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The rise of virtual digital humans has brought new marketing opportunities to enterprises, but inherent problems such as serious homogenization and difficulty in establishing emotional connections have hindered the development of virtual digital human marketing. This paper focuses on the key question of "how to make virtual digital humans come alive", and proposes a way to overcome the inherent disadvantages of virtual digital humans by creating an emotional narrative that transforms technological products into cultural products. The proposal of this path will help enterprises find the way forward in the wave of virtual digital humans.
Text / Liu Qian, Xu Zhennan, Liu Guilin
In April 2021, an internet celebrity named Lil Miquela posted his first photo on Instagram, and quickly went viral through continuous updates and promotions. As of 2023, Lil Mikla has nearly 3 million followers on Instagram. In addition to his social media presence, Lil Mikla has also collaborated with internationally renowned brands such as Chanel, Suburi, CK, and more. According to CCTV, Lil Mikla's annual income in 2019 was as high as 76 million yuan. With Lil Mikla's rise to fame, there has been a lot of discussion about her on the Internet, the biggest of which is "whether Lil Mikla is a real person". Starting with Lil Mikla's recognition of his identity as a virtual human, the new concept of virtual digital humans is officially presented to consumers and marketers.
In recent years, more and more businesses have begun to adopt virtual digital humans as brand ambassadors, which has become an emerging trend in digital marketing. Although the virtual digital human originated in the overseas market, thanks to the maturity of the domestic technology industry and the high acceptance of technology by consumers, the virtual digital human industry in mainland China has developed rapidly in recent years, showing a trend of catching up and surpassing. According to iiMedia Research, the virtual human industry has maintained a steady growth trend, and the market size and core market size of China's virtual human industry will be 186.61 billion yuan and 12.08 billion yuan respectively in 2022, and it is expected to reach 640.27 billion yuan and 48.06 billion yuan in 2025, respectively. With the rapid growth of the overall scale of the market, related companies have sprung up. According to the 2022 China Virtual Digital Human Influence Index Report released by the Research Center of Communication University of China, as of 2022, there are more than 587,000 virtual digital human-related enterprises in mainland China, of which 278,000 were established in 2022, an increase of 41.4% over 2021.
However, the survival rate of virtual digital human-related companies remains at a low level. Although a large number of virtual digital humans are created every year, only a very small number of them can be recognized and loved by the public, and bring corresponding commercial benefits to their developers. According to the self-media "Tech Planet", which focuses on the research of the metaverse, there are more and more virtual idols that have been "born" in recent years, but there are only a handful of them that are truly "alive or popular" and have sustainable vitality. With the intensification of competition in the industry and the exhaustion of dividends brought by the "freshness" of virtual digital humans, how to make the well-built virtual digital humans "live" has become an unavoidable problem for enterprises chasing on the virtual digital human track.
The key to the popularity of virtual digital humans and their ability to maintain continuous attraction and influence on consumers is to transform from technical products to cultural products, which can be called the personal branding of virtual digital humans. This article hopes to answer three questions from the perspective of enterprises: how to build a virtual digital human personal brand through content design and output? What are the characteristics of content that can effectively create a virtual digital human's personal brand? What are the indispensable back-end decision-making links in the personal branding of virtual digital humans? Based on the analysis of the practice of enterprise virtual digital humans in the context of digital marketing and the consumption practices of consumers in the context of technology and culture, this paper will elaborate the strategy of building a personal brand of virtual digital humans with emotional narratives, so as to provide feasible ideas for enterprises to avoid homogenization in virtual digital human marketing and realize deep connection with consumers.
Virtual digital humans from the perspective of digital marketing
Virtual digital human is a kind of virtual image, realized through computer animation, motion capture, virtual reality and other technologies, existing in the non-physical world in the form of pictures, videos, live broadcasts, etc., with functional or identity anthropomorphic characteristics. The "virtual" aspect of virtual digital humans lies in the fact that it is essentially a digital presentation that relies on multiple technologies, while the "human" side is manifested in the fact that this digital presentation can achieve the effect of being similar to human beings and interacting with the real world through personality shaping or functional imitation.
Digital humans and virtual humans are concepts that are highly related to virtual digital humans but have fundamentally different concepts. Digital human is the most extensive concept, encompassing all the characters that exist in the digital world. Virtual humans are components of digital humans that exist in the virtual world, and their identities are also virtual. Virtual digital humans are a narrower scope and are emerging products with the development of virtual technology and metaverse technology, specifically referring to those digital images that exist in the virtual world and have human characteristics or human abilities.
The advantages of technology and the novelty of the image make virtual digital humans a hot spot in current business applications, especially in digital marketing practice. As can be seen from Table 1, virtual digital humans are mainly divided into two categories: functional and identity, the former mainly relies on technical advantages to replace traditional labor to improve the efficiency of enterprise services, and the latter stimulates consumers by virtue of the novelty of identity and attributes.
Mike Seymour and others believe that digital avatars will fundamentally change the business landscape if they can be deployed on a large scale. The same is true in the field of marketing, where the emergence of virtual digital humans poses challenges to marketing practices such as brand building, but also opens up new possibilities. For example, brands can get rid of the dependence on real spokespersons or image ambassadors, and explore the application of virtual digital human endorsement strategies in product promotion and brand promotion. On the other hand, the emergence and popularity of virtual digital humans will inevitably refresh the expectations of consumers, especially the younger generation, in terms of demand and pursuit.
A virtual digital human as a technology product
Identity-based virtual digital humans do not have specific functions, and are mainly made through endorsements and other means. Enterprises often face greater challenges when developing and operating identity-based virtual digital humans than functional virtual digital humans. The following analysis and elaboration are mainly aimed at identity-based virtual digital humans, and of course, the conclusions and solutions reached can also be migrated to the marketing practice of functional virtual digital humans to a certain extent.
Academic research on marketing that focuses on social media influencers has compared virtual influencers with real influencers, and then summarized the four advantages of virtual influencers, namely, lower endorsement costs, the ability to deliver customized information, more stable and controllable images and experiences, and "work" that is not easily affected by external environmental risks. These four advantages are also recognized by the industry. For example, every time a celebrity is exposed to a scandal or is found to be out of shape, the virtual spokesperson is mentioned and discussed. Most of the hot discussions are the controllability of virtual digital humans, that is, their developers and operators can control the image and experience of virtual digital humans, so the "deviant" behavior of virtual digital humans has been eliminated from the source. In addition, during the new crown pneumonia epidemic, due to the restrictions on the movement of people due to the epidemic prevention policy, the work of many real spokespersons has been affected. In stark contrast, virtual digital humans existing in the virtual space can still travel around the world through technology, participate in activities, check in and take photos, and show strong risk resistance. At the same time, thanks to the development of artificial intelligence technology, virtual digital humans are intelligent and automated, and can deliver more customized information. Through the use of advanced machine learning algorithms and natural language processing technology, virtual digital humans can rationally analyze user data and behavior patterns, and then infer users' intentions and preferences, and design customized communication patterns that meet consumer behaviors and consumer preferences. When delivering the same message, compared to the past when celebrities and influencers treat fans as "audiences", the virtual digital human customization function can achieve more intimate contact with consumers.
However, the root cause of these advantages, the essence of virtual digital humans as technological products, has also become an obstacle to the recognition and love of virtual digital humans to a large extent. The most prominent of these are a lack of credibility, a high degree of homogeneity, and a difficulty in establishing a deep connection with consumers.
The virtual digital human as the spokesperson is the medium for the business to convey the brand message. The authenticity of the content posted by influencers on social media platforms is the most important concern for consumers. However, the virtual nature of virtual digital humans may reduce consumers' trust in brands, which in turn affects consumers' purchasing behavior. According to the study, only 15% of fans of virtual digital humans consider virtual influencers to be a trustworthy source of information. In contrast, real people are more likely to build a relationship of trust with consumers. In the real world, consumers can often judge the authenticity of information by observing the words and actions of others, making it easier to establish a relationship of trust. At this stage, virtual digital humans are generally dominated by technology, and they are obviously inferior to real spokespersons in terms of depth and richness of words and deeds. Virtual digital humans are programmed to be controlled, so there may be a lot of similarity between different virtual digital humans. This homogenization may lead to confusion among consumers about virtual digital humans of different brands, which can affect marketing effectiveness. In contrast, real people tend to have more unique personalities and characteristics, which are more recognizable to consumers. Due to the lack of authenticity of virtual digital humans and the inability to communicate face-to-face like real people, it can be difficult for consumers to connect with them in a real way. In corporate marketing practices, the lack of deep connection may lead to consumers' low recognition of the brand, which is not conducive to consumers' acceptance of products endorsed by virtual digital humans, while real people are often better able to establish contact with consumers.
It can be seen that the problem that enterprises need to solve in virtual digital human marketing is to benefit from the advantages of technology while effectively avoiding the inherent disadvantages caused by technology. Enterprises that develop and operate virtual digital humans can use the strategic design of emotional narratives and first-person content publishing methods to use technology to empower the high controllability and customization of products, and build virtual digital humans into personal brands with emotional and cultural significance, so as to resolve the disadvantage that it is difficult to win the deep recognition of consumers due to the high homogeneity of virtual digital humans. In the process of building a personal brand of virtual digital humans, enterprises can adopt a three-step strategy of technology, selfies, and text. Through technology, the intuitive image of the virtual digital human is presented, and the life trajectory of the virtual digital human is shown through selfies, so as to give the technical plot, and finally make the virtual digital human the emotional leader of today's consumers through the text expression, and accumulate emotional capital for the personal brand building of the virtual digital human (as shown in Figure 1).
In order to resonate with consumers, the emotional narrative of virtual digital humans needs to be rooted in the emotional culture of a new generation of consumers. In the long run, only a narrative that is close to the emotional culture of consumers and has a certain leading role can show the emotional capital of virtual digital humans, which is an important guarantee for virtual digital humans to maintain their influence and appeal and form user stickiness.
Understanding Consumers: Digital Habits in a Wave of Technology Culture
Virtual digital humans are the product of technology, so virtual digital humans are widely accepted and loved by consumers today thanks to the wave of technoculture. In the culture of technology, digital technology is seen as one of the key factors that shape our identity and culture. Through digital technology, we can easily access and share information, interact and communicate with people. At the same time, digital technologies have also brought new social and cultural practices, such as social media, online gaming, and virtual reality. Technology culture encompasses many areas, including music, film, games, social media, virtual reality, and other digital technologies, and aims to explore the social, cultural, and economic impact of technology, as well as people's attitudes towards technology use and innovation.
Specifically, technological culture is an important manifestation of the interaction between technology and culture in modern society, including a range of identities, practices, values, rituals, hierarchies, and other sources and structures of meaning, and the creation or expression of these cultural elements is influenced by technological consumption. Among them, the consumer culture related to the culture of technology has also undergone fundamental changes. Technology consumption includes two aspects, one is to achieve the end with the means provided by technology, and the other is the interaction and exchange of technology products, and high-quality interaction has increasingly become a reasonable expectation of consumers in the use of technology products. The emergence of technological consumption is not only the inevitable result of the development of science and technology, but also the embodiment of consumers' subjective initiative. Through the application of technology and consumer experience, consumers have realized the interaction and exchange between technology, and thus promoted the integration and development of technology and culture. Through the way technology is consumed and applied, technology culture has profoundly influenced the thoughts, behaviors, values and lifestyles of current consumers, and has become an important part of the cultural diversity of contemporary society.
Therefore, Gen Z consumers, who have grown up under the wave of technological consumer culture, are another important factor in the rapid development of the virtual digital human market. As digital natives, Gen Z consumers have grown up with unique digital habits. Habits refer to long-lasting and transferable dispositions and tendencies created by the conditions of survival and living. Under the influence of habits, consumers tend to think and act in ways that are agreed upon in the field. Digital habits have made consumers more receptive to innovative and even radical technology products, and have also shaped their unique expectations in technology consumption. First of all, the popularization of technological culture and the application of technological products by consumers from an early age have made virtual digital humans more acceptable. With the continuous improvement of people's awareness of technology and digital culture, they are becoming more and more familiar with the concept and application of virtual digital humans, and modern consumers are exposed to more and more virtual digital humans through traditional digital devices and even virtual reality devices, which makes it easier for them to accept and understand the existence of virtual digital humans. Secondly, the application of virtual digital humans in the field of entertainment and social networking continues to expand, which also makes consumers more interested in it. For example, virtual digital humans can already launch exclusive music works, digital exhibits and other consumer goods that consumers can access through digital technology, which makes consumers more aware of the existence of virtual digital humans. In addition, virtual digital humans are also being applied to social media, virtual assistants, etc., which makes consumers feel the importance of virtual digital humans in their lives.
Building a Personal Brand for a Virtual Digital Human: Steps to Build an Emotional Narrative
The development direction and ultimate goal of virtual digital humans is not to show the tools of virtual simulation technology, but to carry cultural products that carry emotional information. As mentioned above, the core value and operation logic of virtual digital humans are essentially similar to those of real stars, both of which are content consumption and emotional consumption. Todd, the founder of Shiyue Xingcheng, a leading virtual digital human operation company in mainland China, once said in an interview: "We are producing and operating virtual digital humans, and we are more like operating a real artist or KOL (key opinion leader) to give them emotion, warmth and world view." Technology is just a tool, and our job is to make technology fade away from the sense of coldness and distance, and gradually dispel the sense of boundary between the real world and the virtual world. "In the face of the virtual digital human generated by technology, consumers will not have many touches, and only when the virtual digital human is "lived", they will have the desire to further establish contact with the virtual digital human.
Scholars such as Mona Murad have studied virtual influencer followers and argued that developers should shape the identity of virtual digital humans with consistent, coherent, and relevant narratives. Narrative is the process by which the narrator expresses his or her own opinion through storytelling, which can be expressed in written, verbal, and visual forms. As a product of technology, the identity construction of virtual digital humans has four characteristics, namely virtual image, artificially generated content, existence as an independent individual, and persona dominated by enterprises and brands. Therefore, the narrative presented by virtual digital humans on social media platforms is not only the content expression led by enterprises and brands, but also the storytelling of independent individuals in the eyes of consumers.
The key to the successful shaping and continuous generation of value of virtual digital humans is to establish a personal brand of virtual digital humans through emotional narratives, create their more humanistic characters and images, and thus improve their emotional connection with consumers. In order to build a personal brand of virtual digital humans, enterprises should design and manage the first-person existence of virtual digital humans as an emotional narrative practice. In order to more effectively guide the marketing practice of virtual digital human personal branding of enterprises, we summarize the following three-step strategies for building the emotional narrative of virtual digital humans.
Step 1: Present an intuitive image with technology
First of all, as a virtual digital technology product, virtual digital humans do not exist in the same physical space as consumers. Therefore, it is the most basic requirement to present the intuitive image of the virtual digital human with technology. By creating an intuitive image of a virtual digital human through technology, the virtual digital human as a technical product can complete the transformation from "virtual to real" and have a concrete image in the minds of consumers. Intuitive image is the first step for consumers to connect with virtual digital humans, and it is also the starting point for cognition. As a form of human-computer interaction, the specific image of virtual digital humans can allow users to understand their characteristics and functions more intuitively, and the process of interacting with them is more natural. In addition, like the brand's packaging, trademarks and other appearance elements, the specific image of the virtual digital human can make it easier for people to remember and understand the features and functions of the virtual digital human, thereby improving their awareness.
The practice of creating virtual digital humans also fully demonstrates the company's attention to cutting-edge technology. For example, Shiyue Xingcheng Company has introduced the impact of EU5 technology on the presentation of virtual digital humans to consumers through its official public account, and expressed the expectations of enterprise engineers for this technology. As a technical product, the development team of virtual digital human will fully devote resources to technology development and the presentation of an intuitive image with technology as the underlying logic. At present, the intuitive image of virtual digital humans through technology has become relatively mature, and more and more virtual digital humans with different images for different subcultural consumer groups have shown a rapid growth trend.
However, the presentation of intuitive images is only the basis for a virtual digital human to enter the "real world" where the consumer is located, and it is not enough to make a virtual digital human "live". The virtual digital human building team also needs to give the virtual digital human a life trajectory, so that they can truly integrate into real life. The main way to achieve this is to present episodic virtual digital human selfies through social media and other channels.
Step 2: Give the technical plot with a selfie
The selfie here is not limited to "taking pictures of oneself" in the traditional sense, but emphasizes that the virtual digital person presents a photo of himself or herself on social media to show his life trajectory, so as to have a "live" behavior in the minds of consumers. Plot, characters, and purpose make up the three main parts of the narrative. Therefore, showing the life trajectory of the virtual digital human through selfies and giving a plot to the narrative of the virtual digital human is the most important step after presenting the intuitive image of the virtual digital human through technology. Putting an intuitive image based on technology in a real-life scenario will make consumers feel like a virtual digital human is "alive".
In the cases we observed, virtual digital humans often dabble in and immerse themselves in both public and private scenarios, the former including those visited for work reasons and those visited for private reasons. The storyline that unfolds in these scenes is mainly the daily whereabouts of virtual digital humans, and the theme is mainly leisure activities with a cultural and urban life. For example, virtual avatars can actually participate in a real-life art exhibition, or check in at a real coffee shop, or interact with real influencers and celebrities, and consumers will have the opportunity to further follow in the footsteps of these virtual avatars and explore the places they experience. These selfies that show the daily life of virtual digital humans connect the images presented by technology with the real world, making virtual digital humans "live" in behavior.
However, the behavioral "liveness" can only make consumers regard the virtual digital human as a real independent individual, but it is difficult to establish an emotional connection with it. Therefore, it is not enough to show the virtual digital human only by intuitive image, and the emotional narrative displayed through words is the final step, which plays an important role in expressing emotional perception and accumulating emotional capital for the personal brand building of virtual digital humans.
Step 3: Verbal emotion
In addition to visual information such as visual images and selfies in daily life, the text narrative of virtual digital humans, that is, the text content directly expressed on social media and other platforms, is the key to their emotional perception and accumulation of emotional capital. Although virtual digital humans appear to be independent individuals, their narrative content is actually carefully designed by the team. Therefore, the emotional narrative text expression of virtual digital humans requires a team to deeply understand the current consumers' technological consumption habits and the emotional culture expected by today's society.
It should be noted that the emotions emphasized in this article are not at the level of consumer cognition, but in the socio-cultural sense. Some scholars have mentioned that "from a cognitive point of view, emotion is a certain conscious feeling of the self and the object in the environment; From a cultural point of view, emotion is a symbolic discursive label, that is, the name of people's physiological arousal state for a particular characteristic. "Emotional culture embodies the values related to emotions, is the guarantee of group cohesion, and also contributes to the achievement of cultural self-identity.
Furthermore, understanding and using the socio-emotional culture gives the virtual digital human emotional capital. Affective capital is the most tangible part of cultural capital, the ability to express, manage, and feel emotions across contexts in a way that is in harmony with mainstream affective norms and cultural expressions. Emotional narrative is the strategic application and use of emotional capital, enterprises should be based on the insight into the emotional culture and consumption habits of consumers under the wave of technology and culture, appropriately set the position of virtual digital humans, and take the corresponding emotional expression, emotional echo, and emotional guidance as an important content in the self-narrative of characters, and finally make virtual digital humans become the emotional leaders of today's consumers.
The final effect of the virtual digital human's personal branding
The self-narrative constructed by the above three steps is helpful to construct the identity of the virtual digital human while visually presenting the image. Because the emotional aspect of identity is based on emotional capital, it is more likely to meet and awaken the emotional expectations formed by fans in their daily difficulties and growth experiences, so as to establish an intimate emotional connection with consumers. This process aligns with Kevin Keller's classic book, Strategic Brand Management, which mentions building customer-based brand equity. Therefore, personal branding is a necessary way for virtual digital humans to achieve lasting differentiation and long-term value. Of course, it should be further clarified that the personal brand in this article corresponds to the academic concept of "personal brand", which is not equivalent to the term IP (Intellectual Property) that has become popular in the field of creative and cultural industries in mainland China in recent years. The establishment and maintenance of personal brand has internal logic and law, and is a process concept in the sense of strategic brand management. In contrast, although personal IP is often used interchangeably with personal branding, it focuses more on referring to those creative symbols that have traffic potential and are protected by copyright, and lacks attention to the long-term management process at the level of marketing strategy.
In essence, the emotional narrative carried out by the virtual digital human belongs to the "front-end performance" led by the enterprise to which the virtual digital human belongs, and the form, content, evolution and evolution of this performance are the result of the design and regulation of the virtual digital human project team in the background. Based on the analysis of relevant industries and enterprises, the core capabilities and ideal division of labor of the team behind the virtual digital human branding process can be defined. Shaping a brand-type virtual digital human requires the cooperation and collaboration of at least three teams: first, the artistic concept of the corporate strategy and management team determines the typical positioning of the virtual digital human and provides an anchor point for the emotional narrative of the virtual digital human to unfold in the first person; Second, the content production team needs to maintain a connection with the real world, and have a deep and dynamic grasp of the emotional norms at the macro level of society, the emotional expression culture of fan groups, and the widespread technological culture in society. Third, the technology team needs to stay connected to the virtual world, and have a timely and dynamic grasp of the latest possibilities of virtual technology and the preferences and expectations of consumers as digital natives. The latter two aspects are not only the basis for the typical positioning of virtual digital human characters, but also provide a reference for the development and evolution of emotional narratives.
epilogue
All in all, the key to creating a personal branded virtual digital human is to construct the identity and intuitive image of "people", in which emotional narratives play an important role. This shows that in the process of virtual digital human branding, the design and promotion of content are as important as technology, which is an aspect that enterprises should focus on. At the same time, we propose that the content team and the technical team have different important roles in building the personal brand of the virtual digital human. Enterprises interested in developing the long-term value of virtual digital humans need to get rid of the simple "obsession" with technology, and establish the awareness of building virtual digital humans from technical products into cultural products, and put them into practice.
About the Author | Liu Qian: Associate Professor, Department of Marketing, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University;
Xu Zhennan: Ph.D. candidate, Department of Marketing, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University;
Liu Guilin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Marketing, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University.
Editor-in-Charge | Liu Yongxuan ([email protected])
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