 Okay, that's my avatar. The good thing about avatars is they allow you to express your best personal self. Unfortunately, in real life, I have a little less hair, a little bit more weight, and I have to wear my glasses so I can see all of you. So, thanks, David, for covering a little bit of my background. As you might be able to tell from that background, I, for the last 30, almost most of my last 30 years, I have a passion for media and technology and how they come together. I'm also blessed that much of that career, more than 25 years, I've been coming to this amazing country, and I've had an opportunity to work on a lot of projects in media, in television, in digital media, and I can never get enough. And I have to say, I know it was covered a little bit earlier on, but the tourism tagline for India of Incredible India, I think could not express it any better than it does today. And after 27 years, I think it was the first time I came to India, I can't think of a better moment for India. This is the start of a whole new phase. Not only does India have the size and scale, but it's more like a continent than a country. And so that gives you the platform with amazing talent. There's amazing skills here in India, technology, engineering, creativity, commerce, finance. And so all of this is adding up to make not only drive economic growth and success for India, but the role of India on the global stage has never been stronger, and I think that's just going to continue. I'd go back, even though I've been coming a long time, I'd go back six or seven years ago when the government said digital India is absolutely essential to the success of this nation. And after that, the availability of 4G at an affordable price has driven the explosion of ecosystems, digital payment ecosystems, commerce, digital media, and streaming. And you've not just pioneered success in this market, but you've set a model for markets around the world. When 5G launched late last year, for me, I got even more excited because this is the start of your next phase of digital transformation, one where I think you're going to lead the world at scale. And so 5G is not just a backbone infrastructure technology. It enables different experiences and enables different technologies to connect with consumers. So one of the things that excited me about joining Densu is Densu helps brands make human connections. And it does that through amazing creativity, technology, and a deep understanding of the emerging media space. So what am I going to talk about today? Well, I've been touched on it a little bit as some of the transformation changes. I'm going to talk a little bit about the metaverse and Web3. So I love the description we use to say, the meta what? Well, everybody has a slightly different description of the metaverse. And the metaverse has gone through a standard Gartner hype curve. Various people are different stages on that hype curve. Some are getting to the peak of the expectations. Some have gone over that hill into disillusionment. But beyond that comes the sustainable development of any hype curve where the reality checks in and people understand what their role is, what they're at, and how to experiment. So a little later I'll talk a little bit of how brands have been experimenting in metaverse, what they're doing, and what we at Densu are doing to support their development and role of metaverse and Web3. So first, this is not the definition. This is our common understanding at Densu, but there are different definitions because it's evolving. So the first thing is the metaverse is the future of all digital media and commerce and the successor to the current internet. Some of you may not believe that, but we are on the start of the journey to do that. Many people at the start of the internet did not believe that it would play the role that it did, and we're at the start of that journey now. But there are some different traits about the metaverse and the role of Web3 in this next phase. There are a few key trends here. It consists of a persistent shared spaces that are linked together with interoperability and a fully functioning economy and open access to all. Now, many of those sub pieces are still being formed. The fully functioning economy, there's been a lot of experimentation with crypto and different currencies. That's a curve that people are going on, but there's a move towards digital currencies, one that you know better here in India than markets that people could develop, like the US or the UK. There are some tenets of Web3, which is the backbone. I think of the metaverse as the presentation layer of Web3. There's a few tenets that are slightly different to the internet. The first is value exchange. We hear a lot of talk about tokens, fungible tokens, non-fungible tokens. They are the fuel, they aid the exchange, but it's really the smart contracts that enable transactions from one person to another person without the need of the intermediaries in a safe and secure environment. So the smart contract systems that are built on top of blockchain are enabling rapid interchange at scale. Another important differentiation is self-sovereign identity. We've grown up in digital economies over the last five to ten years, but our identity was managed by large organizations, amazing organizations that will still continue to exist, but the self-sovereign identity allows the individual to have their identity back and have it protected and to control their data. And to choose which applications they engage with and how they interact. Underlying all of this are technologies, decentralized technologies. So obviously the blockchain is the backbone of that. For brands, one of the questions I often get asked is, yeah, but that's all very cool and exciting for a lot of the engineers, but what does it mean for me? Well, to do the answer to that question, we have to think about what it means to consumers. How are they engaging with the metaverse? There are areas that many of you will already be familiar with. Gaming in Web 2.0. Gaming platforms like Roblox or games like Fortnite are a first step into the world of the metaverse. They are Web 2.0 versions, but many of the Web 3.0 versions are having offering richer, more immersive experiences, either in a gaming platform or the Web. Now, a lot of that relies on virtual reality, and I'll show you a model we look at in a second, but virtual reality requires that coming together are some physical technologies and the actual production of the immersive worlds that people are entering. There are some other schools of thought that combine augmented reality, which is instead of removing you from the physical world you're in and immersing into a virtual world, they put the virtual world on top of the physical world that you live. Now, when you put these two together, there's no right answer. It's not augmented reality will win virtual reality won't or vice versa. So we talk a lot about extended realities because these are a suite of tools to engage with audiences, especially the next generation. We'll talk a little bit more about NFTs in a moment, because a lot of people think about NFTs as digital artwork. That's probably one of the first manifestations we think about. But NFTs are just digital rights. Those rights could be a visual asset, like a graphic piece of work. They could be a right to have a membership at a club or access a privilege or a benefit. So there's a lot more usage of NFTs than people are thinking about currently today. So here's that model I think about. The Metaverse is a very layered environment because it's powered by Web 3. But the heart are infrastructures that allow that access. 5G today we're very excited about, but 6G is already in development. And so how do we leverage that access and the usage of cloud to transact at scale? Obviously, we are still humans, despite our lovely AI report, and despite my avatar. We need human interfaces. We used to human interfaces. You have hundreds of millions of phone screens. That's an interface. We've had TVs, they're interfaces. But the interfaces are evolving. We talk a lot about goggles and wearables, but they also talk about haptic is being developed. The materials that allow you to experience sensations and stimulate the experience to give a more realistic experience. All of this, of course, is powered by the computing power that drives this. Edge computing is enabling a lot more processing speed which enables a lot greater realism of the experiences. And obviously we talked about AI. There's a lot of aspects to machine learning. That's worth the whole conference on itself. But we're talking a lot about the role of generative AI. We've talked about some of the visual aids, but also chat GBT. That's still quite early in its growth, but what it's enabling now is artificial intelligence and machine learning as a tool. Moving to the creator economy, one of the things we're doing is we're seeing these worlds come together. So social media has created a greater empowerment in creators. I grew up in a world of film and television and big studios and big egos and big artists and big talent. We still have those big artists and some big egos, but we are empowering anyone anywhere to become creators. So we've already had that for some time in the creator economy, but put that into a virtual world and put that into generating creative content at scale, asset marketplaces at scale, processes that people can learn very quickly instead of 20 years in the craft, and you enable much more interaction and much more creativity. On top of that, we need to form the connections and we need to monetize it. Wonderful to have so many brands here. Thank you for your wallets. But we need to find ways to connect people and individuals who are creating assets, even if they're an individual sitting in their bedroom creating a virtual avatar. They want to monetize and they want to participate, but they don't have the ecosystems that we have. So how do we create an economically balanced ecosystem for all? Ad networks are key to that. Curation, systems that allow us to measure and value that. That's the discovery part. And experiences, how do we enhance those experiences? I'll share a few examples in a moment of the first wave of metaverse and the experimentation that people have. But one of the areas people are spending a lot of time right now is how do you make a metaverse experience more engaging? Theaters, movie shows, movie theaters in virtual worlds. I saw Shimaru launch the virtual cinema. There is experimentation now from cinemas, from esports. Gaming was obviously a natural platform, but now there's so many more ways to experiment with that experience. So let's look at some practical examples because we can spend days on the theory on what it actually is and people get excited building things, but it doesn't have as much value if we don't understand how do we connect humans and brands, which is my passion at Densu. So in our experience, and I'm going to run through some examples, some that we've been involved in creating or partnering in, others which are just ones we hold up as great examples. And when we think about it, there's two key areas. How have brands engaged with these platforms to build brand and brand awareness and brand affinity? And how have they engaged in actual commerce-related transactions? Now, even if your business doesn't come from one of these sectors, if you're able to see how it drove that sector, there's always manifestations, ways to bring that alive in your sector too. Everybody is starting to think about how to participate in an experiment. So let's start with the brands. One of the earlier examples, 2020, the Japanese cosmetic brand, Tatcha, decided that they wanted to create just a simple engagement inside one of the game's Animal Crossing. So they just created an island and they enabled scavenger hunts, very simple gamification techniques to just hunt around. Doing the hunting around and the gamification rewards to come from participating on that island, they then engage on some of their products. They showcase some of the new products. Very simple experimentation, the metrics of conversion are probably not very tangible. It was more to participate, get some noise, and actually access an interesting new audience. And that's one of the reasons a lot of brands have been experimenting. Obviously, there's a younger demographic, a future customer demographic that is more active in this space today, but obviously the demographic is also broadening. So that was just an early example, not a sophisticated, deep, complicated example, but just early experimentation. An example that we supported recently was Heineken launched a new brand, that kind of silver brand. And they created a virtual bar and a virtual DJ space and they encouraged people to come and sample the beer. The only problem was it was a virtual beer and you couldn't really sample it. And so it generated a lot of chat and debate and it wasn't meant to actually sample the product. It was obviously meant to create some buzz and some PR. And what's interesting, they then went on to buy, I think it's almost in Decentraland, they actually bought the land and now will continue to experiment with this space as an area to experiment their participation. Now, many of you have heard of the virtual use of virtual or avatars or virtual influences. Well, it started out as a kind of virtual influencer modeling. It's become a lot more complicated and we like to think of it as virtual identities because there are so many uses. Some of these characters come that the virtual identities can be created in sort of purely produced, sort of pre-produced. Others we use green screen technology, a bit like we did in the movie industry where we kind of wire up green screen and you actually emulate the individual person. What we found is that there's multiple purposes that can be used, some which draw off traditional usage. Brand ambassadors. Maybe a celebrity before might have been a brand ambassador. Now some of these individual influencers have their own followings and so they can become a brand ambassador for that brand. It's much easier to guide and control a virtual identity than it is a real life identity to manage celebrities before. But it's also more easier to kind of craft alignment with a brand's particular brand objectives. Some of the virtual identities have got their own followings, their own social media accounts. They're very transparent about being virtual and that's what makes it cool and fun, but then it's much easier to form those connections. One of the things we found with celebrities is they can't be everywhere all the time and so if you create a virtual twin it enables a much greater footprint and reach which adds value to the celebrity and also adds value to the kind of the value of the virtual identity. But that's the more traditional use of endorsement, celebrities, influencers, which you know, all of you are very familiar with. Another aspect it can become actually a tangible, operating member of a team, lead generation. So digital retail assistants. As you move into digital shopping and a lot of the digital shopping platforms where there's live commerce, e-commerce, mobile commerce, you want to bring some of that humanity back and even though it's not a human, you create some of the interaction with a virtual assistant. Same thing with live events and hosts and talent and you can even move that to being employee experiences as well. So moving on to the commerce side of things, another earlier example, I think this one was probably 2019, Louis Vuitton partnered with well-known game league of legends and created a series of virtual goods, virtual skins that you could buy in the game and it really was just an experimentation but for Louis Vuitton it was very interesting. It moved to a much younger demographic, a younger demographic that still were rising in discretionary spend, it enabled them to add a different brand element, a cooler brand element and allowed them to experiment with the use of these platforms at a very early stage. Move that forward a little bit to 2021. Ralph Loren partnered with Zepperto, again with the pronunciation right, Zepperto to create a full replication of their 2021 summer collection as a virtual version. And what this did is it really created a connection between the virtual worlds that some of their customers were engaged with and the physical worlds and a number of other brands have started drawing on that. With that there's been a move towards this kind of omnireality, virtual and physical blend. Balenciaga is another one that's experimented with digital clothing. It took me a while being a slightly older generation to get my head around why would I pay for virtual clothing. But if you're participating a lot in these platforms and it's a much lower cost, you get the enjoyment of gamifications much as you would if you play any of these games and you buy weapons and other life extended lives, etc. It's an extension of that. But the value for a fashion brand is that it drives awareness about the design, it drives an affinity to want to go to the physical and it translates to a much larger value of physical. Plus, it's quite hard to push people down the funnel, as you know, from brand awareness to intent to purchase to actual transaction. So this can actually shorten those transactions. We're at an early stage. There's not a perfect solution to that yet, but there's a lot more experimentation between general brand awareness and engagement and pushing through the funnel across digital platforms. For those who are still a bit cautious about the virtual reality world, there's the augmented reality world. We've done some work, this one was with General Motors in the US, and we looked across their digital platforms and said, how could we add an AR element? And some of that AR element just allows you to experiment with what the car would look like in its location, this one in your driveway. Others allow you to actually put yourself in it, put it on the street, see how it would look in context. And so adding a layer to that, it's not the sole intent to purchase, but it makes the shopping experience a much richer experience and that deepens your affinity to concluding a transaction. It's still early stage in experimentation. So this goes back to that earlier point I had about NFTs. A lot of rise and buzz, then a lot of skepticism about NFTs as an asset. Is it really an asset? I take five photos of me, change the color, and suddenly that's a valuable NFT and I'm going to sell it for millions. Probably not. Not even my avatar version of me, which is slimmer. But the point about the NFTs is literally it is a digital asset of a right and a transaction, and that could be a great design. But it could also be rights to a subscription or membership to a club. So we're starting to see the NFT technology be used for loyalty campaigns. So there's an example I don't have up here, but for FIFA, they put QR codes on the back of Chris Packett. And when you scan it, you use the NFT registration. You each have your unique identification and then you get rewards from that single scan. So yes, we're all used to QR codes, but that QR code is not always linked to a single unique identifying right that you have. So there's a lot more usage of the backbone technology and the NFT structure to make it easier for direct relationships with your customers that are unique, protected, and secure. Now, there's no right way because we're in the earlier stage and experimentation is the key. I think Estee Lauder is one of those examples I like holding up. They experiment in different ways for different parts of their brand portfolio. So they have a virtual retail environment, one example we do a lot of, which is Maison. That's just one example to experiment with that brand. They've experimented with a virtual games arcade, which is around one of their night repair serums. And then they also, because sustainability of the Aveda brand is key, they use the blockchain to be able to track uniquely the supply chain to ensure it complies with their sustainability goals. There are multiple use cases for these technologies that are not just the obvious up-and-down hype of certain creative assets. So what are we doing? Well, we're still learning, too, and we don't expect to have all the answers in-house, but we help work with brands to identify what they want to achieve by participating and how to do it. We have a number of partnerships and NFTs that help us design and mint and launch NFT, whether that's through membership campaigns or through assets. We work with a lot of the native platforms, whether it's Web 2, like Roblox, and Fortnite all the way through to some of the future platforms like Decentraland and Sandbox. And we also, as the new technologies emerge with AR and VR, we're working with those platforms to see how can our brands participate in experiment. We've made some investments. We bought a gaming company in Australia. We have minority investments in a number of AR, VR, basically across the spectrum. And we make these minority investments in some of these earlier-stage businesses. We do that because, A, we're really excited about their unique position in the ecosystem, what they're contributing. We are excited to support them on that journey by introducing them to the amazing brands we have in our portfolio. And then we use that to kind of enable growth of that particular part of the ecosystem. So it's still relatively early in the metaverse journey. But as we said, in India, 5G rollout, digital adoption has been massive. As we move ahead, that's going to become a backbone that enables the digital transformation of the nation. And I think you're not going to be following here. You're going to be leading the world. And so when you look at what brands are doing to participate in that, there are a number of ways we're working with them as they experiment. Next-gen showrooms and commerce transaction marketplaces. We're working with them on those platforms. Extended reality events. We are getting people back to in-person events. Thank you, E4M. I love coming to in-person events, and I love to be here. But we need to kind of extend that as well in how do we extend these events into the virtual world. Reward and content. CRM and loyalty still matters. In fact, in a fragmented landscape, it's even harder to grab your share of attention and keep engaging with a brand. So that's an area we're spending a lot of time focusing on. And then activations. Avatars, we in Singapore, in our Singapore office just down the corridor for me, we have a room that produces the virtual avatars. We have the green screen, the technology, and we actually produce virtual avatars. And we white-label that for partners as well. We've produced it for some companies across the region, and we don't say this is a Dentsu avatar. We produce the avatar, drive the awareness, and it's then revealed it's a brand avatar. And then we get involved with virtual product design as well. Let me just, before I get to this, there's a video I want to show you. There's a big partnership we struck between, if I can get back to the video. Yes. So we struck a partnership with Microsoft and LinkedIn to create a virtual world. And I think better than me describing this, it's better if I show you the little video. Do you have audio? Any audio? Welcome to Dentsu Next Space. I'm Neva. I'll be your tour guide to take you through our latest experiences brought together by the teams at Dentsu, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Head Office Space. At Dentsu Next Space, teams can learn about reinventing retail experiences, amplifying assistants, rapidly prototype ideas, accelerate insights, immersive learning, the power of networking and more. For the first time in the Dentsu Next Space, visitors can log in with LinkedIn, a professional community powered by more than 875 million members to grow their networks, connect with their communities, and engage their audiences. We know team collaboration is important in any business and it's no different here in the Dentsu Metaversity. Thanks to the power of Microsoft, enabling our teams across the world to upskill and learn new crafts. Using Microsoft 365 products, text-to-speech and forthcoming Microsoft designer capabilities, we've built an immersive learning experience to power up new starter inductions, employee training, and more, enabling teams anywhere to gain new skills and competencies. This floor is currently dedicated to Microsoft Viva Insights designed to help teams balance productivity and well-being in the workplace with data-driven, privacy-protected insights and recommendations. Over here, we have the Microsoft Retail Education Space, where retailers and brands can gather, learn and see demonstrations on the latest retail technologies featuring Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Cloud for Retail, and Dentsu's proprietary Shopnext Retail Innovations. Here at the Shopnext showroom, we can educate and inspire teams with hands-on demos of our Shopnext Retail Innovations, scan and know, and unbox it. Our Merkle Virtual Retail Lab features our latest retail innovations and explorations across e-commerce, media monetization, virtual shopping, and more. Imagine creating bespoke experiences for your customers, like this digital twin of a beauty bar. And because your brand is your destination, we have the ability to create experiences that integrate into your existing e-commerce website, customer profiles and loyalty programs. Hey, let's check out the Dentsu Intelligence Center, our home of future-focused thought leadership, immersive insights, and design-thinking workshops. Getting from place to place is easy on Dentsu Next Space. Now, let's take a look at the LinkedIn Lounge. The LinkedIn Lounge is a space where brands can connect through their professional LinkedIn identities to recruit, network, and engage with prospective buyers and customers. We also host industry-leading talks and thought leadership sessions on the main stage. One of my favorite spaces in the LinkedIn Lounge is the Gamified Networking Area. Down here we've got the Akosha Forest. Here, you can learn all about Akosha, powered by Microsoft, the search engine that helps create a better planet with every search. Making the switch to Akosha is the simplest way to plant trees and be climate-active every day. Did you know, together with Microsoft Advertising, Dentsu have planted over 1.5 million trees across the globe. This is just a glimpse of what we've created so far together with Microsoft and LinkedIn. With endless possibilities from the future of Web 3, the evolution of the metaverse, AI-amplified assistance, and accessible everyday tools brought together to inspire and excite brands about what's next, let's create the never-before-together. So I shared with you a few examples. As I said, it's all about experimentation at this stage. I'd like to hope that when we get together for next year, that some of the best examples anywhere around the globe that we're talking about come from here in India. So thank you very much.