Digital consulting company Publicis Sapient has its sights set on the Metaverse.  The subsidiary of the French advertising giant Publicis Group is announcing a new partnership with NFT auction house Portion in an effor to help brands deliver experiences in the metaverse, including the sales of products. Publicis Sapient CEO Nigel Vaz joined Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss. "In the context of our collaboration with Portion, the first experience that we created was with Decentraland, which is a virtual world," he said. "And car manufacturers in this metaverse, in terms of their buyers, can interact with a virtual person, (and) they can view quality NFTs. They can examine a virtual vehicle, be inside the car, rev an engine, open doors, all without leaving their homes."

Closing Bell

 Publicis Sapient Partners With NFT Auction House Portion to Deliver the Metaverse

digital consulting company. Publicist SAPIEN has its sights set on the metaverse subsidiary of the french advertising giant Publicist is announcing a new partnership with N. F. T. Auction house portion. The company says this will help brands deliver experiences in the metaverse, including the sales of products. You're not to discuss the ceo of Publicis Sapient Nigel vase and Nigel. Can you offer more details about this partnership with portion of what what's going on there? Sure. Thanks for having me ken you know, fundamentally Publicist Sapiens all about accelerating businesses transformation in the digital space, right? And we do this by combining capabilities like strategy, product experience, engineering and data. And we we call these accelerators are speed capabilities, bringing them together and the next frontier for brands. Absolutely the metaverse more and more brands are needing to get to understanding how new consumers want more immersive engagement. So portion which is an auction house is. And our partnership with them is all about developing Web 22, Web three prototypes appealing to this new generation of consumers. You know like for example how companies can sell products in the metaverse but also how they can offer post purchase services in the metaverse. And again a lot of these products and services today are ideas that we're testing with this new generation of consumers. But for me what's really exciting is the underlying engagement that we build with this new consumer set as the services of off. So what do you think is the biggest challenge that companies are facing when it comes to transferring from something like a Web 22 Web three. You know, it's the same challenge that was faced when we transferred from Web one and Web two right companies need to embrace a new business model. They need to figure out how to scale all of these capabilities that I'm talking about. How do you design experiences in a in a more immersive world? How do you actually start to scale data and making sure that you can deliver the right message to the right consumer? How do you transact in this new world? And it was all the channels that brick and mortar businesses faced when integrating digital channels with their physical stores some years back and now of course they need to move into this new world, right? And most critically for companies today is how do you build capability and talent in order to bring this kind of new thinking into your organizations in the context of young talent. So I've read your company is working with car makers to help them make or take rather advantage of the metaverse. So how are you doing this? Yeah. So in the context of our collaboration with portion, the first experience that we created was with the central land which is a virtual world and car manufacturers in this metaverse in terms of their buyers can interact with a virtual person, they can view quality N. F. T. S. They can examine a virtual vehicle, be inside the car revving engine, open doors all without leaving their homes. You can buy and own this N. F. T. In this vehicle and this could appeal to a whole new generation of consumers who enjoy spending and engaging in this space, right? But most importantly, they'll get a lot of new features buying in this channel. What I will say for folks who are looking at the video and listening to me and thinking, wow, this is super futuristic, I'm not sure this is going to be relevant. I was talking to the leadership teams of many of our our big clients and automakers in the space pre pandemic when we were asking them the question about how how likely is it that you will get an end to end sale of a car entirely digitally. And what I mean by that is a consumer will discover a car online will configure that car book a test drive And then ultimately have that card delivered to their home and pre pandemic. For one of the big large automakers in North America, this was 0% And right in the midst of the pandemic, they hit 38% of sales in this way. So, you know, something that seems pretty out there and far fetched in this new world in terms of how technology is getting adopted moves very quickly to becoming reality and that's what we're trying to achieve here with Portia. Now, your company says it's also developing a micro N. F. T. Website, what is this about? Yeah, so, you know, when you, when you think about how NF DSR generated transferred and used for identity resolution, a lot of the work that we're actually doing is thinking about how these N. F. T. S, whether it's in the auto industry or um, you know, or other industries, for example, can provide information within the key chain that can be shared with other providers. Right? So that can be used to verify information in the future. It can be issue, it can issue N. F. T. S. That will transfer with the ownership of the vehicle. So you can track the vehicle. And for me, ultimately, this is the power of what I was talking about. Whether the actual example or not is powerful. The underlying capability that we enable these companies with is actually what's going to last for me over the course the coming years. And also I was reading that you're exploring keys of cars becoming N. F. T. S. How does this work? Well, you know, if you think about a key of a car, right? So often the key and the car are disconnected from each other. So what this is basically saying is if an N. F. T. Is issued at the same time as as a car, we can always track how the actual access to the vehicle and the vehicle are evolving, innovate that the vehicle has traded, which what that essentially means is as the car gets sold and as it moves on, you can track that all the way through the N. F. T. Actually moving ownership, which actually comes right back to the automaker, which so many cars today, of course, you know, they have no way of knowing exactly what the current level of ownership is. Once the resales happened two or three times. So where do you see N. F. T. S? Do you see them being used more and more to verify ownership in things that you normally wouldn't think in the future? You know? I think, yeah, well, I think safety is like everything digital, right? We're seeing in every context. So, you know, you're seeing N F. T s in the form of art, you're seeing N. F. T. S in the form of virtual ownership. But you're also seeing the metaverse more broadly allow people and companies to start to engage with products and services where consumers aren't making perhaps the distinction between real and what is physical today and what we consider real, Right? So, when you start to think about things like gaming and concerts and fashion, we're seeing huge acceleration in the metaverse around art, which started the ride with N. F. T. S around images and GIFs. Now we're at the next level adoption, whether it's Gamification as games, characters and assets are interconnected in entertainment, right? So shared experiences, like concerts, sporting events could be held in hybrid modes. So more and more as you think about us as people, right? I think the physical and the digital and that distinction we used to draw is fast disappearing. I think very quickly now we will start switching between the virtual and the physical world in the same way that we actually used to switch between shopping in the old days. And we used to call it shopping in a physical store and shopping online. And today it's just shopping. You know, nobody makes a distinction between how your shopping and I think our our engagement is going to go the same way. It's interesting. I totally agree. I think you're absolutely ahead of the game on this. Nigel. Vaz Ceo Publicis Sapient sounds like an interesting company. Nigel thank you so much for coming on the show.