Unbox: What Can Brands Learn From Paris Hilton Bringing Her Empire to The Metaverse?

Have you ever wondered how the metaverse fits into the strategy of the world’s most iconic brands and celebrities? In this edition of our Unbox series, we sat down with Cynthia Miller, Director of web3 & Metaverse at 11:11 Media, to explore how Paris Hilton brought her empire into The Sandbox with Parisland and Cryptoween, experiences accumulating a total of 2.4M quests completed by over 105K+ unique players. Each provided “eye-opening” learnings that the team is taking with them moving forward.

Scaling Novel Cultural Moments on Valentine’s Day & Halloween Through New Forms of Entertainment

In 2021, Paris founded 11:11 Media, a global, next-generation entertainment company dedicated to elevating creators, brands, and IP through the power of storytelling. The team is at the forefront of innovation and works with the biggest brands in the world across lifestyle, fashion, beauty, travel, consumer products, web3, and more.

“11:11 is always thinking about new entertainment, content, products, and experiences. When it comes to web3, we’re born futurists that are exceptional at creating impactful experiences that push pop culture forward.”

Paris and her team view the biggest opportunity in web3 as the possibility of telling stories through the fusion of IP, entertainment, and self-expression in emerging platforms. To achieve their vision of activating in the metaverse, they knew that they needed a platform that provided the creative flexibility to bring even their most innovative ideas to life.

“Our team is positioned at the center of pop culture, so when we looked at the possibilities of the metaverse, our guiding mission became to connect community and commerce across a broad array of businesses. The Sandbox really fits into that broader strategy; we’re able to build innovative experiences for Paris’s fanbase that encourage everyone to have fun in this brave new world. We know that our explorations here are really innovating the future of how we connect with our fans.”

When they considered available options, The Sandbox stood out because it catered to their needs for creativity and also already featured high-quality, forward-thinking brands and celebrities that could become future collaborators in the virtual ecosystem.

Leveraging The Sandbox and all its creative tools, 11:11 Media has already been able to pioneer a brand new form of entertainment; one that sees cultural moments IRL tied to live activations hosted in the metaverse, like their Halloween-themed Cryptoween event and Valentine’s Day-themed Parisland that launched last year.

“There was this moment when people could view Paris’s iconic Halloween outfits IRL on social media and could also experience them on her avatars in the virtual world. For us, it was an amazing glimpse into how you can build experiences in parallel and have what happens IRL be reflected in the metaverse.

Through these experiences, Paris’s fanbase is able to interact with her in more meaningful ways than ever before. While very few people in the world ever get to party with Paris at a Halloween event (leaving everyone else to live vicariously through social media posts), anyone was able to connect with her brand through Cryptoween and celebrate the special day in a more fun, immersive experience.

Growing the Fan Base with an Engaged & Active Community

11:11 entered The Sandbox with a clear objective of growing Paris’ audience while capturing learnings for future activations.

“We wanted to grow our audience, and I think what’s been remarkable with her recent Parisland experience in February for Valentine’s Day was seeing the influx of new users and new account sign-ups directly because of that. Paris sees herself as a bridge between web2 and web3, so growing our audience while showcasing the magic of web3 has been really important. We all want to help bring more people into web3 and enable them to experience its wonders.”

What they found is that, by joining The Sandbox, they’ve been able to form a partnership with the community that actively participates in the experiences. That relationship has allowed the team to freely experiment in the world of web3 and receive direct, free-flowing feedback in real-time that then guides the process of improving experiences.

Paris Hilton Valentine’s day experience had an incredible 99.99% quest completion rate, and we recorded an average play time per user of 25 minutes. It’s very eye-opening for us. If we look at social media, I don’t know how people would spend 25 minutes looking at a single piece of content. But when we create a gamified experience, we’re able to tell a story, immerse fans into a world, and drive fun engagement.”

With great success and an abundance of experience now under their belts, 11:11 Media is focused on using their learnings to continue to drive innovation forward. They’ve launched unique cultural moments like Cryptoween and Parisland, now it’s all about future audience growth and retention — finding new ways to tell the Paris story, reward loyal fans, and create pop culture entertainment experiences.

The Next Chapter of Paris’s Web3 Story Places Community at the Focal Point

Moving forward, 11:11 Media is continuing on as storytelling innovators driving change forward with fresh ideas. Community will be a paramount priority.

The team is constantly thinking about how to “be web3 first” and reward their community in ways that resonate with the web3 audience, like bringing them BTS with alpha leaks. They’re running unique tests and asking questions to find what their community values and finds interesting. Answers to those questions guide how the team serves up new content and experiences that resonate.

With deeper activations directly linking Paris to fans through digital ownership and rewards coming to The Sandbox, there’s an exciting era of metaverse exploration ahead for everyone.