Business and the True Metaverse, with Benoit Soucaret | Ep. 76

Episode 76

Chief Experience Officer at Merkle, Benoit Soucaret, explores the reality behind the metaverse and the importance it will hold for B2B processes in the future. He discusses data, legislation, metaverse platforms, and their integration with the physical world.

Episode 76

 

Episode Summary

Metaverse: reality or make-believe?

Well, what actually is the metaverse? Benoit describes it as a 3D virtual environment with immense creative and professional applications. Access comes from devices like smartphones and VR glasses. The space already exists but constantly grows through various platforms - from gaming to cryptocurrency and NFTs. It represents the next phase of the Internet, with two layers:

  • Visual layer envelops the 3D, VR and AR experiences available in worlds like Roblox, Decentraland and Fortnite. Workplaces will also transform into virtual environments, especially with the dawn of remote working initiatives.
  • Transactional layer - this refers to the blockchain technologies that underline the metaverse structure. Younger generations are already heavily investing in cryptocurrencies, which will drive an element of the metaverse's decentralized culture.

 

Advice for brands

Entering the metaverse can create vast new opportunities for companies. Yet, their brief for doing so must be meaningful. Brands must be able to create value and deliver it through metaverse applications for a specific, customer-driven purpose - beyond simply awareness. For example, sustainable practices could be demonstrated through virtual factory tours, and customer service can be elevated by virtual interaction hubs.


The issue with regulation

Legislation often moves behind the curve of technological advancement and is forced to play catch-up. This also rings true with the metaverse, yet an added element of anti-legislation comes from its deregulated, decentralized nature. The metaverse aims to place users, rather than corporations, at the forefront of all activities, which leads to a purposeful lack of regulation. However, where can we draw the line between what is socially unacceptable and illegal in the physical but not virtual world? These are the conversations that need to continue developing as the metaverse evolves.

This article summarises podcast episode 76 ”Business and the True Metaverse" recorded by CX Insider. For more information, listen to the episode, or contact Benoit on his LinkedIn profile.

Written by Marcell Debreceni

 

Full episode transcript

Benoit: Beyond the aspect of allowing brands to create immersive experiences for their consumers. Because at the core of it is that if it's a 3D virtual environment, I think it's giving the opportunities for brands to be present in a virtual world just like they are in the physical world. So again, going back to Decentraland. If you can create your own space and your virtual world, you can have people sort of walking into your store, into your factory, and start interacting with an avatar of your employee or your phone of staff.

Valentina: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of CX Insider. In today's episode, Greg and I talked to Benoit, Chief Experience Officer at Merkle. You've been asking for a metaverse episode for some time. And finally, here it is. We will cover all things metaverse, business opportunities, and consumer insights this virtual world can offer. Enjoy the episode, and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, where you can watch short chapters, bonus content, and more. By the way, this podcast was brought to you by ACF Technologies, a global leader in Customer Experience Management Solutions. Hello Benoit, and thank you so much for coming today.

Benoit: Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you both, sorry.

Valentina: Yeah. So we usually start by doing an introduction of the guest. So would you like to tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Benoit: Sure. So I'm my current role is Chief Experience Officer. So it's a mouthful for Merkle in London, for the UK, and the EMEA market. And we are owned by a larger media group called Dentsu, which is a Japanese group. And essentially, what Merkle does is, is customer experience. We specialize in customer experience. So that's my sort of remit. I look at it from a holistic perspective and try to sort of instilling a consumer-centric approach into the companies that we work with, basically into the culture. So that's my current role. And I've always sort of worked in the digital industry. I started as a contractor when Flash was still a thing. So I was building and designing websites in Flash. And then I had for a while I had my own sort of creative agency for four or five years and, and moved around a bit. But yeah, so it's been over 17 or 18 years now, I mean in the industry.

Greg: So that's asking what was it like having your own agency?

Benoit: Stressful. It was quite stressful. It was fun. I think there are positives - you're your own boss to start with, so you sort of makes your own schedule. But beyond that, it's sort of... You know, you have to go and get the clients yourself. You wear multiple hats, which I actually really like because I was the sales guy, I was the manager, and the creative director. And then you can sort of seeing the team growing and the client portfolio growing. So it was fun. I enjoyed it, though, and I did it in Barcelona. So it's a great setup.

Valentina: Nice. Cool. Yeah. How many years did you do it in Barcelona or you lived in...?

Benoit: So I started, so I finished my studies, I moved to London for a couple of years and then moved to Barcelona for seven, seven or eight years, which originally was supposed to be a year. And then I ended up sort of staying, building the agency and, and then I moved back to London because I've always had a... London is home for me, so. Really.

Greg: Yeah, cool. That is cool. What about like customer experience? Like, why do you work in that space? Are you passionate about that for a particular reason or?

Benoit: Yeah, so I'm passionate. I kind of fell into that by default because originally, my idea was to be in advertising in a traditional sense. And then, when I finished school, the only projects that I was getting were sort of designing websites and or small e-commerce shops. So I was like, well, I'll give it a try. And by the time UX was in, it was in what it is today, and CX was in what it is today. And so I sort of started really, really enjoying it. And then, you know, it got more user-centric, data-driven and content-centric, etc.. So it became, it became really a passion. And I think for me it's the reason why it's interesting is it's, it's a nice cross between technology, brand, and sort of data and experience. Right. So I love this space.

Valentina: Last year, Facebook changed its name to Meta, and Mark Zuckerberg published over an hour-long explainer video of his vision of the metaverse. Soon after, the metaverse search interest on Google skyrocketed. Everyone was curious whether it's really as promising as it sounds. Is it really worth investing? Will we all live and work in the metaverse at some point? Let's start from the basics because even defining the metaverse is quite tricky at the moment.

Benoit: We don't really know what the metaverse will be. Obviously, there was this big announcement from Facebook, and they're going all out. I think they were investing about in 2021, they put 20, sorry, 10 billion into developing the metaverse in one year. And I think this is going to be a continuous investment. So we'll see what it becomes. But I think, for the time being, we know that it's... Essentially it's a 3D virtual world, right? But it has different layers. So you have the visual layer. You could almost think of it as two layers. You have the visual layer, which is your virtual reality, 3D, immersive environment. There are various platforms that already exist, like Fortnite. Although Fortnite is questionable from my perspective, I wouldn't necessarily call it the metaverse. You have Roblox, you have Decentraland that a lot of people are talking about at the moment. And yeah, so and there's the ownership side of things. So in a metaverse, you can sort of own your data, you own certain assets like your piece of land, you own your avatar, that's, that's yours, right? So from a visual layer is very much about this sort of immersive experience. So you can create, and if you think about Instagram, all these sorts of social media platforms, they haven't really evolved in the last few years. Sure, they've added features, but from an experience standpoint, the visual layer remains the same. I think where the metaverse becomes interesting is that it's going to start challenging people to think broader, and it's probably a reason why we don't know what it is, because we have a natural, as human beings, we have a natural instinct of recreating what we know in the real world, but in the metaverse.

Benoit: And I think as things evolve, we're going to get more and more creative. It's great, it's a great space for creativity and innovation. And then underneath that, you have all the more the currency, the transactional aspect. So that has to do with blockchain and all of those sorts of what we call ledger technologies. And that sort of gives access to people, so they essentially own their... They can own virtual goods in that space. And so that opens a whole different sort of world. But I think from. Well, for me, what's interesting is that it, and there's a vision about the metaverse, which at the moment everything is very siloed. So you have Decentraland, you have Roblox, you have all these sorts of different spaces that we call the metaverse today, but you can't really navigate from one space to another. You can if you own something in Decentraland, you can't. It's not the same thing as owning something in Roblox. And I think eventually the vision is that you'll be able to sort of navigating from one world to another and, and exchange assets and exchange money and NFTs etcetera into from one world to another.

Valentina: You might have heard names like Decentraland or Sandbox. These are some of the metaverse platforms. And at the moment, there are more than 160 companies building the metaverse. So how are all these worlds different?

Benoit: At the core of all of it is communities. It's all about creating those communities. I think that the main difference between these communities and, say, a social media community is that in those communities, you can have you're not relying on somebody else. You're not relying on a platform. You can create your own channels. So on Fortnite. Fortnite, as I said before, I sort of question whether this is really the metaverse. It feels more like it's still Web 2.0, a Web 2.0 Kind of platform that is very much like it's a game slash social network. Roblox is very much sort of like it's the same. It's the sort of the virtual world where you sort of create communities and, and play within those, those virtual worlds. Decentraland is that's the one that a lot of people are talking about. You can create and actually buy your own piece of land and build a virtual store. This is what the likes of Burberry and all the fashion and luxury brands have started, sort of creating their own space. You can advertise in those spaces. So it's much more of a yeah, I suppose a real estate platform almost. You also have Sandbox, which also aims to become this sort of, you know, virtual space where people can hang out and just go and chat to your with your friends.

Benoit: And then the other one was, I think we talked about Fortnite, Roblox, Decentraland. Yeah. I think those, those are sort of like that. They also differ; there's Discord as well, which is very much a that's almost like a chat social platform. It's very much about, you know, you create you... I don't know if you've ever done it on your phone, but you create your own channel about a specific topic, and then you can invite people to sort of discuss and exchange, etc. So it's very, I guess, the main difference, I would say, between what we call today the metaverse and the rest of the digital world. The other social media platform is that the metaverse is very much user-centric, right? As opposed to maybe social media feels a lot more brand-centric, right? So you have in on a social media platform, you pay for your ad, it gets displayed and shown to people. In the metaverse or in those platforms, it's much more about the people rather than the brand itself. So you're going to get called out if you talk about certain things and brands have to sort of think about this differently in terms of how they approach that space. Right. And in terms of really thinking about your audience and who you're targeting and how you're going to get your message across.

Valentina: There are two schools of thought. The first one believes the metaverse should be a regulated space to ensure the security of the users and create a stable social place. The other one is against any regulations. What are the pros and cons of both?

Benoit: I think it's a question of how do you govern the ungovernable almost? You know, it's tricky. I think there are legislations that have always been behind technology because technology moves so fast. And especially in today's age, things are changing and evolving really, really fast. And so you've always had legislation trying to sort of catch up where we're seeing it with what happened a couple of years ago with Facebook and when they, the whole thing was Analytica or something like that. And so, you know, legislators trying to sort of work out how to essentially control those big social media platforms better. And we still, I don't think we're still there, and it's still sort of discussing it. So there's definitely no at the moment, there's definitely no regulation. There is, you know, there is I think there are two schools of thought. Right. And there's obviously the the the companies that today own. People's data, the government that can sort of track and understands a bit better what's happening on social media platforms, who from their perspective obviously may think that it's a risk of not having any legislation. I'm sure parts of users that are in the metaverse are enjoying that because the whole purpose of the metaverse is that it's decentralized. Right. And I suppose the core message of, of being decentralized is that it's not Internet, like Internet is owned by the likes of Google, Facebook, Apple, like you have. If you want to download an app, you have to use Google Play Store or Apple Store, etc.

Benoit: If you want to look for something, you go through Google. The whole purpose of the metaverse is that you create your own space, you create your own, your own environment. You're not relying on any technology, right? So obviously, those people feel like it's those people this audience feels like it's the right thing to do. I think it really depends. I think if we want to talk about risks. For me, there's three risks. Three risks. But it's whether there be legislation or not, I don't know. There's the data privacy aspect. Right. So if there is no regulation, how do you well, how do you protect your own data? And how do you protect your own privacy? In that respect, I don't know if the likes of GDPR wwill eventually apply to the metaverse. Again, those are the things that are, I'm not even sure if they're being discussed. I'm sure they are. But, you know, those are things that that that don't apply yet to the metaverse. So that's the first thing. The other thing is, is about transaction. So when you talk about NFTs, we're talking about in some cases millions, you know, thousands if not millions worth of dollars of artwork that are sold as NFTs. So those are huge sums that in the real world you have laws like you have ownership laws, right? Like if you own, if you buy something, if you buy a piece of artwork, you not only own a piece of artwork, but in some instances you can own the intellectual property.

Benoit: You may or may not, but in some instances you can. So how do you regulate that in a metaverse? This is currently you own an NFT, right? You pay millions for 1000 NFTs and an NFT is a single essentially. It's a unique piece of data that's not replicable. Right. So it's this concept of scarcity. But then how do you regulate ownership? Right. There's no regulation. There's no government behind that. So that's one risk. So more on the transactional side. And then the last one is it's a bit grim, but it's, you know, what happens if your avatar gets abused, you know, in whatever shape or form by another avatar? Does that consist of breaking the law or is it acceptable because it's virtual? So all these things we don't know because it's all sort of being being created as we speak. I think for me, it can't rely on just the government and it can't just on the technology company. So both government and technology company will have to work together. Whether they'll be doing it, that's not the question. But because we're seeing it with the likes of Meta and their sub brands. But yeah, I think it's a big topic and it's definitely something that's being asked on a regular basis. Yeah, yeah.

Greg: Yeah. And really interesting point there because if you think about the metaverse is obviously this Web 3.0 virtual world. We have to access it from the physical world to access it. We need something. Yeah, you can't just access it effectively without anything. So whether that's devices like you say, Oculus or other devices, there is going to be a layer in between the human being and the virtual world. So there's going to be governance on some level.

Benoit: Yeah, yeah. You can access it through, you'll be able and today through apps on your phone or whatever the mobile phone becomes like you said, VR, VR glasses, but also AR glasses that will look like these, you know.

Valentina: Going back to Meta's vision of the metaverse, the idea is to create a virtual space where people can socialize, network, exchange value, go to the office, parties, concerts. It sounds quite futuristic. So at what stage is the metaverse right now?

Benoit: So I think if you look at it today, it's investment, right. So you have kids that are investing in crypto. I think what now it's much more... I'm not going to get into too much because it's not a topic of today and neither am I a specialist. But you look at 2008 in a crisis. Now the market is more regulated. But. I think what it showed a lot of people, I think it was in Cyprus, for example, where the country was obviously like like a lot of the rest of the world wasn't doing well and don't quote me on this, but I think it was something like for any saving above 100,000. Basically, the government took them out to refund the economy. So people realized that that money wasn't theirs. Right. And so I think what the metaverse does or this cryptocurrency does is that this is again, this is another thing that's not regulated at all. And so what people realized that money could be theirs. Right. And so you have 17 years, 17, 18, 20, whatever, whatever the age or older, they are investing in crypto because they're seeing that whatever happens to the financial market, this will still be theirs. Right. Even though crypto went down last year, this is a long term game.

Benoit: So the first impact I think it has in our everyday life is investment. Then I think there's the creative aspect of it because I think it opens from a creativity and innovation perspective. If you I think it impacts everyone. If you are a user, if you are a brand, if you are like us in professional services, I think it opens up a whole new world in terms of communities. It's a big thing. I mean, a lot of those... I don't want to drop the G word, the Gen Z, Gen Z generation. They all, they're hanging out on Roblox much more than they're hanging out on on Instagram and they're definitely no longer on Facebook. So I think in that sense, from a creative standpoint, from a community standpoint, from a transactional investment standpoint, that's how it's impacting today's life. There are ways I think you also see there's a lot of you start seeing digital showrooms. So, for example, during the pandemic, for a brand for a computer brand, we created a digital showroom, right. Because all their stores were closed. And so we essentially recreated a digital environment, virtual environment where people could sort of try laptops and computers to sort of see how it was working, you know, how they were working, the specification, etc., as a way of of helping people to not touch physically, but, you know, to sort of see the product.

Benoit: I think we've done that with cars, car resellers as well. So again, during the pandemic, when people couldn't see, see wanting to buy a car but couldn't see the car. So we created those digital showrooms, those sort of product, virtual product finders. They are. And again, this is where it comes to what is the metaverse today? There's different ways you can think of the metaverse in different, different ways. I think it already existed. So you have, like I just said, those those showrooms which impact more the commerce side of things. You have new reward programs that are being created around NFTs, whereas before it was maybe more something that had to do with points. You have those, like I just mentioned, those virtual products, watch brands have started using those a lot where you could sort of try your watch from your from your laptop. You have those virtual traveling for makeup brands, beauty brands where you can try your lipstick, nail polish, etc..

Benoit: So I think today, today this is sort of where you can see it impacting our lives. You also see we've worked with brands where we use augmented reality, which is essentially bringing, like I said before, virtual elements into come to life, into the digital world, into the physical world. So we use that in media and advertising. So those are sort of like the today's activation of the metaverse. I think tomorrow, again, we don't know, but I think that the sort of virtual environment where you can hang out will become more common. Like I said before, I think glasses, smart glasses will make a comeback. I think Snapchat and Google tried and it was a failure. But as the adoption is becoming more democratized, I suppose, with the likes of you seeing how Tesla has changed the sort of car industry, I think those things eventually will come back. And Facebook or Meta is working on a set of of glasses. Apple is working on a set of glasses as well. So I think this is more and as I say, longer term, probably like in the next five years. But yeah, I think this is where it's going.

Greg: In any new technology space. I always have this underlying feeling that Apple are just going to dominate. It doesn't matter what anyone else does. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's like one day they're just going to appear with, like, the best electric car and their own metaverse. That completely beats everyone else.

Benoit: Yeah. Yeah. But I think, and that's just my take on it, I think the reason why Meta is trying to, is putting so much money into the metaverse is that at the moment they're, they don't own the hardware. They just own the, the software. Right. So if you want to if you want to get onto the platform and mostly it's I can't remember the percentage of people that are using their app or their mobile app. So they have to go through Apple. Right. And the app, the app store, sorry to download the app. They relying on Apple. The reason why I think that they one of the reasons one of the many reasons why they want to go into the metaverse beyond the fact that, you know, we talked about Gen Z is to sort of grab that market because Instagram, Facebook isn't so attractive to them they've moved already to TikTok is also one of the reasons I think it's also to sort of have this hardware ownership and be able to create and be reliant just on themselves and essentially create their own world.

Greg: It's hard to see a world where we do spend hours a day in this virtual world. But if you look at especially the younger generation now, they already spend hours a day on social media. So in some respects I know it's different, but in other respects, do you think we're that far away from like especially, yeah. Certain generations being able to easily dive into that world.

Benoit: It's a lot more attractive, I think, for 16 or 17 year old to almost be whatever they want to be in the metaverse rightfrom an avatar to interact with their friends. Them having to you know, the world is going through a weird time. So, you know, with the economic crisis, the cost of living to some extent, I mean, we're not we're not living in that war, but the war in the middle of Europe. So I think it has an attractive side to it to sort of be able to escape and create, create your own world, you know, living in an environment that's, you know, that's unmoderated where you can sort of talk to all your friends where you can. I don't know. I don't think we're very far. I do think that it's not for for everyone. Right. I don't see myself being. And that's I love talking about it. I love working on it, but I don't see myself spending hours and hours. So I have a daughter, so I'll never be able to.

Greg: Until she's old enough. Yeah.

Benoit: She'll probably teach me how that works.

Valentina: When the metaverse becomes an everyday go to platform. How old is the new virtual channel coexist with all the other web platforms in the physical world?

Benoit: So it's like when digital started, right? Like, yeah, people were afraid that digital will replace physical. It never replaced physical and will never replace because neither will the metaverse or the virtual space. It's just a different aspect, it's just a different layer of solving challenges or solving problems. And so I call it the next unified frontier, which is digital, physical, virtual. And I think brands will have to think about how to connect those those three spaces. One thing that's for sure that's here to stay is this aspect of people wanting it to be seamless and connected, right? So I want to be able to sort of move seamlessly from the physical space to the digital, to my digital devices to a virtual space. At the moment, as you know, we're doing a lot of progress. But if I think about it, I think digital is still very much, it feels a bit siloed from sometimes some of the physical experiences that I'm experiencing. Right. So I think one of the next challenges for brands, whether it's B2C or B2B, will be to find a way to make those connections as smooth as possible between the sort of three, three areas. You can call it tripolo, which is online, offline on chain. But yeah, no, I think there's, there's loads of benefit, but I don't think it'll ever replace the physical world.

Valentina: There are many companies entering the metaverse right now, mostly luxurious brands like Gucci, Balenciaga, Burberry, but also Coca-Cola and others. What are they getting out of it, other than awareness?

Benoit: If your brief is - How do I enter the metaverse or I want to enter the metaverse - It's probably, it's not a good brief, right? So I think you need to have a problem to solve for your brand, whether you're B2B, B2C, you need to have a reason why you want to enter this space or whether it's from a brand awareness perspective. It's a new market that you want to explore. It's you know, it could be anything. It really depends. Again, it goes back to having what is the challenge that you want to solve and what problems are you trying to solve with by entering the metaverse? But like I said, I think at the moment it's much more of a brand awareness sort of play than it is a profit game, right? Because from a commerce perspective, the metaverse is still in its infancy. But from a brand awareness standpoint, we're seeing a lot of things from a B2B, pure B2B perspective. This is where I think it gets interesting because you can you know, if you wanted to be a more transparent company, you could have your suppliers visit your factory and where your products are made. And you could have them navigate through your factory and get educational content. So I think yeah, I think there's different reasons why you would enter the metaverse.

Benoit: Another reason I think is beyond the aspect of allowing brands to create immersive experiences for the consumers. Because at the core of it is, is that if it's a 3D virtual environment, I think it's giving the opportunities for brands to be present in a virtual world just like they are in the physical world. So again, going back to Decentraland. If you can create your own space, if you can create your own virtual world, you can have people sort of walking into your store, walking into your factory and start interacting with an avatar of your employee or your front of staff. I mean, it sounds crazy, but some you know, it's another. Again, like I said before, it's another layer of the experience. And I think, you know, I think a lot of people, especially the younger generation, will, you know, will enjoy that. I did the other day. I did a talk. And we're talking about the B2B audience and how it's changing. And I can't remember what the numbers were, but there's a huge number of Gen Z and younger millennial, right. Because Millennial is I think the older millennial have 41 or 41, 42. So it's a more the younger millennial and Gen Z in five years will represent a huge portion of the of the B2B workforce.

Benoit: And so those are people who are what we call digital native. So they were born with a device in their hand. They know they're on those platforms today. So they expect brands to, you know, to be there in the space. And I think you have to you can't think of the metaverse as being something that's just a trend. You I think you have to get ahead and you have to invest. Even if it's like everything else, there's always going to be a test and learn phase. So don't go and create your metaverse department right away. Just like when social media started. There was no social media manager in companies, so they've employed agencies to sort of help them dive into this world. And it's again, it's a test and learn approach, right? So I think my recommendation is have a similar approach. Go work with an agency of your choice and test that space to see what you know. I suppose. Educate yourself about the space, understand? Why should your brand be in that space and how to maximize this space. Right. And really, what problem are you trying to solve? Because if you just again, if your brief is, I want my brand to be in the metaverse, that's not a very good brief.

Valentina: At the moment, do we have any data insights on user behavior in these platforms?

Benoit: If you're thinking about the metaverse, at the heart of it is creativity and innovation, right at the heart of all of this, sits data. So there's a ton brands that are collecting a ton of data around. Now think about the the amount of interactions, the amount of transactions through an NFT, crypto, etc., you know, and that's across various worlds. So there's a ton of data that's being collected. You have a lot of data driven companies like Adidas whose, who's been entering the metaverse world very early on, Balenciaga, and then it's followed by I think Disney is also a brand that's sort of trying to obviously create those virtual Disney worlds, no pun intended. And so, you know, it's more I think it requires a sort of big integrated cloud platform behind it to sort of churn that data and know what to do with that data. And I'm sure those companies have a ton. If you think about the the metaverse. And so that's the same thing for digital in the social media platform, it's all content driven. Right at the heart of everything is content. So how do you personalize? How do you sort of target your audience better in terms of content? There's technologies out there like artificial intelligence or these technologies that sort of help you tailor those experiences using data, you know, helping so many of us at the moment.

Benoit: The biggest market for Metaverse is gaming. Obviously. I think it's 70% of the amount of sales is gaming. And the rest has a lot to do with live events, live concerts, etc.. But, you know, so all these platforms are leveraging data to sort of help enhance automation in a gaming platform. But there's a ton. There's a ton of data that's being collected. There's high quality data. There's decentralized data. There's reusable, reusable data. I think by 2024, Bloomberg said that the metaverse as we know it today will be an $800 billion industry. So imagine the number of transactions, the number of user interaction. So data everywhere. Everywhere. The risk to talk about your question on the risk side of things, I think it's what we said before. And there is no regulation, neither in terms of transaction or data privacy or anything like that. So it's a big question mark.

Greg: It is all designed to be decentralized and therefore anonymous in its nature. So we could quite easily see and you can see it today, you can enter the metaverse and no one has any idea who you are. And there is no means of identifying you as an individual. So if you do good or you do bad, that's for us to yet see how that plays out I guess.

Benoit: Yeah.

Greg: So yeah, that's just connecting it back. Sorry to what you said there about data and risk, but one of the challenges and also the opportunities is that are not anonymous element of people's existence in that world.

Benoit: Yeah, yeah. It's we'll have to see. But I think it's yeah, it's all, I think it's a very interesting shift in where the Web is going. It's a massive shift. It's definitely going to be a... You know, a big difference with what we know today. I think with every big technological shift comes challenges and legislation is one of them. So we'll have to see. But I think from a brand. So if I put my customer experience hat on. I think from a brand perspective and from a user perspective, because again, the metaverse is very much a people first space. I think it could be really exciting. There's a lot of creativity. There's a lot of things we could do.

Valentina: I hope you enjoyed listening to the podcast. From now on, all of our episodes will be published as video, so make sure you check out our YouTube channel. Enjoy Rapid Fire questions and I will see you in two weeks. By the way, this podcast was brought to you by ACF Technologies, Global Leaders in Customer Experience Management Solutions. My first question is what's your spirit animal?

Benoit: Panda.

Valentina: Next one.

Greg: Kung Fu Panda or regular panda?

Benoit: Regular panda.

Valentina: What did you read most recently?

Benoit: I read really sort of boring stuff. I read like business books and that kind of thing. So I think the last one I read was. I think it was how to set up a startup. I can't remember what the author was, but.

Valentina: Yeah. Is there a dessert you don't like?

Benoit: Oh, probably not. I'm a big foodie though. I travel based on what kind of food I'm going to I'm going to eat.

Valentina: And what is one goal you are determined to achieve in your lifetime?

Benoit: That's a good question. Boy, you need a rapid answer for this. One goal I want to be able to achieve.

Greg: The small question. Don't worry about it. Yeah.

Benoit: I said, boy, maybe travel to more countries because we used to, with my wife, we used to travel a lot and I have to say we kind of stopped. So I'd love it if we could do travel the world would be a good goal. And it's not very original, but yeah.

Valentina: She will be happy to hear that.