Mediahub just launched an office in the metaverse that can serve as a virtual testing ground for its employees, a showcase for current and potential clients, and a recruiting tool. 

The office is located in Decentraland, which is a virtual metaverse platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. Along with the office, the Interpublic Group of Cos. media agency is launching its own discord channel which will be used as a new way of recruiting next-generation talent.

The project was created by the agency’s creative media group, Radical + Disruptive Lab, which in April named Laurel Boyd as its first chief creative media officer. Boyd had been leading the group since its inception five years ago.

Recruiting and clients

“We wanted a space where we could, as Mediahub have a presence because in the recruiting world everybody's almost the same,” said Simeon Edmunds, senior VP and creative director at R+D Lab. “We all have the same snacks, unlimited time off the same tools and some big brands, with a few exceptions, that you could work on. One of the things that was also in the genesis of this conversation is what could we do that demonstrates that Mediahub is different from other agencies and this was a case where we said, 'let's do something that people can experience.'”

Each floor of the metaverse office is dedicated to a different theme. The first floor features recent agency projects, the agency’s mission, and recruiting tools such as a link to the agency’s open jobs. The third floor is dedicated to showcasing the utility of various NFT and metaverse activations, like Dinomonks, an NFT project focused on offering mental health services, and The Flower Project, an AI-generated female-focused charity project. Starting in January the floor will feature art from various underrepresented artists that don’t have a history in the metaverse, and are compensated by the agency. The art will change on a monthly basis.

The office is located in what is known as the platform’s Museum District, which features a host of art galleries and artists.

The agency also views this as an opportunity to educate clients and show them what is possible in a more digestible way that eases the “scariness” of the metaverse, Edmunds said.

“Just by us saying, ‘Hey we have a space that you can come check out and see what we did,’ just that little offer is interesting because it feels real,” Edmunds said. It's not like, ‘Do you want to talk about blockchain?’ It's ‘do you want to come see this thing we made?’”

Read: Mediahub is Ad Age 2020 A-List media agency of the year

The space is less likely to be used by staff for meetings but could be used for special company events in the future, Edmunds said.

Building the space

The idea for this project gained traction in November, Edmunds said. He explained some of the hurdles, such as walking through the finance structure with the agency’s chief financial officer, given that Decenttraland operates through the use of several crypto wallets with cryptocurrency MANA used as the virtual world’s currency. Instead of buying the land, which could easily cost tens of thousands of dollars, the agency leased the space using Rentible, a platform dedicated to renting virtual properties, for less than $400 a month.

Once the space was acquired, Edmunds said, it was important to create the space using Decentraland’s native building tools as much as possible. Some aspects of the building like the Mediahub sign and floor levels were created using Blender, a 3D modeling software, which many Decentraland users use for their buildings.

[When building in Decentraland] there are no specs, you just know the size of your plot, there's no X, Y, or Z access,” Edmunds said. “So those glass walls are lined up by eyeball in a web browser. That was a challenge, but it's fun because then we knew this is what you can actually do with the native platform. That gives us the confidence to say we can put something like this together. So if a client wants to do a huge custom build, we'd work with a specialty firm to produce that. But if someone just wants to experience this or they want something simple, that's something we can turn around really quickly.”

Thinking creatively

Mediahub is no stranger to the metaverse. The agency already owns two virtual horses, named Radical and Disruptive, which are part of the NFT horse racing game called Zed Run. The horses can also be visited at their stable in Decentraland.

The agency's creative media group, which will have 15 employees in January, handles work for about 18 clients including Netflix, Viacom, the NBA and Chipotle, and focuses on bringing a creative approach to media activations. Earlier this year, the group helped create a promotion for Netflix’s "Sweet Tooth," a dystopian show about a race of human/animal hybrids. The agency created an animatronic owl-human hybrid baby and took it for a stroll in Los Angeles, garnering reactions from passersby.

The group hasn’t shied away from out-of-the-box advertising. In 2018, to promote a different Netflix show, "Altered Carbon," Mediahub created a bus stop billboard that seemingly had a human inside—it was actually a mannequin that looked like it was breathing.

As a result, the group has increasingly been brought on by brands earlier in the creative process, sometimes at the beginning of a campaign, to collaborate with creative agencies on various projects.

“Everything is fully customized,” Boyd said. “It's either inventing a new canvas or figuring out how to sort of break something that already exists. We work really closely with the media teams to make sure that it's synergistic with the media campaign and expands past experiential. We also like to think about things like if there's a 15-second audio spot on Spotify, what's something more interesting that we could do in that space versus just a typical audio ad, or if it's a video, what's something different that we can do besides just running a trailer.”

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Platforms like Decentraland could bring about the “next evolution of out-of-home,” said Boyd.

“I think this is only the beginning,” Boyd said. “It has some immediate relevance for some of our clients, we've already put some ideas on the table. It has a lot of potential. I think there's a handful of clients. It makes sense for now and as the capabilities grow and there's more and more functionality, I think it's only going to increase the number of opportunities in what's possible.”

Virtual land platforms have been gaining traction. In mid-November, the nation of Barbados announced an agreement with Decentraland to build a digital embassy in the metaverse. In late November, a plot of virtual real estate on Decentraland’s Fashion Street sold for a record $2.4 million. Earlier this month, Adidas Originals announced it bought a space in Decentraland rival Sandbox. Mediahub even reached out to the Very Serious Partners, a creative duo that launched a project last week offering offices in the metaverse to agencies.

Discord recruiting

Through the Discord channel, people can engage with the agency through pop-up recruitment sessions, informational presentations, and get feedback on resumes from senior staff. The channel also includes designated text channels for various agency departments such as its recruiting team, P3, which is the agency’s programmatic, search, and social group, Insights + Actions, and the R+D Lab, with leads from each team regularly updating their channels with thought starters, white papers, and ongoing projects. Mediahub also plans to host audio chat sessions.

For Boyd, this initiative is as much about retention as much as it's about recruiting.

“What we're trying to do internally as well is remind people that there's this whole other side to media that we don't want to forget about,” Boyd said. “I always like to say when we got into this business, I don't think anyone really does that to create flow charts. It’s a necessary piece and some people definitely nerd out and love doing it and that's great, but it's also about not forgetting who's on the other end of an impression. We're buying an impression but we're also trying to reach humans. There are the basic nuts and bolts that you have to master when it comes to media, but once you have that down then it's time to open your mind and figure out how we can take that  foundation and  blow it up.”

Ad Age Datacenter estimated Mediahub Worldwide's global 2020 revenue at $128.9 million, of which $100.1 million came from the U.S.

See Ad Age’s 2021 Year in Review here.