The web3 talent gap
The web3 talent gap
NGMI if you don't find the right people
Welcome to the Sociology of Business. If you are not subscribed, join the community by subscribing below and joining the Sociology of Business Discord. You find my book, The Business of Aspiration on Amazon and you can find me on Instagram and Twitter. For those new here, in my last analysis, Cortiez Goods, I explored what happens when we start bartering things directly and how commerce can become culture.
Finding the right Web3 talent - and know what “right” means and how to operationalize it - is a strategic and creative exercise. Recently, there has been a number of global conversations around talent in the fashion industry (see here and here and here).
These conversations have been spurned by the obvious shift in the fashion landscape, where competitive edge is not anymore about amassing scale, opening new stores and increasing corporate marketing budgets. To marry Web3 with fashion, the new (and legacy) talent needs to understand the changed consumer market and how to succeed in it beyond incremental innovation.
The question of talent goes beyond fashion or Web3 as the new generations enter workforce, the rapidly transformed marketplace post-2020, and with the passion economy gaining steam.
The topline Web3 hiring approach revolves around four skillset pillars: brand and business, culture and consumer, technology, and creative.
Brand and business. This pillar focuses on a candidate’s ability to identify what makes a brand different and unique, and how to rely on these points of differentiation to make it distinctly successful in the metaverse.
More specifically, this refers to:
The ability to translate primary and secondary research into creative ideas applicable in the physical and virtual worlds
Understanding of business targets and KPIs, and how to achieve them through tokens, skins, virtual real estate and digital assets
Strong cross-functional capabilities, ability to inspire and speak to multiple and diverse teams, including Web2 and CRM tech
In the everyday context, the skills would be expressed as the rapid brand and business immersion and ability to assess and develop the key work streams to grow a brand in the right Web3 direction. What Web3 offerings are right for a brand? How to utilize what makes a brand different and exciting with what Web3 has to offer? What is the right Web3 creative strategy for a brand? What is the right innovation strategy? How to develop a Web3 future-facing vision and stay true to the spark that made a brand successful in the first place?
Specific skillset landmarks in this area are:
Ability to define the key business and brand tasks that Web3 strategy and creative needs to achieve for a brand.
Create a Web3 brand territory (aesthetics, language and visual handwriting) that drives stronger equity and differentiation and that conveys a brand’s core values.
Ability to assess and evolve organizational resources to launch and manage this Web3 brand territory.
Awareness of best practices, consumer data and key market trends when it comes to brands and Web3.
Understanding of who is the brand audience in the metaverse and connect this understanding with the creative execution of a brand’s promise.
Ability to execute a brand’s promise in a number of creative ways, native to the Web3
Understand ways to creatively increase brand affinity and drive brand appraisal and sales through Web3 tactics.
Align with cross-functional teams on the clear and consistent brand vision for the metaverse.
Culture and consumer. This talent pillar focuses on understanding of a brand’s customer and ability to detect values that a brand can believably own and convey in the metaverse. This refers to:
The ability to read the Zeitgeist and cultural mood around Web3 and detect emerging values and mindsets that shape the global cultural, social, economic and environmental assessment of Web3.
Ability to understand what makes the global metaverse consumer tick, knowing they want more from brands than just digital assets, NFTs and skins.
Specific skillset in this area is:
Ability to align creative output with the expectations of the Web3 consumer (how to speak their language, how to enter a dialogue).
Ability to work closely with the Consumer Insights to identify a brand’s metaverse audience key needs, moments of receptivity, and to determine the hierarchy of the most influential Web3 touchpoints (tokens, access, rewards, currency, play-to-earn, avatars, skins, physical-digital integration, DAOs).
Ability to use Web3 creative to create a direct emotional relationship with a brand’s audience/s and deliver executions that differentiate a brand.
Technology. This pillar refers to a candidate’s understanding of the full scope of Web3 technologies, from tokens and digital assets to DAOs, and how a brand can use them to connect with its customers, collaborators and creative partners.
More specifically, this refers to:
Ability to identify, assess and educate teams on specific Web3 use case scenarios that brand’s target customers use and quickly come up with creative ideas that are native to them.
Ability to capitalize on the Web3 creative horizon by understanding what works and how.
(Too often, companies treat Web3 as a shiny new toy and a new marketing opportunity - and not as a new creative and business model. The differences in the approach are profound. As a creative vehicle, Web3 creates new ways to deliver consumer and business value, and to build new markets via new ways to connect with consumers, new revenue streams and transformation of merchandising, production, design, brand governance and marketing).
Specific skillset in this area is:
Ability to put forward and informed approach to Web3 innovation by having a proven track-record in deploying cutting-edge gaming and/or digital asset production technologies in a way that moves a business and brand forward.
Understanding the evolution of Web3 social technologies (Discord, Fortnite, Roblox, OpenSea)
Has a network of relationships with Web3 influencers, founders, developers, creators.
Creative. This pillar focuses on a candidate’s ability to think conceptually about Web3 and be comfortable with thinking big and coming up with ideas - as well as ability to translate big ideas into a tactical rollout plan and come up with multiple execution scenarios.
More specifically, this refers to:
Strategic and creative thinking, strong aesthetic intelligence.
Ability to go beyond a brand’s category and find references, conversations and cues from other markets/categories that may engage a brand’s audience.
Culturally plugged-in and able to deliver creative that people will talk about.
Ability to steer a brand towards cultural dialogue by understanding which creators, influencers and communities to engage with.
Has one foot in a brand’s business and the other in Web3 culture.
Ability to succinctly articulate to consumers a compelling reason as to why they should engage with a brand in the metaverse.
Specific skillset landmarks in this area are:
Lead creative execution with a cultural rationale in mind: understand for which cultural communities a specific cultural output is for, who is going to get excited by it, is a brand giving back to different communities as much as it is taking from them, who should a brand collaborate on editorial, creative, product, storytelling … ?
Has a network of cultural influences and creative personalities (artists, creators, designers, activists).
Ability to root Web3 creative output in culture via references, aesthetics and relevant calls to action.
Summary: It’s not just about a Web3 skillset, it’s about the Web3 mindset. In order to give a brand a specific cultural context in the metaverse, the aim is to attract talent that combines all four target areas in a manner that:
Creates demand for a brand and its products in the Web3 market
Inspires internal and external stakeholders about possibilities of Web3
Unifies teams
Attracts creative partnerships and collaborations
Informs brand behavior and messaging
Influences culture
I recently spoke with the Hotels Magazine about the opportunities and use scenarios for hotel brands in the metaverse. Read our conversation here.
