Ball adds that the speed at which brands wanted to act, without a real plan or understanding of the space, created issues for its longevity: “There was definitely a lot of, ‘We need to do this because everyone’s doing it,’ and ‘We need to do this because shareholders expect us to be doing it.’ There were many that overestimated the relevance of their brand in these 3D spaces.”
A Pivot to AI
Now, many of the chief metaverse officers, who had been so quickly installed, scrambled to reinvent themselves—or otherwise found themselves out of a job entirely. Coca-Cola’s Pratik Thakar swiftly pivoted from spearheading the brand’s metaverse content to becoming the company’s global generative AI lead in August 2023.
Around the same time, Michael White, who was tasked to lead Disney’s metaverse efforts in 2022, left after the brand’s dedicated metaverse division was closed…
