Artificial intelligence and metaverse activations are currently changing the landscape of digital marketing in fashion, beauty, automobiles, travel and home. These two technologies are attracting and engaging high net worth consumers in new and exciting ways - and encouraging their purchases.

And since digital marketing has been my business since 2008, I have been very active in educating the interior designers I know - and the wider home related and interior design industries - on all things virtual.

This post is a summary of my own activity with respect to speaking, writing and being interviewed about AI and metaverse activations for the interior design and home related industries. I hope by reading it, that you will click every link so you can learn all you can from me - for free.

I believe it’s imperative for all in the home related industries to learn this information so we can compete effectively in years to come with the fashion, beauty, tech, auto and travel and jewelry industries who are already far ahead of our industry in incorporating these two technologies to drive revenue and brand loyalty via their digital marketing activities.

I’m also writing this for the historical record, and I hope [when I’m gone] that one of you reading this post will have saved it and will share it so this information will not be lost.

Now, back to the beginning…

My very first interest in metaverse activations was when metaverse activations were simply called “virtual worlds.” I got interested in the virtual world of Second Life in 2008 and approached Rob Sligh, then the CEO of Sligh Furniture, to do a product development experiment with me in that virtual world. He agreed.

At the time, in 2008, I was writing the online Retail Ideas column for Furniture Today magazine, and this is the article that explains what we did. As you will see, the byline says anonymous now, but scroll to the bottom and you will see my name [ and my old company name ] as the author of this article.

https://www.furnituretoday.com/business-news/sligh-second-life/

Fast forward 12 years… to 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic.

At that time, one of my company’s clients was Gary Pettitt, the CEO of indoor/outdoor furniture manufacturer, Seasonal Living. Savour Partnership was advising Seasonal Living on digital strategy and we were also running almost all of Seasonal Living’s outbound marketing as well as writing and producing Seasonal Living’s now well known lifestyle magazine, Seasonal Living Magazine, which was an idea I had pitched to Gary back in the Spring of 2018.

In early 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, when noone could go to tradeshows, Gary had the brilliant idea to do a virtual designer showhouse, the first one to ever be designed ONLY in the virtual world, but situated on a real piece of property in Malibu, CA.

Keep in mind, this Showhouse is NOT a metaverse activation. Why? Because we cannot go inside of it, all together, as our avatars, and interact with each other. However, it is viewable in 3D and it’s still the only one - even to this day - to include augmented reality.

I was co-principal in this with Gary and it was a fabulous collaboration between the 15 sponsoring brands and 11 interior designers that Gary and I onboarded to participate.

We hired Luann Nigara to host the virtual VIP kickoff party for us on Dec.3rd, 2020 and our international media sponsor was ISSUU magazine.

Luann hosted a special podcast with Gary and I which you can listen to here:

https://luannnigara.com/611-seasonal-living-an-interior-design-virtual-showhouse-like-no-other/

and if you’d like to watch the 30 minutes of the kickoff party, where Luann takes the audience through the virtual showhouse, you can watch that on this post written by Annilee Waterman, [ my current workshop co-host] who designed the architecture of the virtual showhouse for us:

http://designerannilee.com/seasonal-living-magazine-luxury-virtual-designer-showhouse/

The showhouse, while not a metaverse activation, as I mentioned above, COULD become a metaverse activation. I’d love to see that happen. However, doing the showhouse gave rise to this roundtable discussion I moderated which was filmed in the Jaipur Living showroom at #HPMKT in Spring of 2022.

Jaipur Living, one of the 15 brands who sponsored the Showhouse ] had Gary, myself, and 3 of the virtual showhouse’s designers [ Arianne Bellizaire, principal of Arianne Bellizaire Interiors, Robin Baron [ who was also a sponsor ] , principal of Robin Baron Design and Laura Muller, principal of Four Point Design Build,] discuss going from virtual showhouses into metaverse activations.

You can watch our conversation below on Jaipur Living’s YouTube channel.

And here’s a blog post Laura Muller wrote after she participated in this discussion, which contains an excellent wrap up and her thoughts:

https://fourpointdesignbuild.com/the-future-of-design-from-virtual-showhouses-to-the-metaverse/

An exterior view of Seasonal Living Magazine’s Virtual Showhouse, as rendered by Annilee Waterman.

To find out more about the history of the Showhouse, see this post on my blog:

The Backstory: https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog/2020/9/27/seasonal-living-magazines-virtual-designer-showhouse-the-backstory-

One of the many gorgeous stills taken from inside the Showhouse is shown below. This room was designed by Michelle Jennings-Wiebe, in partnership with one of our sponsors, Universal Furniture. A few of the pieces in this room, and throughout the Showhouse, can be seen in your own homes via the augmented reality QR codes inside the showhouse link.

Watch this video that Michelle and her team created after they were asked to participate.

The 3D renderings of the over 700 pieces of furniture in the Showhouse were done by Sarah Durnez in collaboration with Annilee Waterman and Lauren Jenkins Brantley.

And here you can listen to Universal Furniture’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, Neil McKenzie, interview Michelle about her business and her experience working on her virtual showhouse room.

https://www.universalfurniture.com/podcast?postalcode=33607&fbclid=IwAR04vSf-oNmpfjqenZzLWHfKIF21rMXQgwYtC5u1_TykwFj9tWoDRT--GCI

Fast forward to 2022 when interest in all things metaverse really picked up steam…

In February of 2022, I was invited to participate in this talk in Modenus Media’s Design Hounds lounge at the National Kitchen and Bath Show with my long time friend, Jaime Derringer - with Katye McGregor Bennett moderating.

Jaime also has a huge interest in all things metaverse and non-fungible tokens.

Here’s a snapshot of me talking with Katye, taken by one of the attendees, who shared it in their IG Story.

Jaime and I have both been interviewed for several magazine articles about this. The image below shows me holding a copy of the October 2022 issue of Home Accents Today, where Jaime and I were both interviewed about the metaverse and what it means for our industry. Unfortunately, the link to this article is no longer available as HAT changed to a new format at the end of last year.

Also last year, in 2022, Furniture Today decided to host an inaugural summit on INNOVATION, and I was asked to keynote their first one on the subject of the metaverse. This was very well attended by major manufacturers like Ethan Allen and major retailers like FurnitureLandSouth

This year, their INNOVATION event will be held on AI at Las Vegas Market in July. Make sure to sign up for it if you are attending #LVMKT!

I wrote a post summarizing that keynote speaking experience + 5 misconceptions about metaverse activations. Here’s that post and the image below is from that post.

https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog/2022/9/13/5-misconceptions-about-the-metaverse-and-the-innovation-event

Here’s Furniture Today’s wrap up post for their audience

https://www.designerstoday.com/news/industry-news/5-stats-that-show-how-the-netaverse-is-translating-to-real-life-dollars/

And here’s an interview FT did with Annilee about why retailers should be thinking about metaverse activations to increase sales.

https://www.furnituretoday.com/technology/heres-why-every-furniture-retailer-should-be-thinking-about-using-the-metaverse-to-increase-sales/

I ended 2022 being interviewed about the metaverse for this article in Furniture, Lighting and Decor Magazine:

https://www.mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=44489&i=769896&p=18&ver=html5

Fast forward to January 2023….where I keynoted The Women’s Leadership Conference for The International Surfaces Event in Las Vegas - on the metaverse.

I loved educating a brand new segment of the industry on the possibilities for revenue generation with metaverse activations.

In May of 2023, I was interviewed, along with KB Homes’ Chief Marketing Officer, Amit Desai, Digby co-founder Andrew Lane, and Annilee Waterman by Forbes contributor, Jamie Gold, about the metaverse and its possibilities in this excellent article she wrote for Kitchen and Bath Design News Magazine.

https://www.kitchenbathdesign.com/the-metaverse-and-new-possibilities/

Concurrently with my national speaking on these topics, I decided - in September of 2022 - to start hosting online workshops for interior designers with Annilee on metaverse activations.

This year, 2023, we’ve also added AI to our workshop mix, since I’ve been very active in learning Midjourney and discussing the pros and cons of artificial intelligence with members of my private Facebook community for interior designers, Design Wealth - a very active private group of 1500+ of North America’s top interior designers that I’ve had daily conversations with for 7 years now.

Our workshops are held every month. We limit them to 25 participants and they are not recorded. We’d love for you - if you are a designer, manufacturer or retailer in a home related industry - to join us for one!

Below is an image of our July 23 workshop participants. You can find and register for our monthly workshops on this link:

https://savourpartnership.com/workshops

Here is a lovely testimonial we received from Heather Jennings, principal of Blackwell and Jennings, about our July 2023 workshop. Follow Heather on Instagram here to see some of her beautiful AI images.

Recently, our June 2023 workshop attendees, Autumn Pochiro, principal of Autumn Dawn Design, had a room she created with Midjourney featured as the lead image in this Business of Home article about how designers are using AI.

She gave us a nice shoutout about our workshop, which we appreciated. If you see this > thank you, Autumn!

https://businessofhome.com/articles/designers-put-ai-to-work

For the May 2023 issue of Furniture, Lighting and Decor magazine, I was interviewed about artificial intelligence and its implications for the interior design and home furnishings industries.

https://www.furniturelightingdecor.com/digital-bulletin-it-real-or-it-ai

Listen to Joann Kandrac’s and Kelly Kole’s excellent INSIDE DESIGN podcast, where they invited me to discuss an Intro To AI For Designers with them.

It’s 30 minutes and we had a great discussion which I hope everyone seeing this post will listen to when they have the time by clicking the red arrow below.

If you’d like, you can also read more about our discussion by going to this post on their website here:

https://www.kandrac-kole.com/podcasts/episode-159-intro-to-ai-with-guest-leslie-carothers

I’ve also written two posts on Midjourney AI, one of which has been widely reshared as it is a tutorial for interior designers [ and interested others ] on exactly how to get started using Midjourney AI, with step by step instructions.

Here’s that post:

https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog/2023/3/23/how-to-use-midjourney-ai-a-tutorial-for-interior-designers

and here’s my 2nd post on How To Use Midjourney AI For Product Development

https://www.savourpartnership.com/blog/2023/4/6/midjourney-for-furniture-ideation

NOTE:
I want to thank Chelsie Butler, Editor In Chief of Kitchen and Bath Business Magazine, the official magazine of the National Kitchen and Bath Association, for asking me if she could repurpose my AI tutorial post for her own readers, most of which are in the kitchen and bath industry, which she did here:

https://www.kbbonline.com/news/blog/a-midjourney-ai-tutorial-for-designers/

So what does the future hold?

I am thrilled to have been asked by luxury kitchen, bath and lifestyle brand, Thompson [ on IG as @thompsontraders ] to partner with them on the world’s first AI designed sink. I conceptualized this sink through my text prompts to Midjourney’ s artificial intelligence bot and Thompson’s copper artisans are producing it for debut in Thompson’s exhibitor space at the National Kitchen and Bath show in Las Vegas in February.

It is available for pre-orders now through Thompson, for those who want to be first in line for production [ which is an approximately 4-5 month process ], although no money is being accepted until the final sink is shown.

If you are a designer reading this, you can also use Midjourney for your own sink, bathtub, vanity, range hood or other concept made of copper and then submit it to for a quote through Thompson’s Tailor Made portal.

If you’d like to read the backstory on how this collaboration between myself and Thompson came to be, click here.

Recently, I was interviewed for this article on using Midjourney in interior design for Livabl, North America’s most comprehensive and accurate platform for new home construction listings.

You can read the entire article here.

I am also working very hard to help educate everyone in the home related industries in understanding how important it is that we - in the home industries - are not left behind when it comes to using these new technologies to move our businesses powerfully forward in connecting with new generations of consumers who are digital first natives.

Already, brands in the fashion and beauty industries are way, way, way out in front of home related industries in using metaverse activations to make millions of dollars and to attract brand loyalty and create international buzz amongst younger, high net worth consumers.

These brands understand the power of gaming and how important games are within metaverse activations to developing community and creating purchasing opportunities with digital first natives.

As for my own business?

What I hope is that all of you reading this in the home related industries will:

1. Take our workshops so you have a framework of understanding. Again, find them on this link:

https://savourpartnership.com/workshops

2. Hire me to speak to your audience about metaverse activations and/or AI for your next event, national training opportunity or tradeshow. Contact me here.

3. Follow me on Linked In, where I share extensively on these two topics:

https://linkedin.com/in/lesliecarothers

4. Consider, if it’s in the realm of possibilities for your home related brand, hiring metaverse architect and my workshop co-host, Annilee Waterman, to build out a metaverse activation for your brand. Contact Annilee here.

5. Lastly, please share this post with anyone you may know in your own circles who would find the information I’ve shared in all of these talks, articles and interviews useful.

Sharing this post will be the #1 way we can work together to help inform and educate everyone in the home related industries about what’s coming in the years ahead with respect to digital marketing and creatively connecting with and engaging our future customers and clients.

Thank you,

Leslie Carothers
Principal, Savour Partnership

Named One of Home Furnishing Business Magazine’s Top 40 Most Inspiring Women In Home
Winner of Designers Today Magazine’s 2022 Readers Ranking Award for Best PR and Marketing Agency

https://instagram.com/lesliemcarothers