JOURNEY RINGS FIRST EVER OPENING BELL IN THE METAVERSE ON NASDAQ TO CELEBRATE THE LAUNCH OF NEW METAVERSE STUDIO

For the Bell Ceremony, Journey Built a Best-In-Class Metaverse Experience In Collaboration With Nasdaq and Core

Agency Announces New Key Hires and Debuts World Building Capabilities

NEW YORK, June 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Fresh out of stealth, Journey, announces the launch of its Metaverse Studio and the opening of virtual offices in the Core Metaverse, Decentraland, The Sandbox, Roblox, Fortnite Creative, RecRoom, and VR Chat. To celebrate, the company, alongside Nasdaq, rang the opening bell in the metaverse for the first time.

Together at Nasdaq, Journey CEO, Andrew Zimmerman and Journey Co-Founder and Chief Metaverse  Officer, Cathy Hackl, rang the Opening Bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square and simultaneously in the metaverse, in a virtual version built by Journey on the Core Metaverse platform. Journey was joined by some of its Metaverse Studio clients and industry partners who helped them to celebrate this historic moment. 

The Metaverse Studio is led by Journey's co-founder and Chief Metaverse Officer, Cathy Hackl. The studio works with global brands on everything from education, strategy, and roadmap creation, all the way to implementation and execution. The Studio provides companies with world building services for experiences in many gaming platforms, as well as strategic advisory for the creation and implementation of Web3 and metaverse strategies and roadmaps. The studio's main goal is to help brands and organizations make sense of the metaverse and Web3 beyond just the hype. To view the experience via livestream beginning at 9:20 AM ET, please visit: https://twitter.com/NasdaqExchange 

"Journey's Metaverse Studio is born from the need for brands to understand, enter and create long term strategies for Web3 and the metaverse," said Hackl. "We work with our global partners to build solutions including virtual worlds and experiences in the metaverse, bespoke NFTs, and virtual fashion collections. We help our clients to build the future, create successful strategies and meet fans and customers where they are now and where they are heading."

Journey's new studio has hired some of the industry's top leaders to help lead the virtual world building, metaverse and Web3 strategy, and market research initiatives. Some of the visionaries that have joined the studio include:

• Sasha Wallinger, formerly Superplastic's CMO and ex Nike, H&M, SOREL
• Lee Kebler, formerly at Nike, Intel, and will.i.am's former CTO
• Lily Snyder, editor of The Augmented Workforce and former COO of Doghead Simulations

The Studio team is composed of skilled developers, strategists, creatives, and futurists, who have pioneered this new emerging space for many years already. The Studio already works with global brands like Clinique and with organizations like the Orlando Economic Partnership, to name a few.

Through providing education, bespoke events, from IRL to URL,  and seamless integrations of people, places and things across the virtual, digital and physical, the Journey Metaverse Studio de-mystifies Web3 ecosystems, builds brand-centric virtual approaches, that meet audiences where they are and creates best-in-class Metaverse World-building solutions to ensure launch strategies that help brands stay two steps ahead of their consumers' expectations.

"Journey is harnessing best practices from physical experience design, conversational AI and metaverse/web 3.0 capabilities to meet audiences where they are going with seamless integration. We will do this by helping our clients understand how to unleash the power of their brands in the metaverse, build best-in-class voice programs and choreograph the physical to digital interplay in connected environments where they live, work, learn and play," added Andy Zimmerman, CEO of Journey.

Journey, the agency of the futurescape, enables companies to navigate to their next chapter, designing, building and running immersive experiences, at speed and scale. Backed by Growth Catalyst Partners, Journey was founded in 2022 by Andrew Zimmerman, former CEO of frog Design, with co-founders Lionel Ohayon, CEO and founder of ICRAVE, Brandon Kaplan, CEO of Skilled Creative, Craig Ayers, former COO/CFO of frog Design, and Cathy Hackl, Chief Metaverse Officer and founder of the Futures Intelligence Group. Customers include market-leading B2B and B2C clients including Clinique, Entertainment Weekly, HBO, JetBlue, Marquee Nightclub, STK, Warner Music Group, MoMA, Procter & Gamble, Wall Street Journal, Sloan Kettering, and more. 

For more information about Journey, please visit https://journey.world/ and on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/journeydotworld/mycompany/ or @journeydotworld

The Core Metaverse is a best-in-class metaverse platform for users who want to build virtual worlds and experiences, as well as those who want to explore the metaverse in stunning high-definition. In its first year, the Core Metaverse welcomed more than 3 million users and more than 50,000 experiences. Available on PC, and coming to iOS later this year, Core has become a social hub for new types of interactive experiences in the metaverse. Next week, Manticore Games is revealing the next evolution of the Core Metaverse, including exciting Web3 integration that will set a new standard for NFT utility in the metaverse.

Media Contacts:
Lynsey Rose
lynsey@virgo-pr.com

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SOURCE Journey