CEO of the Casa Mais agency says that the focus is on serving local companies and subsidiaries of multinationals in Europe
Fbio Costa was in a pub in Australia, in 2010, when he noticed that there was a person making videos with a different camera for the time, which captured everything in 360 degrees. So, I thought of all the potential that technology had to meet the demand of many companies, he said.
This was the start to create Casa Mais, an agency specializing in augmented reality and metaversion. Today, with more than ten years in the market, the company arrives in Europe, with the opening of an office in Lisbon, Portugal. Establishing a physical headquarters makes all the difference due to its proximity to the market, he said.
How is Casa Mais positioned today?
Although we have our products, such as augmented reality, virtual reality and metaverse, we do not have predefined products. This has a reason: the necessary customization of each campaign for each company. This is our core business. Basically, we receive the client’s demands and align with the technologies we have at our disposal, which is the main reason for the good results. Often, what the customer wants seems to be unfeasible. But, with knowledge of the technology and an expert team in programming, among other resources, we were able to reach the expected result or, not infrequently, suggest even better means and final results.
And what is the main objective?
An important point is always to understand the final objective of the project envisioned by the client. Okay, so you want virtual training for your employees, right? But you need to know if they’re really going to learn what it takes. So, we created an environment in which it can be evaluated, often in a gamified way, in 3D. But, if your objective is to fix your brand in the end consumer’s mind, we can use other tools, such as a game within your metaverse that plays with your product or service and, at the same time, activates the participant’s affective memory, in fun and immersive way. But these are just a few of the many examples. That’s exactly what makes me so passionate about it. We have many possibilities at hand, provided by the technologies we work with and by combining them.
In October, the agency will have an office in Portugal. How was this expansion projected and what will be its impact on the agency’s revenue at the end of this year?
We’ve had this expansion in focus for some time now. This is the beginning of our global expansion and we designed it with a few focuses, such as serving local companies and subsidiaries of multinationals that are there. Although we already have cases outside Brazil, establishing a physical headquarters makes all the difference, due to the proximity to the markets. Furthermore, the focus is not only on Portugal, but all of Europe. Regarding the impact, we measure that in the first year we will not have increases of more than 20% to 30%. However, there is institutional and strategic planning importance in this expansion in our planning for 2023.
Augmented reality has always been one of Casa Mais’ specialties. With the pandemic, has the demand for the tool increased? How was this period?
Yes, it always was. It was the second technology we specialized in, the first being virtual reality and later the metaverse. Regarding the pandemic, yes, we had a significant increase. But I also see this as a natural evolution, which would end up happening even without the pandemic, albeit more slowly. At the beginning of the pandemic, we created REUNI, a platform that consists of creating corporate virtual environments in 3D and with various digital tools. We created pavilions, training rooms, showrooms, meeting rooms and other gamified environments in which people could work and meet virtually with their avatars. In other words, we already had the metaversion, even before Facebook’s brand change. Throughout the pandemic, to meet the diverse demands of customers and to offer more to the market, we improved REUNI, with tools and functionalities aimed at the development of conventional tasks and interaction within the platform. As a result, when Facebook changed its name to Meta and the metaverse began to be addressed more, we already had a very advanced immersive tool. And, of course, we will continue to evolve our metaverse, following the latest in terms of technologies that are part of this new virtual world.
The agency also works with the metaverse, right? How are companies looking for this technology?
Yup. In fact, the metaverse turned out to be a happy convergence of all the technologies that we worked on over our more than 10 years of existence. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, immersive experiences in 360 degrees… in short, everything we’ve always worked on and even used in our beginning of the metaverse, which was the REUNI platform, and we continue to improve. interesting to talk about the search for this technology. It’s funny to talk to some of my clients on the platform, who did projects with us even before the term metaversion became popular, and realize that they understood that they already had this virtual space even before it was on the agenda. As was the case with clients such as GE, Porto Seguro, Colgate and Acer. At the time of the pandemic, companies did not mention, for example, that they wanted to hold an event in the metaverse, but that’s what they were doing. Their quest was for immersive solutions to improve the remote work forced by Covid-19. But, as I replied at the beginning of this interview, the situation we saw during the pandemic only anticipated one situation. So there is this quest.
a hot market?
Yes, as much as the pandemic has passed, the home office culture has changed and, apparently, so has the number of jobs in this model. At the same time, we have a new generation arriving in the job market, which gets along very well with it, which generates a perspective that people live more in the virtual world, work, have fun and meet each other. Many large companies, such as Nike, Walmart, Ambev, Ita and Lojas Renner, have already understood this and already have spaces in the metaverse. Some smaller companies too. A professional opinion of mine: paying attention to this topic is something related to the type of management of a company. If it’s a company that looks to the future, considering the workforce and future consumer markets, it understands. Now, if we talk about companies that don’t care about modernization, they’re not really looking at the metaverse. Of course, I’m not going to say that these companies can succumb just because of that, but, certainly, this lack of attention to the subject shows an administration that doesn’t modernize and that, yes, can cause failure.
Do Brazilians already understand what the metaverse is and how it will be inserted into people’s daily lives?
I think that, in fact, the question is not whether Brazilians understood this. It has much more to do with generation than nationality. Obviously, we can see a slight cultural and social difference that will impact this, but I don’t think that’s the main focus of a metaverse evolution. Considering Brazil is a developing country with problems in the distribution of technologies, I believe that the issue is one more delay in the diffusion of the metaverse in relation to developed countries. Now, the relevant fact is even the generation. See: baby boomers can even use the cell phone, but not in the same way as Generation X, which, in turn, uses it differently from millennials. And now we have Generation Z and Generation Alpha, who were born into technology and already live their virtual lives in games, creating communities and even a microeconomy, with the purchase and sale of items. It’s already almost two feet in the metaverse. Therefore, answering part about the insertion of all this in the day to day, for these generations and for the future ones, this must happen naturally.
And should it be fast?
Of course, it all depends on how the virtual environments are going to be created, the accessibility of headsets and hardware, the arrival of 5G, what the attractions will be and how people will feel comfortable within that environment. But there are technologies being created, studied and improved, focusing on these issues. I see a lot of progress in the technologies of motion tracking, of reducing the discomfort in the use of virtual reality glasses, of augmented and mixed reality (so that people can continue their tasks and needs in physical environments without leaving the metaverse completely) and of sense of presence and interaction. So, I believe that we will have a strong convergence between the social moment, the moment of the dominant generation and the evolution of technologies. Our role at Casa Mais combines the virtual world with the real world. We already have pilots that are being developed for large companies, in which the user will enter the customer’s metaversion and will be able to make a purchase, and the product will arrive at his home, in the real world. This is our main objective, always linking the two worlds (real and virtual), because we know the importance of the metaverse, but we also know the importance of the physical social relationship and eye to eye.
Since 2019, the Casa Mais agency has maintained a project called Alegria Virtual. How does this initiative work and where did the idea come from?
Alegria Virtual is about social responsibility, but I’m going to speak now as a person. The feeling and emotion of our actions is something that is priceless. Imagine, for example, a child with cancer, hospitalized in one of the GRAACC units, confined in a space, which has to undergo procedures, chemotherapy for example, all the time. Now imagine that she can, for a few moments, travel instantly to some other place and forget about everything she is going through. There’s no way words can describe the emotion I feel when I provide this to her. We also carry out actions in shelters for the elderly and children’s hospitals, among other entities. I believe many of us have been to places like this. It is very difficult not to be shaken by some situations that we see. At one point, I thought about how I could effectively help, using the knowledge I’ve acquired over the years with these immersive technologies. I came up with this idea and so we did a test day in a GRAACC unit, bringing 360-degree content and virtual reality glasses for the children to wear before they undergo chemotherapy. We soon realized that this action reduces children’s anxiety, helping with treatment. With that, we created a link with GRAACC, making monthly activations, and we opened our range to serve other needy institutions and help even more people with the use of virtual reality, augmented reality and, now, the metaverse.
