Facebook inaugurates the era of the new virtual world
Waiting for the announced metoverso to finish taking off, fashion brands and great consumption begin to create their own digital spaces.Advertising agencies are also developing new business areas.
Imagine someone who returns home.Or that you just woke up.It accommodates and puts virtual reality glasses.Access a scenario of a video game.Full of avatars.Among them, those of his friends, with whom he enters three -dimensional stores to buy a garment of his favorite brand.And he decides to go with her to a virtual work meeting or a Billie Eilish concert in a digitalized stadium and full of great sponsors.Everything, without moving from the living room.Science fiction, for the moment.But getting closer and closer, with the arrival of metaverso.
Since Mark Zuckerberg announces this virtual world revolution, advertising awaits its development with open arms.It is, after all, "a corporeal internet, where, instead of visualizing content, you live within it", according to the words of Facebook's own creator.That is, if social networks have been a shopping shop window until today, metavers will be a space where to do it thanks to immersive technologies.
According to Alfonso Marián, president of Ogilvy Spain, that means that the barriers between the physical and the virtual will disappear, and the consumption will be made transverse: "The purchase will be simultaneously, combined and complemented, and consumption situations linked to thesocialization will multiply.Therefore, it is a huge potential for brands ".
In this still prehistoric phase of Metaverso, part of the advertising sector agrees that the beginning of its success will be given in 2022 or will not occur.For now, the estimates of the Wildbytes consultancy foresee an 800 market.000 million dollars in the next two years.A fact that invites you to think that it is not a passenger fashion.
Therefore, Jordi Calvet, president of Iki Group, argues that in a current context in which users seek to have an active link with the brand and the product, and in which, more and more, they invest a very similar time in thePhysical and digital, "brands that assume risks and try to leave with a competitive advantage when metaverso reaches maturity".
Today, there are many unknowns still to solve.As the fact of knowing if there will be replicas of the products in the real world or if the ads can be oriented based on the appearance of someone in virtual reality.And even if it will be a single virtual universe or each manufacturer will have one that interacts with the rest.But, what Calvet is clear about, is that "there are industries such as beauty, travel, insurance or fashion that are called to be part of it as a new environment to relate".
Pioneers
In fact, textile brands already lead the first experiences that have emerged during the last months on platforms considered the prelude to this disruption.Zara has already started selling clothes made of pixels in Zepeto, an application that allows the user to enter a fiction universe and socialize with other people through avatars.
In others, such as the giant Roblox (with more than 220 million users), Nike has also launched its own virtual microunive.Others, such as the Balenciaga firm, allow the same to do in the fortnite game.
Such is the success of virtual garments that the RTFKT study, native in blockchain authentication and actually acquired and recently acquired by Nike, has come to sell virtual shoes worth more than 3.5 million euros in a matter of only fiveminutes.
On the other hand, technological companies such as Dyson have created a virtual store where it is possible.Even the Stella Artois brewery brand took advantage of the Kentucky derby cancellation, because of the pandemic and the subsequent migration of the races to metaverso with virtual horses, to become the first sponsor of this new event.Moreover, he has recently announced that he will offer its users the possibility of buying, selling and raising digital horses to participate.
Virtual business
And that is where NFT (non -fungible token) or virtual assets that are marketed in metavers come into play.An NFT can be an image, a video or an element of a game, and thanks to the blockchain it can be traded with all types of intangible goods that already include cars or works of art.
Before El Dorado that opens for advertising, some agencies have already decided to take the first step.This is the case of Metabrands, the first business unit for launching in Spain of extended reality projects in the advertising, marketing and communication sector."We bet on proposals that are born to be consumed on mobile devices, virtual reality and native environments, which already have a user base, precisely to make experience accessible and opt for scalable technologies".
And for that they have four areas of transformation: a line of work focused on innovation of spaces and cities.Another, for the creation of entertainment actually mixed.A third for the development of content with influencers in this new context.And finally, another line that will focus on navigation and consumption.
As they explain, the crux of the matter is that "it is necessary to build a network of their own talent, by the hand of professionals who have been part of these new realities for years.And this team already integrates consulting or technology profiles to understand the ecosystem, and the partners, which have a wide baggage of solutions ".
The need to adapt advertising teams to this new disruption responds to the reality described by Begoña de la Sota, CEO of Mediacom.In his opinion, although it is true that "creativity urges as a relevant element to continue connecting and building a new more real engagement, technology is important as a basis for implementing messages and brand contents that allow agencies to continue connecting fromdifferential way with the client ".
En esa línea, y atendiendo a la llegada del metaverso, en Darwin & Verne han optado por crear una oficina virtual.This is described by its content director, Bel Rodríguez: "We sit on our sites, we have private rooms for each of the departments and squads that make up the agency and we can speak between us as if we were in front.If I need some administration, I take my avatar and take it to the room ".
Alliance with 'Gaming'
As for advertising showcase that represents this incipient world, he believes that "the gaming sector is the perfect ally, for its level of penetration and accessibility and by the great communities that it is capable of mobilizing".Videogames such as Fortnite or Minecraft are already considered a kind of metavers in embryonic state and represent for brands a kind of real estate property in which they are more than willing to place their advertising.In fact, Fortnite has just launched the party worlds, social spaces conceived to speak, exchange objects or entertain and where the combat is not allowed.
Irene Montón, Senior Strategic Planner of PS21, believes that in this way the opportunities triple: "In the Bloktopia and Decentraland platforms, advertising spaces are already offered for brands, leaving them the opportunity to build what they want within metovers".As he adds, in these spaces there are no limits, and only "it is necessary to understand the nature of the environment and the needs of the consumer and build something that helps to add value to space".
For example, replicating on stage the size and design of advertising fences that also exist in the real world through NFT technology.Without going any further, the Ocean Outdoor company has become the first to launch digital exterior advertising campaigns synchronized with the real world in the virtual space Somnium Space.
Waiting for these types of strategies to take off, Miguel Olivares, vice president of the strategy of the Association of Transforming Creativity (ACT) and founding partner of the pantry, understands that the expanded experience of metoverso will come when he begins to connect everything inAn ecosystem that is virtual and physical: "Until now, the established and successful brands have taken their most iconic products and have thrown them into Roblox or Fortnite...Perhaps the interesting thing is also seeing how popular brands and created in metovers are able to make the way and launch their products in the physical ".
In search of other audiences
The fact that video games are at this time the main link between advertising and metoverso implies that, "at the beginning, the target is very young", as Ferrán Burriel, director of the Nothingad agency, explains.In this sense, it emphasizes that the incursion of some great brands in the virtual world aims to "attract the public in a massive way and that social networks can be segmented as they do".
At the moment, Burriel points out that micropagues can be "a direct way of capturing", while highlighting that there are already cases of users who "have come to buy virtual land for millions of euros".For him, it is still early to know if metaverso will triumph or fail, as was the case with Second Life, the first virtual community emerged in 2003.Therefore, Apostille: "It will be interesting to see to what extent it drags the consumer".
Peripherals, new windows
See, touch, react...Immersive experience devices will have a key role in the metoverso explosion."There will be a conjunction of entertainment and technology brands that will offer a sensory experience to the user", as indicated by Ferrán Burriel, director of Nothingad.It is already known to move from home through virtual stores and browse products like who walks through a shopping center will be possible thanks to virtual reality helmets such as the Oculus Quest.
But it doesn't end there.Recently, Facebook (now Meta) announced the arrival of the Project peripheral changes, glasses that give the possibility of registering the slightest detail of face expression to transfer it to our avatar.According to Burriel, this type of advance in the sensory environment "will make brands do not want to be left behind".
Among other reasons, because a range of possibilities opens so that advertising can identify consumer reaction to an advertisement or experience.Even the touch will have a place, he adds, with the appearance of haptic devices such as costumes or t -shirts that allow a realistic touch in virtual reality.Therefore, agencies such as Metabrands have already focused on these advances, with the idea, as they explain, to "connect the possibilities from a consumption and entertainment perspective".
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