“Are We There Yet?” is an entertaining yet educational content series that aims to uncover where the metaverse stands now and what’s coming in the future. It’s half talk show. Half road trip. Explaining all things metaverse—with Keke Palmer as our host in the driver's seat asking the questions that are on everyone’s mind. During each episode, we take our audience on a journey through the metaverse with Keke interviewing the most interesting creators about this new virtual world.

Understanding of the metaverse rose, reaching 42% in November 2022, as people watched over 21 million minutes of “Are We There Yet?” That’s 40 years! The campaign was one of the most successful Meta brand programs of the year in driving Meta Quest signups and reached 2.6 billion impressions. “Are We There Yet?” continues to be a go-to source on the metaverse. Even if we’re not quite there…yet.

Before Facebook rebranded to Meta in 2021, most people had never even heard of the metaverse—including the creatives working on this campaign. But the name change ignited a new conversation across every newspaper, TV station, podcast, and dinner table. Everyone was asking the same question: What is the metaverse? We set out on a journey to find the answers.

The brief for this campaign was to get our target audience, young adults, to feel excited about the possibilities of the metaverse. But the biggest challenge was how to explain the third dimension of the internet that doesn’t fully exist…yet.

Creating the aesthetic for a new dimension of the internet was one of the biggest ambitions our production company, First Avenue Machine, has ever tackled. Production transformed our set into a road trip ready for the virtual world. Set on a volume stage, Keke Palmer drove each conversation from the driver’s seat of a revamped 1988 Yugo. On LED screens behind the car, we projected animated skies created by Unreal Engine. We transformed each backdrop from concepts on paper into 3D mini-worlds complete with roads, skyscrapers, waterfalls, flamingos playing table tennis and even shoe-inspired planets in space. Each unique backdrop featured communities of avatars exploring the infinite possibilities of the metaverse and incorporated themes that tied into the conversation.

Ultimately, the show struck the perfect balance of explaining one of the buzziest tech breakthroughs of our lifetime, while also enticing people to dip their toe into the virtual world.