To keep our streak of social proof alive, shoutout to another of our valued H0Rs, an old lax bro friend of mine from high school who’s currently crushing law school. On Tuesday, he threw this headline from Above the Law into the lion’s den for our patented shred-tearing hot takes.
The gist is, Arent Fox became the first ‘Biglaw’ firm to build in the Metaverse, recently purchasing some Decentraland to set up a not-so-literal shop soliciting web3 users with their legal services. As a growth hacker myself, in title and practice, I must say I’m impressed by the AF marketing team. It’s one of those brilliant 1:1 moves that couldn’t have been better aligned, given web3 users’ complex, highly regulated financial needs.
Of course, it is purely a marketing play, and acknowledged as such by the firm itself: ‘We want to show our clients we know this world; look, we bought in this world, and we can help them navigate this world.’ For lawyers, they’re surprisingly honest.
Despite the insane premium, there’s still no clear advantage to doing business in Decentraland, outside of seducing customers who believe in Decentraland by making them believe you do, too. And Arent Fox — a ‘white-shoe firm‘ according even to their Wikipedia page — perfectly fits the profile of prestigious but rapidly dated institutions making the Metaverse pivot in hopes of maintaining some modicum of relevancy.
Still, this is exactly what marketing textbooks are referring to when they tell you to establish your brand on channels where your target audience lives. Most degens are still plebs, so the brands planting their flag in the sand now might well get their business and loyalty in the long run, simply because they were there first. Worked for those WASP-y Mayflower mofos. Might as well work for their descendants, too.
