Americans to colonize their west coast. And off they went, on the backs of their horses, to found Hollywood and everything else. Likewise, just a few months ago, Mark Zuckerberg fired the starting gun and legions of virtual wagons set off on the race to colonize the metaverse. Not that the metaverse, like the West, didn't exist before, but both needed a finger to point firmly down the road and say, "Over there".

The fact is that the conquest has begun, and -despite skeptics and denialists- it will consolidate unstoppably in the coming years. Currently there is not just one, but different independent metaverses and protometaverses, with closed experiential environments. Immersion in these worlds depends on the peripherals that open the portal: it is not the same to access through an Oculus Quest 2 as through a less sophisticated technology, such as a cell phone, which also offers its possibilities. The final scenario points to a connected metaverse in which the user will be able to jump from one environment to another easily. He or she will be able to attend a book presentation and interact with the author; then go to a fashion show at Fashion Week in Paris; buy art at NFT in Gagosian NY, and participate in a car race in the purest Ready Player One style. Zuckerberg and his people are working on it, and they already have Oculus technology and Facebook and Instagram data for almost immediate onboarding. Apple, which on the one hand has said it's not going in, on the other invests massively in immersive technology. I don't know, maybe it will wait to see what others do and then create its own enhanced Appleverse. It wouldn't be the first time either. We are still in version 1.0 of the coming future (as social networks were fourteen years ago); some promises will deflate and others will emerge in unexpected places. In the meantime, some brands are taking positions:

Zara launched its collection with Ader Error in physical and virtual store through Zepeto; Adidas created an NFT collection, with BAYC, in The Sandbox; Hyundai has announced a plan to connect robots to the metaverse; in Roblox we find Nikeland or the Gucci Garden Experience; Vodafone has announced its own metaverse for 2022; The Foundation increasingly sells encrypted works by artists from around the world, and even we, at the agency, already hold virtual meetings in our recreated offices in Gather Town.

These are the first steps, but in the next few years this will become more complicated. The world of brands and agencies is going to change profoundly. Again. We will no longer talk only about campaigns, but about experiences in infinitely more connected environments, with more experiential content than ever, in graphic universes that now seem like science fiction. They are not, and right now somewhere there are some very smart people working to make them a reality. But let's not get nervous. It's not going to change all at once. The metaverse will develop over the next few years and we will see what possibilities it offers us. This is not the time to panic, to invest millions, or to revolutionize brand strategies copernicanamente. But it is time to mentally anticipate what is to come and to make some decisions. There are stages to complete before embarking on the next journey. However, what does seem prudent is to learn how to ride a horse. Because this time it will not be necessary to go west: he will come to us, whether we want him to or not.