The Future of Marketing (B)
For a good experience, impression matters. How brand marketing is adapting to the upcoming Metaverse.
*This article is continued from the previous article, The Future of Marketing (A). If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend you to go with this one first.*
Gucci Garden @ Roblox
Gucci conducted its first digital showcase on Roblox, the Gucci Garden experience. The virtual space was created in collaboration with Rook Vanguard, a Roblox creator; was open on the platform for two weeks since May 17th of 2021. When players enter, their avatars become a neutral mannequin, free of gender or age. These avatars are able to wander around the space where Gucci’s various curated digital experience — expressing their design philosophy and brand legacy — are showcased; can also purchase and wear exclusive virtual items directly.
Burberry — B Bounce, Ratberry, B Surf
Burberry introduced a series of video games online — B Bounce, Ratberry, and B Surf. These games were made to acknowledge the Burberry brand to the wider public and showcase its apparels.
B Bounce is the first video game it launched in 2019. Burberry’s Baby deer character — POP — wears multiple collections of Burberry clothings; players are able to select their preferred choice, and control POP throughout the game. Then it launched Ratberry, the successor of B Bounce, as part of its 2020 Lunar New Year Program. Players bounce Ratberry upwards, aiming to get as high as possible, collecting gold coins and catching Chinese lanterns along the way. B Surf is the third game released, for introducing the TB Summer Monogram apparel collection. Players control POP on a Burberry surfboard to win the race.
More from the game itself, there were special rewards in the game, which provided players a chance to win a lottery for limited-edition prizes — either physically or virtually.
Balenciaga — Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow
Balenciaga released its Fall 2021 collection as a form of a video game. The showcase, Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow, was created in collaboration with Dimension Studios. Here, players walk through different “levels (zones),” following a path of arrows displayed on the floor. On the path, 3D models of Balenciaga’s apparel collection — created via the volumetric video capture technology of Dimension Studios — are displayed. Players are able to experience various curations in virtual spaces full of diversity and uniqueness.
Ralph Lauren — Polo Player AR @ Snapchat
For the 2020 holidays, Ralph Lauren introduced its Polo Player and Pony logo scanner experience using Snap’s AR technology. Consumers can scan the logo, using Snapchat’s camera, wherever they find it — on a shirt, website, or shopping bag. Then, an AR animation of Ralph Lauren’s 3D logo appears with gift boxes and red ribbons. A photo taken in the AR experience can be shared with friends.
OnePlus — Nord AR Launch
On July 21st of 2020, OnePlus demonstrated its Nord smartphone via an AR launch. When users install the OnePlus Nord AR app and activates their cameras to scan a large-flat surface, such as a desk, the keynote presentation stage and the infographics appear as AR. More from this, participants also could create their own avatars to share their reactions in real time.
IKEA — @ Harajuku w. Imma
Japan’s first IKEA store opened in the shopping mall, WITH HARAJUKU. On September 2020, IKEA showcased a home life of a Japanese virtual model, Imma, with the main intention to demonstrate that a home can be much more. For three days, LED screens were displayed on two floors behind the IKEA Harajuku window, showing her time in home. Her home life was perfectly mirrored on social media in real time.
If reality was a video game, it would go bankrupt without the feature for “consumption.” Reality is tough, boring, and mostly repetitive. Consumption, simply the buying of things, or the willingness and ability to buy a necessary or desired product, enables people to discover “joy” in life. This joy, can either come from making small changes in life, or setting an optimal depiction of a life an individual is craving for. And these all end at buying products. People believe a demand for something ultimately results in an enhanced living standard or a happier life. Alas, as a result, consumption became an inseparable feature that takes the major rudimental portion of an individual’s life.
Consumerism provoked overproduction and overconsumption; structured the online space to be swarmed with unwanted advertisement. It’s not the point that consumerism should be overcome at all costs. Consumption is the key engine functioning the economy. The argument is about restructuring the consumer ecosystem more efficient, from arranging the use of resources to transforming advertisement and marketing.
The prominent benefit the internet has brought us is the ubiquitous access to a platform. This made companies to load ads wherever the public gathered, in any case. Platforms hold numerous outcomes of marketing, produced by countless companies. Now it’s time for companies to realize they can build up its own platform — either independently or through collaboration. The infrastructure that brings them to the Metaverse is already there.
Part A concluded with the note that experience is the key to future advertisement and marketing. The examples provided above illustrates how different brands/companies of fashion, technology, and lifestyle provide experience to the people through the integration with the Metaverse, adapting to the upcoming future.
Advertisements are produced relying on the purpose to attract ad viewers to become consumers. Experiences should not be made on this objective. The common aspect of the examples given above is, that experiences are equivalently provided to the people, even if they’re not their consumers. Experiences should be built for publicizing the brand, wide spreading its identity to the public. Those who loved it, will become potential and ultimate consumers; those who didn’t enjoyed, will not. What fundamentally matters to build a “good” experience, are the scales representing: how much users enjoyed or loved it, and how much it will remain in their memories.
For a good experience, IMPRESSION matters.
The transformation of advertisement and marketing isn’t just about reaching sales of physical goods at the end of the day. Virtual goods also possess high relevancy in the future Metaverse ecosystem. In the future economy, monetary transactions for digital products in the Metaverse will take high proportion. We purchase music, movies, and e-books already online, because the technology has allowed us to. Then why not for digital clothes and furnitures in the future? Clothes that can be worn, furnitures that can be placed in the digital world. As a matter of fact, people are animals of expression.
Experience can further be developed, more from the original idea of brand marketing. To the entire industry system. As mentioned earlier, consumerism led overproduction, making people waste resources. More are produced than what people actually buy. Or more are consumed than what people are actually able to afford. Though, this notion will be dealt in the future, as a new topic.
For any areas of industry, experiences are able to be curated, even if that’s not mainly linked with the industry’s product itself. The only matter is widely acknowledging the public of the brand’s existence and the company’s idea, with deeply-touching impression. Case in point, Tesla sold limited edition Tesla Tequilas. Why would an EV manufacturer sell beverages in a hand-blown lightning-shaped glass bottle?
Though, it is challenging to make an immediate shift to the digital world. Consider the adaption as a parallel changeover, optimizing both approaches of marketing; not immediately making alterations to a certain side. Right at the moment, experiences doesn’t need to take place in the digital world at all. Experiences curated in the physical world are also applicable. Still, adaption to the digital world is necessary in the future; changes should be made at the end of the day.
Want to join the exciting journey of discovery into the Metaverse? Let me know what you think in the comments section. Connect with me on Twitter and follow up my Medium profile @yijisuk for the latest article.
