Serviceplan just launched another web3 studio. Is there still room in the market?

This year alone, WPP launched a ‘Metaverse Foundry’, TBWA launched a web3 ‘platform’ called Next, VaynerMedia established an NFT consultancy called VaynerNFT and then relaunched it as Vayner3, while Publicis appointed a chief metaverse officer, VCCP built a Roblox office for client meetings, Havas Group constructed one of its ‘Villages‘ in Sandbox and M&C Saatchi Abel began trading virtual real estate. And that’s not mentioning all the indies fishing around the space, including Young Hero, Eidgensi and Z3.

The latest is German group Serviceplan, which unveiled its metaverse studio Dcntrl this month. Led by new recruits Nina Matzat, Yves Bollinger (formerly of DDB Düsseldorf, where he worked on DDB FTW) and Katsche Platz, the studio has been set up to shepherd workaday advertisers into the world of virtual marketing and to help future-facing brands establish the essential scaffolding required to for their long-term strategy.

Given the rush towards the sector from competitors, is there still enough room? “Definitely,” says Matzat. “If you imagine how many crypto wallets there are compared to credits cards, or how many NFT owners there are worldwide, it’s nothing. There’s so much space. We don’t want to be competitive, we just want to build great stuff. The more the merrier.”

Studio model

According to Matzat, the studio offers services bundled into four ‘modules’, which are the discovery and analysis of metaverse-related opportunities, the onboarding and educating of brand marketers around how those opportunities might be approached, an “ideation phase” that identifies actual use cases or potential web3 projects for a brand, and then the actual execution of those projects.

“When we started with this idea, we looked at how others were doing it. There’s a lot of consulting happening at the moment and agencies talking to clients about getting into the metaverse and web3. We wanted to do it a different way.”

She continues. “We’re not going to sell them a million-dollar project if it doesn’t fit their needs. And they might have in-house teams they want to execute the project with – we’re fine with that.”

It’s not just about bringing old companies into the new world, but equipping clients with disruptive ambitions with the classic tools of marketing. According to Platz: “We’re connecting the web 2.0 world to the web3 world and the other way around. We’re here to offer services to companies already in this world of immersive 3D, who are already in blockchain… [helping] to develop a brand further and take advantage of all the services that a professional agency like Serviceplan has. We see ourselves as a matchmaker between those two worlds.”

With Platz just a week into the job and Matzat having joined with Bollinger in August, the studio is already working with two group-level Serviceplan clients and is beginning to court new ones across the French and German markets.

Beyond Matzat, Platz and Bollinger, the team pulls in talent from across the rest of the group, in particular its offices in Dubai and Poland, making up a global, 50-strong informal team available for metaverse projects. There are plans to hire two more in February, with the aim of bringing together a team of 10-15 staff within two years (pending client wins and the ebb and flow of projects). “By definition, we’re a hub connecting everyone in the Serviceplan Group to this centralized team,” explains Matzat.

Virtual appetite

2021 saw brands rushing to make their metaverse debuts. But since then, key cryptocurrencies have fallen in value and concerns over the environmental impact of blockchain tech has mounted. And with a recession probably on the way, marketers are less likely to set aside budgets for experiments or punts. Could damp client enthusiasm hold dedicated agencies back?

“One of our main tasks at the moment is education,” says Matzat. “There’s often no essential foundation in a company for this kind of knowledge. And that’s the best case scenario for us, if a client comes to us and says: ‘Look, there’s such hype, can you help us make an educated decision?’”

Bursting some of that hype may be a strategy the team adopts in future, with Matzat saying she is prepared to grill future clients about their expectations and ambitions for metaverse marketing. “What is it you expect to solve there? What is it you need? Is it a marketing or sales case? We really try to understand why they want to do it.”

Platz cautions marketers to look past the hype surrounding financialized blockchain use cases, such as the speculation on NFT trading, and to focus on other possibilities. “A lot of people got hooked on the financial aspect… now, it looks like the financially focused projects are down while, on the other hand, there are new projects and new utilities coming up all the time.”

While Serviceplan gradually builds up its Dcntrl studio, Matzat wants to develop connections with those agency competitors, to “talk about projects, share experiences and learnings”. She says: ”It’s about getting all those people who are interested and passionate about the space together.”

More successful use cases built by those rivals will aid Dcntrl’s cause, Platz adds, if it helps boost overall client confidence in the field. “Every good experience, every good case that comes up, makes it easier for us to convince people this is a good place to go. We have absolutely no interest in seeing any agency or studio fucking up a web3 project – we want it to be great.

“Imagine how many advertising agencies have specialized in, say, social media or filmmaking. I think there’s plenty of space for a studio like Dcntrl in the world.”