adidas Originals officially lands in the Metaverse

In mid-November, adidas invited members of its adidas CONFIRMED app to the POAP platform, distributing collectible digital tokens that currently represent only distinctive badges but which, as the brand announced, «may come in handy». It was the first teaser of the brand's entry into the metaverse that today, through an article published on the brand's app, was confirmed with the announcement of a collaboration between adidas Originals, Bored Ape Yacht Club, the PUNKS Comic of Pixel Vault and the crypto-investor gmoney – announcement given through a video that mentioned the entrance into «a world of limitless possibilities» and with the change of the profile pic of their profiles with a Bored Ape wearing an adidasu outfit that bears the logos of all the partners of the collaboration. In an article published yesterday on its app, then, the brand has better told its imminent exploration of the metaverse, described as «a realm being built in parallel to ours by younger people from overlooked locations with updated values».

The brand's entry point to the metaverse would seem, for now, to be the NFT market through the collaboration with the NFT collection of Bored Ape, one of which has become the new "face" of the brand with the name of Indigo Herz but above all with the crypto-visionary gmoney, one of the pioneers of the NFT explosion, and the PUNKS Comic crew who instead is playing another interesting role within the new crypto-art market by creating a series of comics that insert the characters represented in the NFT in a unitary storytelling that contributes to increasing the weight and cultural value of the nascent subculture. In the article published by the brand there is a lot of emphasis on the concept of community: the main value of the metaverse is indicated in its ability to level all the geographical differences that normally separate the various members of the sneaker community bringing all its members in the same virtual world «where anyone can express their most original ideas and be their most authentic selves, in whatever form that may take».

A non-secondary consideration that plays on the dynamic between the idea of metaverse and that of personal identity – a concept, the latter, which has never as in recent years assumed a growing importance within the development of fashion brands that have both tried to build collective identities through the social engineering of thier online communities and to change the narrative surrounding fashion itself, transforming its products not into status signifiers but into expressive tools for a generation that, born within the digital culture, has developed a completely new concept of self-image, taking it no longer as a fixed and immutable datum but as a malleable construct to be shaped and redefined. Beyond its enormous marketing potential, estimated at around 50 billion dollars according to BoF, adidas' new project, its partnership with the world of comics and the importance assigned by the brand to the idea of a space where everyone can choose and redefine their identity represents perhaps the most lucid point of connection with the psychology of Gen Z,  the generation that will carry adidas' legacy forward in the coming decades. A market of undeniable importance, the world of NFTs can often be difficult to understand, which is why adidas Originals has created a "for dummies" guide to help you understand the world of non-fungible tokens.