WPP’s Epic Games partnership represents the opportunity the agency world sees in the metaverse

The news: Epic Games announced a partnership with WPP to help it offer a digital experience for brands in the metaverse.

• The agreement will include the creation of a training program to upskill thousands of the agency network's creatives and engineers in order to produce brand experiences for the online platform Fortnite, including learning how to design for virtual environments using Unreal Engine.
• The curriculum will be divided into multiple tracks, with unique content for particular archetypes—executives, creative practitioners, and media specialists/strategists.
• This comes just weeks after Epic’s agreement with Lego to establish a family-friendly metaverse initiative.

Agency opportunity: WPP sees metaverse initiatives as an opportunity to better service clients—and perhaps take more market share from its competitors.

• WPP created The Metaverse Foundry in February, which is focused on generating content for Web3 worlds.
• Approximately 700 creatives are involved in the initiative.
• Wendy's, Pizza Hut, and Pfizer are among the brands working with the Foundry.

What it means: Consumers will spend more and more time in virtual worlds. It won’t happen overnight, but major players like WPP—and their clients—are willing to spend on test-and-learn opportunities so that they understand the mechanics of marketing in immersive environments before their competitors do.