As Marketing Director of Decentraland Foundation, the first fully decentralized virtual world built, governed, and owned by its users, Marja Kontinnen’s background in global digital advertising and marketing is invaluable. So too, is her 12 years’ experience in mobile games, including launching titles such as Angry Birds Space with NASA from the International Space Station.
Within the Decentraland virtual social platform, explains Marja, ‘users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications via its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and decide and vote on how the world works’.
“My role is to pioneer new ways of doing decentralized marketing − from amplifying the voice of the community, the creators and DAO, to educating and onboarding users, brands and governmental officials to web3.”
Marja’s wide-ranging passions include the Metaverse, social-driven gaming, kids’ games, learning and edutainment apps. Therefore, it’s apt that one associate calls her ‘a creative powerhouse fueled by inspiring energy, that she spreads around her like fairy dust and makes magic happen.’
With multiple qualifications − including a Bachelor of Arts and a master’s degree in Innovation, Communication and Media Studies from Finland’s University of Tampere − she’s gained a reputation as a world-class creative with a sharp digital marketing mind and insatiable curiosity for fun. She also runs Transparent Eyeball, a marketing and Metaverse consulting agency.
The Metaverse, Marja remarks, ‘is a social space in 3D internet, where I can socialize, create and explore realistic and fantastic experiences.’
With Decentraland being an open-source, user-owned platform, it’s ‘both a playground and a warehouse of building blocks for anyone.’ That’s why their team is building Metaverse use cases in real time, while testing new community engagement models and building best practices along the way.
And how does Marja see web3 and its growth in the past year? “Web3 is a wild, uncharted territory both in the good and bad. Everything happens very quickly, the highs and lows are extreme, and the only thing you can know for certain is that tomorrow is going to be a different day.” Yes, it can be scary, but ‘it’s also exciting for innovation, because this is the time to build tools and protocols, onboard individual users and brands to be part of the journey.’
As for opportunities web3 and the Metaverse may offer in the next five years, she says she’s an optimist, believing ‘new technology and business models can be used for the good of everyone.’
What also excites her is around data acquisition systems (DAOs) as an impact tool, grass-root level activism, and their ability to empower peoples’ passions and energy into actions and careers.
Marja says the impact of the Metaverse is seeing more people resonate with the idea of empowering their own creativity, data ownership, and communities through technology on a global level.
“The Metaverse might be where some of these actions take place as we meet each other in 3D worlds without physical limitations of geographical locations.”
With applications quite complicated to use while tools and products are being built, there are challenges in the space. She sees productmarket fit and meaningful use cases as the biggest barriers to mass adoption, commenting the latter will happen ‘once there is a need for the new experiences and applications.’
So far, her favourite project was collaborating with The Female Quotient (FQ) on their Equality Lounge at the World Economic Forum, held in Davos in May this year.
This ‘twin digital party experience’ entailed a simultaneous live stream on a large screen, by merging the FQ virtual Equality Lounge in Decentraland with a physical lounge at the Davos event. In an event that takes place in real life (IRL) and in virtual life (IVL), Marja says it ‘proved the concept of decentralized marketing; it’s about amplification and highlighting the community as they are the voices, the creators, the owners.’
Joking in a recent tweet that she seems to spend her evenings working ‘across way too many time zones,’ Marja gives her ‘brain a switch of scenery’ by sometimes camping with her kids or enjoying art and live music. And with future aspirations − to bring multidimensional learning experiences alive so that the Metaverse kids are growing up with is an inspirational place of wonder − this business-driven creative could make it happen.
MARJA KONTTINEN’S METAVERSE & WEB3 TIPS AND RESOURCES
