Advertising and marketing have found their way into every aspect of public life. Marketers ensure the efficacy of their messaging through consistency and flair. Simply put, it is the practice of creating memorable material, and then repeating it enough times until it sticks in the public consciousness.
The advent of the internet has led to this approach being put to use in drastically different ways than seen in the days of print media supremacy. With virtually inexhaustible digital space, marketing and advertising operations of predominant brands have been besieged by a huge influx of competitors, making the fight for market share a matter of catching and retaining customer’s attention.
In fact, the shift towards an attention-based economy has forced every brick and mortar business to have an online presence. This adoption of digital spaces as bastions of marketing is expected to continue into the metaverse. Touted as the successor of the internet, the metaverse has already started to garner attention through the success of video games like Fortnite and platforms like Roblox. Spurred on by the increase in sales of VR headsets, the biggest tech companies in the world are racing to get the title of the metaverse maker.
Like any other digital ecosystem, the metaverse holds the potential for integrating marketing and advertising avenues with its core functionality of community creation. Moving away from the typical graphic-and-copy ads, ads in the metaverse can facilitate two-way engagement between brands and customers like never before. Interactive, immersive and portable, a VR-powered metaverse will create entirely new channels of attracting and retaining audiences.
Here are the three big shifts we foresee in the future of the metaverse:
1. Merchandising through Metaverse NFTs
The desire to own unique items is an inherently human tendency. In the last few decades, however, video games and social media have demonstrated that the desire to hoard is not limited to owning tangible goods; the distinction between online and offline life has thinned enough for people to become attached to their digital belongings just as much as they are to physical assets.
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People’s interest in owning intangible digital goods has reached even bigger heights with the launch of NFTs and multi-million dollar purchases of digital art. Many big brands are taking note of this shift in the consumer psyche, and creating digital assets for their customers on popular metaverse platforms. One such brand is Stella Artois, an international beer brand that is famous for its carefully curated brand image tying into sports and derby racing. To reach out to a younger and tech-savvy audience, the brand collaborated with ZED RUN (an NFT based horse breeding and derby virtual video game) to launch 50 new digital horse breeds, skins and jerseys in tandem with a customized racecourse inspired by their “Life Artois” campaign.
Through immersive digital assets, brands in the metaverse can build upon their image to provide curated experiences for the benefit of a loyal customer base. This focus on engagement will earn them organic brand ambassadors, which will help in building the buzz to attract an entirely new segment of buyers.
2. Interactive Gamified Marketing
The god-like ability to create an entirely new world as per one’s creative vision is what sets metaverse and virtual reality apart from any other type of technology in the public domain. Complete freedom opens avenues for businesses to collaborate with creators to make unique experiential marketing campaigns on these platforms. The present norm of using banner ads – which are often seen as intrusive and annoying – is likely to fall out of favour as newer and gamified alternatives become available.
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By virtue of the medium, gamification is intrinsic to the metaverse. Marketing in the metaverse is imbued with an added degree of engagement from the get go, which can then be ramped up further through the ingenuity of the creator. One of the biggest names in fashion, Gucci, has begun pushing the envelope on metaverse marketing with the Gucci Garden launch on Roblox to commemorate the brand’s 100th-anniversary.
Showcasing collections from the years past in a set of virtual rooms, Gucci Garden was launched on May 17th as a limited-time event. Each room was dedicated to a specific collection; users were invited to take a virtual stroll through the Garden via avatars that resembled white mannequins, which took on colours and patterns inspired by the room they were visiting. This dynamic display of the brand’s legacy as well as its considerable influence on the fashion industry cemented the global giant’s commitment to trendsetting.
3. Future of Social Media Marketing
Social media platforms have transformed the way people interact with their peers, and metaverse platforms are the natural extension of these interactions. Large-scale public events are slowly shifting from being a hybrid of offline performance and online broadcasting to completely embracing virtual events. Far from simply transforming events into virtual games to fit a mould, creators around the world are tailoring virtual environments to user’s needs.
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One of the most unique marketing gimmicks of recent years, rapper Travis Scott hosted an experiential concert on Fortnite in April of 2020 to release his latest album. More than 12.3 million players took part in the concert from all over the world, setting a record for the most concurrent number of players in-game. Apart from being one of the most attended virtual events of all times, the album drop was accompanied by limited edition player skins and items that garnered massive sales for Epic Games, the owner of Fortnite.
Even Warner Bros. joined the metaverse marketing bandwagon by releasing the trailer of Tenet via an in-game drive-through cinema location in Fortnite, which viewers could enjoy with their friends while they played. With social interactions starting to rely on virtual platforms to facilitate them, interactive marketing spaces can be naturally added to the metaverse – much like pop-up stores and brand events in real life.
Metaverse | We have reached the next frontier
With the highly evident and ever increasing potential of marketing in the metaverse being explored by many companies across the world, the amount of dollars and hours going into developing the technology are staggering. Most tech giants are working towards becoming the first metaverse company; the technology is past its nascent stage and fast approaching the critical threshold of becoming a mainstay like smartphones and PCs. Beyond the efforts of FAANG, organizations across the world must start planning and gaining expertise in metaverse marketing or accept missing out on the first movers’ advantage.
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Read more about what the Metaverse has to offer social meda influencers here https://sellshoutouts.com/2022/01/29/what-opportunities-does-metaverse-bring-to-influencer-marketing/
Metaverse is going to be the Future!
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