Text/Xing Shubo
Everything is meta-universe.
No matter how hot the outside world speculates on the concept of metaversics, there are only a few products related to the so-called metaverse concept that can be landed in hard technology at present - open space or sandbox games, VR or AR experiences, etc., and the supporting technologies around them.
An investor who pays attention to the concept of meta-universe told One Entertainment Observation (ID: yiyuguancha): "After so many years of exploration, hardware technology, content production and distribution, and business models now have a certain foundation and have the ability to monetize. However, he also said, "The entire metaverse sector is still in its infancy, and experts predict that it may take 3 years for hardware, 3 years for software, 3 years for business models, and a long process." ”
Consumer goods have not let go of the meta-universe, but their marketing is obviously "pragmatic" a lot, you can bring more goods, and it is also a good opportunity for the brand to be exposed, after all, with the new concept of fire, how much can also earn some traffic.
Whether it is virtual space, NFT or virtual idol, consumer goods are constantly seeing stitches around all aspects of the meta-universe industry chain.
Why do Nike and Crocs want to open stores in the virtual space?
Whether it is "Dreams Universe" that Sony has developed for seven years, or Meta officially announced its VR social platform "Horizon Worlds" on December 9 this year, it is a product landing on the concept of metaverse.
Tracing back to the roots, these later open worlds and sandbox games are in the ascendant, and for consumer brands, they are more willing to cooperate with their predecessors, such as the pixel sandbox game Minecraft.
Some people love to death, some people think it is ugly, the hole shoe tide brand Crocs, has always been at the forefront of marketing. They are keen to combine with youth culture and co-create ideas, such as creating heavy metal hole shoes with punk bands.
However, when Crocs announced the construction of a hole shoe paradise in Minecraft, a smell of "selling things in the metaverse world" came to the fore.
Crocs's hole shoe park in Minecraft
Minecraft is a sandbox building game that allows users to build their own buildings within the game.
After the game copyright holder Microsoft allowed brand owners to enter "Minecraft", many tide brands said that they would build a brand park in the game to attract players. Minecraft does not officially claim to be a metacosm, but it is indeed the virtual space closest to the metacosm concept under Microsoft.
Ms. Heidi Cooley, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Crocs, said: "Crocs is another highly innovative move to create a stable emotional connection with fans and consumers on a virtual stage. Like Crocs, Minecraft is a platform that encourages players to be innovative and express themselves, and it's exciting to be in this innovative player community. ”
Crocs even hosted a construction contest in Minecraft, attracting players from Canada, China, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and the United States.
"Everyone's view of architecture is different, and my view of architecture is this, does not mean that everyone needs this." B station UP master "ghost blade does not knife" believes that in the past, the brand advertising did not have personality. Now through the game, players can build different buildings to express their different opinions and create the buildings they like instead of being the same.
In the "Colorful Construct My World" competition, the well-known game Up owner serves as the judge of the competition
Invited to be a judge for the competition, "Ghost Blade No Knife" has 400,000 fans by playing Minecraft at Station B. Now by rating the game buildings built by the Minecraft players in Crocs, it has caught fire again.
From a brand perspective, Crocs and players build a virtual park in Minecraft, which can both interact with players and attract potential consumers, while the in-game "Giant Hole Shoes" building is also a free advertisement. From a marketing point of view, it is a successful creative marketing. As for whether it is a metaverse, Crocs doesn't really care, after all, the marketing purpose has been achieved.
However, there are still many manufacturers and brands that hope to achieve real sales growth through the concept of meta-universe.
Players of higher ranks really sell goods in the virtual world to earn traffic.
Compared with Minecraft, Roblox, the same type of game manufacturer, as the "first share of the meta-universe", has invited brands to enter their games with great fanfare and created their own brand paradise. Brands are also very encouraged because they can really sell.
Major League Soccer (NFL), one of the three major sports leagues in the United States, announced that it would sell baseball caps in a branded park in Roblox, while Nike would launch a virtual space on Roblox called "Nikeland" to sell clothes and shoes.
Nikeland in the Roblox game
None of these brands currently publish real sales in the virtual space.
However, according to the platform side Roblox data, its registered daily active users have reached 48 million, and the monthly revenue of these brands (August) has also soared by 100% year-on-year, which to a certain extent also shows that the brand has indeed earned real money and silver by opening stores in its games, which has made the platform revenue have actually increased, rather than relying on speculation to support the bubble stock price.
From doing creative marketing in a virtual space to starting to sell and earn revenue, this is a benign trend.
The problem is that there is uncertainty in the pursuit of new concepts and marketing by merchant brands.
Whether to rely on the concept to take advantage of marketing, or to take the concept seriously, carefully prepare the storefront, supply chain, promotional activities, and business operations, and achieve the real transaction scale and sales data.
On the surface, this is the result of the efforts of the brand side, but from the perspective of the industry, it does not depend on the brand, but on what the virtual platform will do in the future.
For example, Roblox has a brand park, but whether Roblox can become the next virtual Taobao or Amazon, is still unknown, Roblox's purpose of doing brand park is only like "Minecraft", but as a brand advertising display and existence is not known.
Consumer goods marry NFTs: collectibles or goods
On December 7, Nai Xue's tea, a new consumer brand selling milk tea, announced its entry into the "meta-universe", resulting in the launch of the NFT blind box works and the global limited 1,000 sets of NAYUKI tide play, and began to sell the surrounding area under the banner of the meta-universe to expand new business.
Coincidentally, on November 24, another tea giant also announced its entry into the meta-universe. Within a month, Michelle Ice City has continuously applied for the registration of a series of trademark contents related to the meta-universe, including "Mixue Meta-Universe", "Snow King Meta-Universe", "MIXUEMEAT", etc., and the international classification involves video, advertising sales, catering and accommodation, scientific instruments, etc.
Honey Snow Ice City is well versed in the true meaning of marketing, since the "Honey Snow Ice City Sweet Honey" brainwashing divine comedy at the beginning of the year, it is not surprising that Honey Snow Ice City has entered the marketing position of the meta-universe.
On December 20, according to public information, the traditional brand cold acid ling, its company applied for the registration of a number of trademarks such as "cold acid lingyuan universe" and "spirit universe".
Consumer brands have intensively entered the concept of meta-universe, in addition to wanting to contact consumers more, especially young consumers, in fact, because foreign brands such as beverages and clothing have taken a step ahead.
This wave of hot spots blowing from abroad to China continues.
In April, Coca-Cola and digital wearables design platform Tafi jointly launched the NFT Digital Collection, a work by Coca-Cola Friendship Box.
Partner Tafi says they're doing "something more meaningful than a fashion piece."
In May, Gucci released their first digital virtual sneaker: the Gucci Virtual 25, an iconic event. In the past, the NFT image was only an avatar or collectible, and Gucci's virtual sneakers were the first batch commodities of the virtual world that really reproduced the virtual world, and its significance was that the NFT began to detach from the high collectibles and token attributes, and became a commodity circulation, although Gucci's digital shoes were not cheap.
Gucci's first digital virtual sneaker: Gucci Virtual 25
A few months ago, German beauty and lifestyle studio Look Labs launched Cyber Eau de Parfum, the world's first digital perfume.
Miraculously, this digital NFT perfume was released with the actual product, and the official said that "its NFT artwork uses near-infrared spectroscopy to extract the perfume smell and express the odor in the form of spectral data in the NFT artwork." "The NFT is detached from the commodity attribute here and becomes a billboard for the addition of the commodity.
From tokens to digital collections to merchandise to billboards, NFTs have gone through decades of the commodity economy era in just a few months, namely commodity branding and symbolization. If the trend guru Andy Warhol were alive, he would be amazed at the speed at which consumer brands iterate. After all, when he was alive, he had painted a Coca-Cola can for 50 years without much change, and now evolution takes only a few months.
Compared with the ever-changing evolution of foreign consumer products NFT, domestic brands are relatively conservative and still stay in the stage of limited tide play and virtual avatars. Just past the Double Eleven, alien computers, light luxury Burberry, liquor Wuliangye, blankets, nature hall and other brands, joint Tmall platform have launched their own digital collections, and even the Palace Museum has launched its own digital collection NFT.
To some extent, the digital collection of consumer goods is similar, some need to be grabbed, some are randomly given away, and more are reduced to "begging heads" marketing tools like red envelopes for the New Year, and a very small number of valuable IP will become real collections circulating in the hands of players.
Netizens "Spit Brother" broadcast live on station B the process of grabbing a digital collection of the Palace Museum "You Feng Laiyi", and the process was very difficult. Designer Omega couldn't grab her favorite collection, so she directly reproduced these digital collections in the video. He complained in the video that the non-homogeneous token digital collection has uniqueness, but is essentially a bunch of pixels, if you like "big deal yourself P one". There are no famous paintings at home, and it is also counted as painting one yourself.
It can be seen that the younger generation is more likely to identify with the NFT concept, for them, the digital collection and the limited virtual avatar of the brand are as collectible as the Water Margin cards they saved when they were children. But for the NFT itself, their mentality is also very relaxed, if there is no money to buy or grab, copy and paste one is harmless, "all pixels" is an enterprise-level understanding of this new thing.
In the next era, consumer goods need to be technically minded
Whether it is the placeholder of virtual space, or the evolution of NFTs, and even more and more virtual idol customization and live streaming, the enthusiasm of consumer goods for metaverse marketing is still expanding, but whether the concept of metaverse can be gambled by them is not easy to judge at present.
"People's Daily Review" WeChat public account posted that the popularity of the meta-universe concept, behind the corresponding technical support and social life factors, is a new bottle of old wine or a new breakthrough in science and technology, before concluding may wish to "let the bullet fly for a while" .
On the one hand, the surrounding technology of the metaverse is developing and growing intensively, but the technical prospects still need to be tested by the market; on the other hand, many brands take the opportunity to make a wave of fast money and high attention, which also confuses the public opinion field, resulting in people's expectations and doubts about the concept of the metacosm.
Facebook's New VR Virtual Social Networking Horizon Worlds
Technically, this situation of coexistence of doubt and expectation is an objective law of the development of new technologies. Taking artificial intelligence as an example, artificial intelligence has developed since the 1950s, experienced three waves of development, and has also been accompanied by three troughs and doubts, each bubble has spawned a large number of companies that hang sheep's heads and sell dog meat, but also gave birth to real technological achievements and products.
The prospects are still uncertain, but these manufacturers have put out real products on the market, which is already the first step to success.
Although some reviews have argued that these products are nothing more than upgraded sandbox games, it doesn't matter, it's better to develop slower than not to do it.
The platform is set up, and the brand sings.
From the perspective of brand marketing, every new technology will give birth to a new consumer platform, and new channels and brands will be born on the platform.
As far as the Chinese market is concerned, 8848 and Good Star were born on the TV shopping platform, and Taobao brands such as Handu Clothing House and Three Squirrels were born on Taobao, and representative brands in the era of micro-business and live broadcasting were also born.
As far as the current meta-universe concept is concerned, as mentioned above, the vast majority of brands are still stuck in the stage of marketing by taking advantage of the situation, and only a small number of brands choose to cooperate with technology platforms to sell goods.
NFT blind box issued by Nesher
In the meta-universe track, consumer brands need to transform the content thinking of live broadcasting into technical thinking. This also shows that whether the next era is a meta-universe or not, the improvement of technology will not be ignored by any brand.
Live broadcasting helps brands to obtain interested people, then, the metacosm is to let the interested people invest in the virtual world created by the brand, which has become a way of life, but the vast majority of brands obviously do not have the ability to build a virtual world.
Some people have concluded that the public account allows the brand to learn to write, the short video allows the brand to learn to take photography, the live broadcast allows the brand to learn to host the control field, and the meta-universe makes the brand learn to do sandbox games.
If it really comes to the stage where consumer brands need to develop their own games and develop VR to sell goods, then the boundaries between consumer brands and technology companies will not be there.
However, consumer brands do not have to worry about their own Jiang Lang talents, which cannot meet the expectations of consumers.
2021 is about to pass, new concepts are coming soon, and there can be another wave of marketing.
After all, the metaverse has not yet warmed up, and Web 3.0 is about to roar again.