Tag: social media

Welcome to part 3 of our dive into the metaverse. In part 1, we covered what the metaverse is and how it changes the social media landscape. Part 2 explored what it means for brands, consumers, and society. Today, we’re looking at the metaverse’s impact on marketing overall, including changes for influencers and brands.

Metaverse is defined as, “a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users.”

Brands Can Leverage the Metaverse to Build Deeper Connections

With its immersive qualities, brands can leverage the metaverse to build deeper connections with consumers and boost loyalty. Metaverse activities can encourage people to engage physically, such as standing to ride a surfboard after sipping a Corona beer, further deepening the connection with brands.

Additionally, interactions in the metaverse enable brands to gather more expansive insights by monitoring details such as what users look at the longest. By gathering and analyzing these deeper insights into consumers’ preferences, brands can drive improvements in product development as well as advertising.

Furthermore, the metaverse also removes geographic boundaries. Virtual events, such as concerts, enable hospitality brands to expand their potential customer base to the entire world. 

Opportunities & Threats for Influencers in the Metaverse

Influencers can benefit from many of the same advantages the metaverse bestows on brands and consumers, including the ability to build deeper connections and engage with consumers worldwide and be ‘present’ anywhere at any time, joining their communities in a range of events in the Metaverse for example – something that in the real world would be absolutely impossible.

Influencers should embrace this amazing opportunity and allow their imaginations to run wild. Take the best of you and amplify it as your digital avatar. Engage with your audience in any way that you find thrilling, such as flying over the forest. Promote products not only in new ways, but offer entirely new types of promotions, including new digital goods and events. 

The metaverse lets us be anywhere, at any time, and offer anything, so dream big. 

Virtual influencers are already growing in popularity, with the richest virtual influencer, Lil Miquela, reportedly earning 10 million Swiss Francs a year. But in the metaverse, all users participate as avatars, eliminating the distinction between traditional and virtual influencers. Without this point of differentiation, current influencers may have additional difficulties competing with CGI Influencers.

In an interesting twist, existing virtual influencers are now facing competition from brands, who are launching their own computer-generated avatars. Additionally, virtual influencers will need to tackle new challenges, such as character management if they choose to interact live with fans in the metaverse. 

Although NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are already being sold on existing social media platforms, interacting in a virtual world should increase demand for NFTs, presenting influencers and brands alike with an opportunity to increase revenue.

Growing Chasm Between Engaging & Annoying Advertising

In part 1, we stated that the chasm between the metaverse and other platforms will be a much larger distinction than the current differences between Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We expect to see yet another chasm within the metaverse itself: between modern and legacy advertising.

The metaverse can change advertising dramatically. Rather than being concerned with having nice banners, brands need to change their game completely. One early innovation is Justin Bieber’s partnership with entertainment company Wave to provide an interactive, virtual event merging gaming, real-time motion capture, and live musical performance. General Mills introduced a new way to tailgate with the launch of the virtual “homegate,” which brings the gameday excitement straight to fans at home, through an interactive virtual kitchen and backyard.

In the metaverse, advertising can be more thrilling and exciting. TikTok advises, “Don’t make ads. Make TikToks.” Similarly, rather than making ads in the metaverse, brands should make immersive experiences. With limitless options, things that were the pure domain of science fiction and fantasy can come to life. Yes, it’s a “virtual” life, but users can experience these collaborations.

We hope that more marketers will go in a different direction and embrace these new opportunities to create value. Give your audience immersive experiences instead of stalking them with text to read.

• PREDICTION: Brands will be challenged with accepting the opportunity to provide something better. Innovative brands can rise above competitors and build customer loyalty, even brand love.

An Escape from Phobias

This freedom could also enable users to escape the burden of phobias. People with fears of social interaction could overcome their anxiety and engage socially in new ways. Likewise, common phobias such as heights, public speaking, or spiders may have less power to constrain interactions. Perhaps the opportunity to ride a giant spider galloping along a cliff’s edge can help reduce the power of phobias upon returning to reality. We’ll stop short of making a prediction, but it’s an interesting theory to ponder.

Brands Dream Along with Consumers as Partners

The metaverse enables people to be whoever they want to be and do anything – all without having to face their fears or doubts. Many social media users portray a carefully curated life that doesn’t accurately reflect their personal reality. The metaverse enables people to continue this practice while inhabiting their online persona more deeply. In the metaverse, users can become who they fantasize they could be, while abandoning the awkwardness of pimples or bad hair days.

• PREDICTION: The freedom the metaverse provides will be very popular, particularly with young people. Savvy brands will embrace this creative freedom, with offerings such as NFTs for unique clothing and accessories.

As Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “the metaverse will not be created by one company.” Brands, along with consumers, influencers, and tech companies, all have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the metaverse. Forward-looking brands should start thinking now about who they want to be in the metaverse. Brands have the potential to shape consumer experiences, progressing toward the goal of having consumers see your brand as part of their lives.

• PREDICTION: Winning brands will dream along with consumers and become their partner in helping them achieve the metaverse identity they want. In doing so, they’ll build even stronger relationships both within and outside of the metaverse.

Influencers in the Metaverse 

Influencers must also consider who and what they want to be. In the metaverse, there are no limitations based on what you were born with. Influencers have the freedom to stick with the identity they’ve already developed on legacy social media platforms or build an entirely new one. Influencers could exist with only a digital persona, and never reveal their actual identity in the real world.

The explosion of options for everyone results in more opportunities for creative influencers, as well as increased competition, making it tougher to stand out. These decisions can also be made repeatedly, as influencers could create multiple avatars and compete with themselves.

Like brands, influencers must also reevaluate who they want to be and how they will add value to followers and brands. They will have to decide how to interact with their communities and how to exert real-world influence in the digital world.

• PREDICTION: Similar to today, strictly digital influencers will exist, and some may gain great popularity. However, authenticity will reign, and most influencers will retain their same real-world identity.

The Metaverse is considered the next milestone in digital transformation – contact Kingfluencers to learn how your brand can benefit from using virtual reality. 

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing

In part 1, we covered what the metaverse actually is, and made some predictions to questions such as “will immersiveness dominate,” and “who will win & lose?” Here in part 2, we’ll focus on the metaverse’s impacts to brands as well as influencers and consumers.

Impacts of the Metaverse on Consumers

An article on the Meta Newsroom describes the metaverse as, “a set of virtual spaces where you can create and explore with other people who aren’t in the same physical space as you.” Consumers can try on new clothes, test drive cars, and experiment with new hairstyles. Metaverse activities can encourage people to stand up and move, which is beneficial for health and can lead to increased steps counts and even improved fitness.

Verity McIntosh, a VR expert at the University of the West of England, told the BBC that the granularity of data available from the use of VR/AR is an order of magnitude higher than on screen-based media. “Now it’s not just about where I click and what I choose to share, it’s about where I choose to go, how I stand, what I look at for longest, the subtle ways that I physically move my body and react to certain stimuli. It’s a direct route to my subconscious, and that is gold to a data capitalist.”

The implications for manipulating people are thus orders of magnitude higher as well. If misused, with algorithms that present users with media that angers them, the metaverse could have a negative impact on society, leading to increased division. Protecting privacy will remain a difficult, ever evolving challenge.

The Blurring Lines Between Metaverse and Reality

The metaverse is a world on its own where people exist and interact, as opposed to passively viewing a web page. There are much bigger similarities between the metaverse and the real world, and the lines between the two will increasingly blur.

PREDICTION: Brands will be able to generate cross-over effects, driving real world behaviors through metaverse marketing and even vice versa. Spillover effects could include digital products promoted in the metaverse becoming more popular in real life as well.

The Role of Brands in Defining the Metaverse

According to a deep dive by The Drum, “We know that marketers have a huge role to play in defining the future of the metaverse, from creating the event spaces within platforms to selling consumers on the tech that allows them to experience it.” Luxury brands are selling digital-only products in the metaverse. According to Morgan Stanley, digital demand for fashion and luxury brands is expected to grow and could reach $50 billion by 2030.

Users have the potential to become who they fantasize they could be. In Part 3, we’ll delve into the enticing freedom of the metaverse. Winning brands will dream along with consumers and become their partner in helping them achieve the metaverse identity they want.

Transformed Opportunities to Interact

Advertising is often viewed as something negative, an interruption. It’s possible that legacy, annoying ads will be copy/ pasted onto the metaverse, and users will be bombarded with irritating digital billboards and flying banners. Writing for Cointelegraph, Tom Mitchelhill captures the bleak possibilities. “Now, Stephenson’s striking fictional depictions of a Metaverse over saturated with the neon glow of commercial advertising rings truer than ever as Web3 designers and marketers gear up to begin advertising in the emerging Metaverse(s).” Digital entertainment and media platform Azerion recently partnered with Bidstack, in-game advertising and video game monetization platform. Bidstack Founder and CEO said the contract, “signals a realization that brand advertising within the metaverse has truly arrived.”

However, the metaverse provides brands with a whole new set of tools to connect with customers. Currently, digital and physical experiences are often very disconnected, but the metaverse generates new opportunities to add value to customers with immersive, engaging experiences and new products in the form of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). Influencers also have more opportunities to engage with their communities, such as being present at a concert or virtual store.

PREDICTION: The sale of digital goods will become important for brands and influencers alike. Digital goods can be leveraged both in marketing campaigns as well as sold to generate new revenue streams.

What Should Brands Be Doing?

New features are being built, investments are being made, and people are experimenting. The Metaverse is currently a huge green field with many opportunities as well as many unknowns. Meta Reality Labs (a sibling unit to Facebook) has committed to spending at least $10bn a year on developing experiences that fuse augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) hardware with software and content.

Brands may wonder if they should already be developing plans to get into the metaverse. The immersive experience of the metaverse enables brands to promote their products in new and innovative ways. For example, fashion brands can sell or give away digital versions of their clothing and accessories. Those in the hospitality industry can recreate the architecture of their venues and host virtual events.

Time to Start Experimenting

Meta’s Reality Labs division, the segment of the company tasked with building the metaverse, lost more than $10 billion in 2021, and the losses keep growing. Executives said it could take up to 15 years to fully realize their vision. With a timeline of “up to 15 years,” there isn’t a big rush. But now is a good time to start the process of creating metaverse experiences.

In the Metaverse, brands and influencers have the opportunity to innovate, experiment, and adapt to improve outcomes, establishing leading positions in advance of Metaverse’s growth into the mainstream.

Although NFTs are already being sold on existing social media platforms, interacting in a virtual world should increase demand for NFTs, presenting influencers and brands alike with an opportunity to increase revenue.

• PREDICTION: NFTs will be a big opportunity for brands as well as digital artists and content creators to monetize content in a new way and build new revenue streams. Developing smart strategies will be crucial for brands and influencers.

Are You Already Behind the Curve?

We don’t think brands need to worry about falling behind just yet. For a marketing channel to deliver positive ROI, brands must be able to reach their target audience. Achieving this objective in the metaverse will require necessary saturation, with a certain quantity of active users. The critical mass isn’t there yet, so brands aren’t at risk of falling behind competitors.

• PREDICTION: We’re not close to this point yet, but nor is it in the distant future. It’s just beginning, with a critical mass of users being three to five years away.

But on the one hand, it’s good to start planning. Now is the time to start acquiring knowledge and building those skills, including getting the support of knowledgeable marketers, so you’re ready.

One thing is certain, the metaverse will require marketers to frequently adapt and re-strategize. Selecting influencers and building an influencer network will become much more complex.

• PREDICTION: The guidance of experts and support from agencies will be more critical than ever.  

Author: Megan Bozman, Owner @Boz Content Marketing