By Jeff Wilser
The chief metaverse officer of Futures Intelligence Group has worked in metaverse-related fields for nearly a decade – i.e. since the dawn of meta-time.
Clinique had a problem. The brand wanted to “enter the metaverse,” but it didn’t want to do so in a way that was cringey. So, it called a woman named Cathy Hackl: the “Godmother of the Metaverse.”
Her credentials? Hackl, the “chief metaverse officer” of Futures Intelligence Group, a metaverse consulting firm, has worked in metaverse-related fields for nearly a decade – or basically since the dawn of meta-time.
Just ask Steven Spielberg. When filming “Ready Player One,” Spielberg partnered with the virtual reality headset company HTC Vive, where Hackl served as “VR Evangelist.” At Magic Leap, an augmented reality company, she worked with the man who coined the term metaverse, Neal Stephenson. And over a year before the current craze, she wrote articles for Forbes like “The Metaverse Is Coming And It’s A Very Big Deal.”
It was such a big deal that Hackl left a cushy job at Amazon Web Services to “take a big bet on the metaverse.” Now she advises brands – like Clinique – on how to position themselves in this strange new market. (Her work with Clinique fetched a glowing write-up from Vogue Business.)
In an interview with CoinDesk, the Godmother shares why the metaverse is larger than perhaps the crypto crowd realizes, why avatars are fast becoming “emotional surrogates of ourselves” and how in the future, “every company is going to need a metaverse strategy.”
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