This week Adidas is launching personality-based avatars where the characters are generated using artificial intelligence (AI). Adidas has partnered with the cross-app avatar platform Ready Player Me for this project, allowing digital characters to travel the metaverse across 1500 apps and games.
The initiative is part of the marketing strategy for Adidas’ new Ozword footwear collection based on self-expression and individuality. When users create an avatar on the Digital Ozworld Experience, they have to answer a series of questions. These include their favorite item of the Ozworld collection. The information is used to shape a unique caricature that takes inspiration from the collection’s visual codes and the users’ preferences.
Besides engaging alternative-reality-meets-fashion enthusiasts, as the avatars travel across the metaverse, Adidas should expand the reach of the collection. The appearance of the avatars matches the branding strategy of the footwear.
A key challenge with the metaverse is to enable interoperability between different standalone platforms. The ability for consumers to create a character and place it in multiple digital realms is the next stage of development in the merge of the digital and real worlds, and Ozworld is a step in that direction.
The Ozworld collection is part of Adidas’s digital Original strategy, which is looking to expand the brand’s presence in the metaverse. The first project that was part of this strategy was the collaboration with the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, where they purchased and branded one of the apes.
Meanwhile, the BAYC founders acquired the CryptoPunks project and will look to relax commercial rights. Billboard partnered with Universal Music for an NFT platform and Wrangler launched NFT digital wearables in Decentraland’s metaverse.
