The road to the commercialization of virtual people is accelerating, for example, many brands have launched their own virtual spokespersons, virtual anchors live streaming with goods, digital collections created by digital people... And so on, and so on. However, at present, can the business monetization logic of virtual people run for a long time?
"From the perspective of cost performance, virtual person endorsement is much more cost-effective than celebrity endorsement." And they belong to the same track, and in the future, virtual people are likely to divide the market's budget for real people's endorsements," Ah Wei, a senior advertising and marketing practitioner, told Yuzi Sauce.
Nowadays, there are enough cases of virtual person endorsements that brands cannot ignore.
As far as the first half of this year is concerned, according to Ayman data statistics, the number of brands that officially announced digital spokespersons from January to May increased by four times compared with 2020. For example, in the beginning of the year, Keep created the "A-SOUL Exclusive Sports Planet", inviting five female group members to settle in and become member vitality star pushers; In June, Xu Xingyou officially announced the identity of Master Kang's iced tea tropical flavor brand spokesperson.
And popular virtual people such as liu yexi, ling, and higaga, popular bloggers in the meta-universe, have also unlocked different endorsements.
In fact, not only commercial endorsements, this year's virtual people in other business monetization areas also seem to have accelerated.
During the 6.18 period, Tmall opened the meta-universe digital show with the theme of "Mobius", and virtual people such as AYAYI and Noah wore 6 brands of virtual clothing for the catwalk. On the occasion of Qixi, Baidu AI digital person Xijiajia also launched the first "AI digital person red girl love live broadcast" with Sichuan Observation, making the virtual person live broadcast another city.
Not only that, in July this year, Baidu launched a live streaming digital person production platform to facilitate small and medium-sized businesses to make their own avatars and implement 24-hour online business.
But these signs indicate the prosperity of the industry, and also mean that in the future, every enterprise and even an individual may have a "stable, hyper-realistic, ultra-high-precision, intelligent digital anchor".
Whether virtual people can replace real people endorsement has long been a clichéd problem, and now more and more virtual people have entered the game, and gradually "inner volume" situation, virtual people business realization has entered the second half.
Whether the commercial business of virtual people can be maintained for a long time is the new focus of the current discussion.
First, what kind of virtual people does the brand like?
Security was once one of the important considerations for brands to choose virtual people to endorse, but now it is not the biggest variable affecting brand decisions.
Compared with real stars, virtual people with natural traffic value have their own sense of technology and topic attributes, and they are more likely to become marketing hotspots in the short term. More importantly, virtual people are mainly aimed at young audiences, so choosing their endorsements can empower brand rejuvenation and high-tech, high-fashion value attributes.
Overall, the current brand categories that prefer virtual endorsements are mainly concentrated in the fields of beauty, technology and food FMCG.
How to choose the right avatar endorsement is one of the main points of the brand's thinking. At present, the domestic virtual person market can be divided into four types from the form of operation, namely brand self-research, star virtual person, relatively mature virtual idol and virtual person operating on the platform.
First of all, some brands will launch self-developed digital people, such as "Huaxizi" launched by Huaxizi brand and "Qu Chenxi" of Watsons. "On the whole, brands have their own avatars in terms of safety and sustainability. However, the production and operation of virtual people require a lot of time and money, and for most enterprises, the current cost performance is not high," Ah Wei said.
Secondly, some brands are also keen to use the star image as the basis to create a virtual "double". For example, Huang Zitao has launched "Taosman", Di Li Reba has a virtual image "Di Li Leng Ba", Yi Qianxi's virtual person "Qian Meow", Gong Jun's digital person, and Gao Yuanyuan digital person.
These virtual people bind real stars to do new personality and brand operation, and once they are born, they will sit on a certain fan base, avoid the construction cost of 0-1, and appear in the form of digital people, which will bless the traffic value of a single star.
However, in essence, its core purpose is to operate the real star IP, and the virtual person carries more of the secondary amplification function of the star value, lacks autonomy, and is relatively low in the flexibility of the secondary construction.
In the endorsement market, what really moves the brand side is the mature virtual idol and the digital person who operates the platform.
First of all, the more mature virtual idols mainly include two kinds. First, it is necessary to periodically produce music, film and television, stage performance works, and stage idols with corresponding resource capabilities, such as Star Pupil, Xu Xingyou, etc.
The enterprises behind them are mainly entertainment content production companies, and generally launch works and hold stages in accordance with the logic of operating live artists, so as to obtain the profits of performance sales, endorsement authorization, and live broadcast rewards.
The other is that platform internet celebrities, such as short video technology blogger Liu Yexi and others, do not need to have talent settings, mainly produce short videos, meitu, fashion evaluation and other content.
For mature virtual idols, in addition to having traffic advantages and fan base, there are also more significant tag advantages.
On the one hand, most of the avatars have a clear image and personality at the beginning of their birth, which determines that they naturally fit some brand temperament.
For example, the virtual human plume set up with the national style girl as the basic person has a cool temperament, loves Peking Opera, and coincides with the temperament of the unified plum green tea containing the aesthetics of the oriental national style, and finally reached a cooperation. Liu Yexi, another popular talent, has a strong sense of technology, so he has a higher fit with more technological categories such as Xiaopeng Automobile and Vivo mobile phones.
On the other hand, compared with real endorsements, virtual people can create images twice, and actively adapt to brand characteristics in addition to retaining their own characteristics.
For example, during 6.18 this year, Tmall opened a meta-universe digital show with the theme of "Mobius", and 6 virtual people such as AYAYI, Zhenya, and Yuan Qian walked on the show in turn with cross-border digital costumes of Brands such as Xiaopeng Motors, Budweiser, Mei Kefei, and Off-White. In the image of the character itself, the iconic elements of the enterprise are added, and the brand is intuitively displayed by creating a virtual person.
The virtual people operated by the Internet platform, such as Ali's AYAYI and Zhenya, and Baidu's Du Xiaoxiao and Xijiajia, also performed well at the label level.
When the Baidu team talked about its two digital people, Du Xiaoxiao and Xi Jiajia, it mentioned the difference between the two in terms of image empowerment brand, "Du Xiaoxiao is a weird AI girl in personality positioning, more affinity and cuteness, warm companionship; For brands that are energetic and want to be younger. Higaga is an ultra-realistic digital human image driven, generated and created by AI, her mysterious and highly intelligent personality, focusing on AIGC, using technology to solve problems and other abilities, so it is more suitable for brands such as technology, futurism, and light luxury. ”
But more importantly, they also go further on the inherent advantages of virtual idols - they can rely on the platform and bundle the resource advantages of the platform.
According to Xiaoyu, the brand cooperates with the platform virtual person, and the platform will give the virtual person a customized plan and give certain resource support. This means that in addition to drainage and labeling empowerment, virtual people also carry the "admission ticket" function of resource links, and the core is separated from the concept of "virtual people" and lies in the competition for platform resources.
Second, rolled up, what to do?
"As the web3.0 era approaches, brands are making new layouts, and virtual people may be a ticket with a relatively low threshold."
Ai Media Consulting | According to the 2022 China Virtual Person Industry Development Research Report, the market size and core market size of the virtual idol driving industry in 2021 will be 107.49 billion yuan and 6.22 billion yuan respectively, and it is expected to reach 186.61 billion yuan and 12.08 billion yuan in 2022, respectively.
With more and more "gold diggers" entering the game, the differentiated competition in the field of virtual people has gradually become white-hot, so how to break through?
From the perspective of the flexibility and diversity of cooperation forms, the identity of digital people and brands is not limited to spokespersons, but also can be recommendation officers, brand ambassadors, etc. At the same time, "rather than the identity of cooperation, we pay more attention to how to use digital people to create more topical content together." ”
According to Baidu, the current way of cooperation between digital people and brands is in full bloom, from the most basic plane, video promotion, peripheral sales, to the recent hot digital people live broadcast, "digital people have content productivity, they can use AI technology to create new creations, such as singing, dancing, composing, painting, writing articles, etc., and release related digital collections." ”
A typical example is ThatGaga's previous cooperation with QEE Tide Play is the use of AI technology to create different Tide Play dolls.
Baidu also mentioned, "We will have customized solutions for different partners from the perspective of creativity, delivery channels, and cooperation methods." ”
Take this year's cooperation with McDonald's and Jidu, respectively. In the McDonald's collaboration, Higaga poked his head out of the street billboards, pulled out a McDonald's burger under the billboard, and conjured up a cyberpunk world behind him. In cooperation with Jidu, she participated in the test drive of her first concept car, THE ROBOT-1, as the first intelligent car owner.
The logic behind the presentation of these innovative marketing content is that there is an increasing demand for virtual person operation technology, including fluency and functionality.
At the same time, in terms of cost, Baidu told Yuzi Sauce, "The commercial market for digital people has extended to various fields, and the magnitude varies according to the mode of cooperation and the IP authorization cycle. It is also possible to cooperate on a single case, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis." That is to say, digital people have a more flexible price advantage than real stars.
In terms of channels, virtual people have also begun to change from a single online model to a landing offline. They landed on the offline screen, stepped into real life in a more eye-catching way, and eliminated the distance between them and consumers.
For example, the source of the cooperation with McDonald's originated from Yu Xijiaga smelling the fragrance of McDonald's downstairs, so on the delivery channel, Baidu and McDonald's chose a large screen with McDonald's shops under the screen. "Dalian and Chengdu are just under the two 3D big screens of McDonald's stores, plus these two places, especially Chengdu Chunxi Road, have a large flow of people, and there are many young people."
It is not enough to break the game of content and channels, starting from the value of the virtual person, the operator has also begun to pay more attention to the operation of virtual people flow, expand the popularity, and the fan operation of the virtual person is gradually mature. In the long run, the operating logic of virtual people, "in essence, like real stars, is content consumption and emotional consumption." ”
Third, in addition to the concept, what is left of the virtual person?
However, even if the virtual person layout is in full swing, its natural separation from the commercial transformation market is still impossible for the current brand to ignore.
"Virtual people have natural deficiencies in their natural ability to grow grass," Ah Wei told Yuzi Sauce.
He explains that there are three main reasons for this. First, more than 90% of virtual people, the current fan base and the middle waist above the real star there is still a gap, the purchasing power of fans is also relatively weak.
More importantly, categories such as beauty and clothing are strongly bound to real people to try on and try. "If Li Jiaqi brings goods, the audience will really see that the upper face is good-looking and easy to use, and will pay the bill." But even if virtual people try out these products, it is difficult for the audience to feel the effect of the products on real people. ”
Third, overall, virtual people lack the most important national degree in business transformation. Ai media data show that in 2022, 63.4% of Chinese virtual person enthusiasts are between the ages of 19-30, and are mainly high-income groups, concentrated in second-tier cities and above. That is to say, the virtual people cover a narrow group and lack the space for the sinking market in the later stage.
And from a technical point of view, the production of virtual people is still a relatively complex process. The production of a hyper-realistic virtual person often includes steps such as scanning, modeling, binding, rendering, etc. It is precisely because of the bottleneck of technology that virtual people have not yet fully opened up their own survival path. However, in the context of the fact that most large technology companies have technical teams to test the waters of virtual people incubation, the industrial production of virtual people is the trend of the times.
In the future, the development of the virtual person business model must not rely solely on the concept of empowerment, and virtual people are bound to break through the logic of image endorsement and bring service benefit bonuses at the marketing level.
Interactivity is one of the focuses of the future development of virtual people. "Compared with real stars, virtual everyone is stable, open 24 hours a day, and can also have countless avatars appear at different fan meetings at the same time, and even be able to have 1V1 conversations with fans."
At the same time, the "Douyin Zaizai" gameplay recently launched by Douyin is another attempt at virtual social layout. With the continuous advancement of VR/AR technology, users are expected to achieve a stronger sense of immersion and experience in the virtual world. At a time when all walks of life are completing the connection between the real world and the virtual world, virtual people are bound to have huge room for development in the virtual world.
Moreover, virtual people also have an irreplaceable proximity advantage in virtual assets. The digital collection of AI paintings created by Du Xiaoxiao has created 8700 copies sold in 24 hours, and finally achieved nearly one million. "Virtual people can wear digital products (such as clothing, shoes and bags, etc.) in a virtual space, and digital people can use digital products for collectors, play with them, not just display them."
Overall, virtual people still can't escape IP empowerment, traffic and technical logic, if the metacosm is the future, then the value of virtual people will be one of the most stable and universal areas, how brands and operators explore new business models to maximize the scale of two-way revenue will be a process of continuous exploration.
Author:Tea Xiaobai; Public number: Marketing Yuzi sauce (ID: marketingyuzijiang)
Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lZ_F3ZkWgxFObI9Z0QwtkQ
This article is published by @Marketing Entertainment Sauce with permission from Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol
The views of this article only represent the author himself, everyone is a product manager platform only provides information storage space services.