The year is 2026, some guy made a million-selling custom tamagotchi NFTs, Zed Run streams are bringing in 1 million twitch viewers, and indie fashion creators are releasing products in Decentraland and real life. The acceleration of the creator and ownership economy combined with the has given rise to the full-stack creator and their omni-world activations.

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How we got here: rise of the partial metaverse

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The creator economy were already picking up steam, but the pandemic expedited those numbers. Now, more people were plugged than ever, and those that were laid off as a result of COVID, realized they could make money off their passion. Combine this with the continued strong run of Bitcoin and NFT sales that turned ordinary people into new money icons.

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All in all, social tokens, NFTs and the rise of the partial metaverse, are results of COVID, creators with diverse backgrounds, and the growing number of mediums and platforms available at a creators control. If digital art and cards are layer 1 of NFTs, the next layer of NFTs are purposeful designed items used to create experiences that can easily transition from the metaverse to IRL.

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Defining it all

• Traditional brand activations - events and campaigns that allow a brand to interact and engage directly with their target audience.

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• ‍Partial Metaverse - the collection of augmented reality, virtual reality, and multimedia tools and platforms to create a partial space in which individuals can interact with each-other.

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• Omni-world activations - a combination of digital, in real life, and metaverse events/campaigns working as a whole to engage fans or activate them.

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The full-stack creator creates omni-world activations in the metaverse, digitally (e.g., social apps) and in person. It's the result of successful activations inspired by Travi$ Scott's Fortnite concert and Lil Nas X all encompassing viral campaign for the Satan Shoes drop in collaboration with MSCHF.

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This label doesn't hold true to every creator. It comes from those creators later in their lifecycle Why? Only a creator later in their lifecycle would have the revenue, network, superfans, and skillset to be able to ideate and execute campaigns like these.

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• Established fan base
• Revenue to fund campaigns
• Network of creators for cross promotion

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With this emergence of new creator, their comes a new playbook for creators to utilize. The new formula goes build an audience on YouTube, TikTok or Twitter, own that audience (e.g., email, SMS, and private community) transport that audience via activations and drops into the metaverse (e.g., Decentral), and couple those metaverse events with IRL events.

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Transition from creator to full-stack creator

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Similar to the days of growth marketers being specialist in one particular area with a broad range of skills, the new creator will be the same. They may excel in video or audio editing, but they'll be one part product designer, one part director, one-part low coder, and one part marketing operations wizard. It comes after years of growing an audience across platforms and creating content religiously.

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For example, rather than thinking of drops as being in one off announcements and event, future drops will be live-streamed via Twitch, while hosting a drop party open to the public Secentraland, with live streaming audio on Clubhouse. Sprinkle in an NFT plus AR filter for Snapchat, and you've got an omni-world activation.

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It's Hollywood level production with new Hollywood talent. Anything new and innovative takes an individual(s) with enough money to invest and a willingness to risk it all. With that said, creators such as Mr Beast, ZHC, and CodeMiko, would be primed for an omni-world activations.

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Industry Shift

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More creators and more omni-world activations mean more incentives for creators to have fully fleshed out teams of writers, activation managers, and operations experts. To consistently pull off activations of this size, creators will need team.

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This will either shift into teams built by the creator, agencies will rise to fulfill this need, software will be developed to help manage parts of the process, or management companies will hire these resources in-house to become multi-media event production studios.

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The explosion of the creator economy and ownership economy will give rise to new ways creators are able to activate and engage their fans. If Clubhouse audio streams and exclusive drops are version 1, Clubhouse in conjunction with NFT drops, Decentralanad watch parties, and AR integrations are version 2. New tools and worlds and the emergence of virtual reality and augmented reality will evolve what it means to be an omni-world creator.

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*This is part one of may or may not become a series dedicated to the rise of the omni-world creator. Join my newsletter below for all things related to the creator and ownership economy.*