A major epidemic unseen in a century, a major change unseen in a century, and a major opportunity unseen in a century. Crisis and opportunity coexist. Looking back on 2021, one of the hottest words is the Metaverse. Even Facebook founder Zuckerberg changed the company's name to Meta. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company is working hard Create a "corporate metaverse".
The metaverse is the ultimate networked world, the metaverse is the highest form of human digital existence, and perhaps the ultimate direction of the digital economy. It integrates almost all technologies to lead the human world to a beautiful world where the virtual and the real are integrated and the virtual and the real coexist. Its essence is the next generation of human society.
Metaverse reshapes the future
We have experienced the PC Internet and the mobile Internet, and we are about to enter the true Internet. In the era of PC Internet, the interaction mode is mainly mouse and keyboard. In the era of mobile Internet, the interaction mode is mainly touch screen, and the real Internet represented by the Metaverse is a world of virtual and real integration. The interaction methods are VR, AR, such as electronic skin, VR Gloves, VR gimbal treadmills, and even Musk’s brain-computer interface, etc.
If the PC Internet and the mobile Internet are the information Internet, then the metaverse is the experiential Internet. The information Internet mainly stimulates our head organs (mainly our eyes and brain), while the metaverse stimulates our whole body. In the past, the Internet allowed us to surf the Internet and be online, but the meaning of the metaverse is to be present, and to appear in several sessions at the same time. For example, the real teacher Hou is teaching in Beijing, while another digital avatar is doing a live broadcast.
In the metaverse era, we will have multiple identities and travel back and forth between multiple universes, and the problem of lack of skills can be solved in a sense. The mobile Internet meets the needs that people think of, improves people's cognition, and improves their horizons, and the metaverse allows us to improve our experience, make it possible to spend N lives and even the next life, and meet the needs of self-realization (Maslow). the highest standard of demand).
Metaverse reconstructs the marketing model
Marketing is the process of creating and delivering value. In the metaverse era, fans can participate in the development, creation and testing of products, and receive instant rewards and medals, because the metaverse comes with its own economic system. The transfer of value has also become simpler. Because people have multiple avatars, they can swim in multiple metaverses, and the online virtual and offline physical are mapped to each other, so the transfer becomes faster and more real. In addition, the new business of Metaverse is less fraudulent in past sales, because the digital native marketing system based on blockchain is inherently trustworthy.
Brand marketing - from active shaping to passive emergence In the
industrial age, the brand's values and brand positioning are top-level design by the brand, shaping the brand personality, building brand identity, realizing the brand promise, and then advertising it to the public through content creativity. Consumers, thus occupying the minds of customers. At this time, the battlefield of enterprises is the minds of users, which is a centralized brand marketing model.
Marketing in the Metaverse Era is decentralized and participatory, advocating the ultimate experience, and user sovereignty has been greatly improved. Everyone is for me, I am for everyone, and the brand has become the service side of fans. In the metaverse, the traces of active marketing are significantly weakened, and marketing plays a subtle role through participation. The values of the brand are no longer dominated by the brand, but become dominated by users. The values and personality of the brand have changed from active shaping to passive emergence. An enterprise can have multiple brands and exist in multiple metaverses. In the era of traditional brand positioning, brand extension is a trap, but in the era of the metaverse, the opportunity for brand extension is greatly enhanced, people can have multiple incarnations, and the same is true for brands.
Brands have the ability to trust endorsement and brand premium. In the future, brand trust will be transformed into digital trust. The blockchain itself is a trust machine, and the brand premium will be transformed into a digital asset premium.
Many people will ask, the ability of the brand has been subverted, what will the brand do in the future? In the future, brands will need to be IP-based, and brands will deliver creativity and experience, which can help digital goods and achieve better premium support.
Marketing people - from virtual idols to virtual people
We are experiencing the era from star idols to virtual idols and then to virtual people. Virtual idols speak for us, and virtual people work for us as ordinary employees.
● The era of models and celebrity endorsements is coming to an end. Celebrities will grow old, celebrities will have scandals, and celebrity endorsements are not only expensive, but also increasingly risky. In 2021, the overturning of idols such as Li Yundi and Wang Leehom will make related companies miserable. In addition, it is too difficult to find a star who matches the brand tonality very well.
● What endorsements will you rely on in the future? Virtual idols or even virtual people. According to estimates from iResearch, the virtual idol market will exceed 100 billion yuan in 2021, and Hatsune Miku is the representative of the first generation of virtual idols.
In November 2020, L'Oreal released its first brand virtual spokesperson, which is Sister M of the brand.
In March 2021, L'Oreal announced that Ou Ye would become the brand's virtual spokesperson. The launch of Ou Ye seems to be different from the small fight between Sister M and Mei, which is a single brand. It is more like a strategic attempt of the L'Oreal Group. Ou Ye's person is set to be 24 years old, of mixed Chinese and French blood, with identity labels such as a beauty brother, a fan fanatic, and a public welfare expert. The vision is to make everyone have beauty. Ou Ye also has multiple professional identities and roles. As the news minister in "Ou Ye Knows Everything", he brings users the latest beauty trends; in "Ou Ye Said Ingredients", as an ingredient party expert, he uncovers the secrets of cosmetics; As a top social circle in "Ou Ye Face to Face", he brings users to meet celebrities and friends, chat about their views, and share the beauty of diversity; in "Ou Ye Doing Public Welfare", as a sustainable talent, he calls on everyone to do public welfare.
On June 1, 2021, Huaxizi also officially released her first avatar, Huaxizi.
Since 2015, virtual characters have moved towards high fidelity, and the trend of publicity focusing on offline scenes has become more and more obvious. Jihara Mi is the representative of this stage. Metahuman Creator by Epic is a cloud-based application that helps anyone create a photorealistic digital human Metahuman in minutes. Education in the domestic market has just started. Ali’s first digital employee, AYAYI, has multiple identities, such as digital curator, artist, and fashion brand manager. Similarly, there are Xinhua News Agency digital reporter, digital astronaut Xiao Zheng, and Tsinghua University digital student Hua Zhibing.
Virtual people also drive the Internet celebrity economy. Live streaming may always exist in the future, but the sense of experience has been greatly improved. From one Li Jiaqi to N incarnations of Li Jiaqi, from one live broadcast room on the entire network to N live broadcast rooms, different consciousness gathers different people and sells different goods. And the user feels that Li Jiaqi is by your side, and can pat him on the shoulder. Every studio is a metaverse. Of course, brands can also cultivate their own virtual people, and everyone can become an avatar. For example, many bosses do not like to show their faces because of their face, so they can use avatars.
Marketing Communication - From Imposing on Users to Automatic Triggering
In the past , advertisements were used for communication, and advertisements were often imposed on users. Even Baidu search would pop up a lot of advertisements. Now is the era of content marketing. A specific form of content, which may be video, may be audio, a barrage, or a physical object. These contents are all for users, without any interruption, to enhance the ultimate user experience. There is a word to pay attention to here, called scene triggering, AI will play a huge role in the future.
Exploring Meta Retail in the Age of Metaverse
Retail is inseparable from the people and goods market. Even the new retail proposed by Jack Ma is the evolution of the people and goods market. Retail has experienced offline retail and online retail. Will there be meta-retailing in the metaverse where reality and reality coexist? We try to explore.
People will have multiple incarnations.
In the past we did retail, we first studied target customers and user psychology. The Weakness of Human Nature was regarded as a bible; now with Internet technology, we turn to the study of user behavior, because behavior is The true external reflection of the mind. The giants can easily collect various behavioral data of users, such as likes, placing in shopping carts, forwarding, etc. They can do AB tests or data embedding to obtain more data, and they can also build a user tag system with the help of enterprise WeChat. To put it bluntly, we are all building real personas.
The user's external behavior may only account for less than 10% of the user's psychological world. Of these 10%, what you really master may only account for 1%, which is far from the real user. So the same person has different portraits in Brand A and Brand B. A little girl who is very quiet in the office, but has countless small dreams, and the Metaverse can fulfill all her wishes. She tried to have lunch with Buffett, a virtual avatar, and went to a nightclub to relax herself in the evening. She who never dared to bungee jump, really I tried a bungee jumping experience and made an appointment to climb the mountain with Wang Shi, so her portrait is very plump. The Metaverse can do this to truly understand and satisfy users.
In the metaverse world, a user will have multiple avatars, the number of users will increase, and the market capacity will become larger. Although many of them are avatars, they are all reflections of real users, which are real user awareness. The frequency and density of user interactions are greatly enhanced, and there will be more opportunities for consumption upgrades.
In his book "The Age of Intelligent Robots" published in 1986 by American futurist and Google chief scientist Ray Kurzweil, he divided the evolutionary concept of human society into six epochs: the first epoch, the physical and chemistry; the second era, biology and DNA; the third era, the brain; the fourth era, technology; the fifth era, the combination of intelligence and technology; the sixth era, the awakening of the universe. In the sixth era, traditional humans became non-biological humans, that is, half robots, thus entering post-human society and shifting from "carbon-based life" to "silicon-based life".
Human consciousness has created the universe, so the essence of the metaverse is the "information block". As an information person, a digital person, and a virtual person, it is completely conceivable to imagine a network composed of information. The sci-fi movie "Blade Runner 2049" shows the "human" composition of the future society: biological human, electronic human, digital human, virtual human, and information human. The you of a virtual digital person is not only a digital twin with you in the real world, but also another you born in the digital world.
Marketing has always put researching users as the first priority. Because there can be multiple incarnations, the number of users is overwhelming, which alleviates the problem of low birth rate to a certain extent. At the same time, users are real and fake, and they are accompanied by false and real, but they are all conscious, and conscious incarnations are like people. The spirit of , let people in reality have permanent existence, and greatly improve people's cognition and learning ability, user awareness and demand exploded, scenes increased exponentially, and consumption frequency increased significantly. The new generation born after 2010 has become the natives of the metaverse, which is a challenge and an opportunity for marketing.
Under the conditions of digitalization of NFT
goods, intelligent manufacturing, collaborative production, industrial Internet, etc., the consumer end and the production end are connected, and prosumers appear. Commodities can not only be digitized, but also capitalized. Many commodities look the same on the surface, but are actually different. For example, the same two movie tickets have huge differences in movie content and seat numbers. There are no two identical leaves in the world. In the era of commodity personalization, more personalized products are also called for, which further promotes the possibility of commodity NFT.
NFT is the abbreviation of "Non-Fungible Token". It cannot be copied or divided. We used to translate Token into "token". In fact, NFT is the real token, which connects the virtual world. and a passport to the physical world. This is a new monetary system, a new financial system, and a new digital token rights proof system brought about by the digital migration of human beings.
At present, domestic enterprises have participated in NFT business, such as Alibaba's "Ant Chain", Tencent's "Magic Core" and its joint construction of "Zhixin Chain", Bilibili's "High Energy Chain", etc. NFT helps Confirmation and deposit of intellectual property rights. The scale of the NFT market is unlimited, and the pan-digitalization of the real world has initially taken shape.
The OpenSea platform has successively received large financing in 2021. The CryptoKitties platform gave birth to the most expensive encrypted cat Dragon in history, with a transaction price of about 170,000 US dollars. By creating galleries, crypto artists can directly purchase NFT works on display. A pair of socks on Uniswap sold for $160,000, the Twitter founder’s five words sold for $2.5 million, and crypto artist Beeple’s digital work “Everydags: The First 5000 Days” sold for $69 million at Christie’s single-lot online sale. All of this feels incredible. Of course, there is a huge bubble in it, but the development of any new thing is like this, and it will return to rationality after the bubble bursts.
In the future, not only works of art, but all commodities can be NFT. In real life, many transactions are actually just buying and selling ownership, and the goods have not moved, such as investing in buying a house. Physical commodities are confirmed on the chain through IoT sensors, 3D scanning, etc., to form digital assets and solve the problems of authenticity and liquidity of commodities, and the buying and selling process can flow quickly through smart contracts. Buying and selling a house is as convenient as chatting or sending files. There is no need to sign a paper contract, seal or even notarize, and a house can be bought and sold dozens of times a day. Of course, the future is not just about houses, everything can be digitized and everything can be NFT. For example, Alibaba digital employee AYAYI personally designed the first gift NFT mooncake.
Each field is a metaverse
offline field. We have experienced grocery stores, wholesale markets, department stores, supermarkets to convenience stores, online fields, traditional e-commerce and live streaming, and Fresh Hema, a new species on the road of online and offline integration. Traditional e-commerce actually solves the problem of online shelves and goods, allowing us to search for a dazzling variety of goods without leaving home, while live streaming solves the problem of goods and shopping guides being online at the same time, there is a certain sense of immersion, but this sense of immersion It's still very bad, there is still a screen between us and the products and the anchor.
What is the field of the future? Each field is a metaverse. With a VR headset, you can invite friends to visit Beijing Wangfujing shopping mall anytime, anywhere. Li Jiaqi, who met a virtual avatar, was introducing lipstick in the shopping mall. Of course, the same is true for buying clothes. You don’t need to go to the fitting room, and the effect of fitting will appear immediately. Currently, offline fitting rooms or makeup mirrors are generally needed to solve the problem. In the Metaverse, shopping malls don’t need these. The backside is the support of computing power and AI. .
After 5 minutes of shopping at Wangfujing, you will immediately cross to the Children's King shopping mall in Shenzhen. There is a lot of people here. If you want to buy a prolactin, you only need to say "Introduce me to this product", and the video explanation about the product will immediately come into your eyes. This is the presentation effect of AR augmented reality. There is also a mode, just next to a treasure mother passing by, she gave you a detailed introduction to this product, and gave an evaluation, this is a real evaluation, not a brush out. This treasure mother acted as a shopping guide, although she was just a passerby, and she immediately received financial rewards. There is no need for real shopping guides in the shopping malls of Metaverse. Everyone is for me, and I am for everyone. The mall automatically adjusts the layout, moving lines and commodity display according to the heat map of people flow, and intelligently adjusts prices, automates promotions, and replenishes goods. This kind of The model can be completely mapped with offline shopping malls to form a digital twin shopping mall. The difference is that offline Kidswant may only have 100 customers, while online may have 1,000 customers.
The Jianyuan Universe shopping mall is inseparable from the land, and the one that followed the Yuan Universe fire turned out to be land speculation and real estate speculation. On June 21, 2021, a piece of virtual land was sold as an NFT on Decentraland for 1.3 million MANA (the platform’s native cryptocurrency), which was equivalent to $913,228.2 at the time. On November 23, 2021, singer Lin Junjie posted that he spent $123,000 (about 780,000 yuan) on Decentraland to buy 3 pieces of land. Blockchain-based metaverse platforms like Decentraland are 3D virtual worlds that offer users the opportunity to buy land as an investment.
If you buy a piece of land, you have to build a metaverse mall, right? In 2021, Walmart closed 31 supermarkets in China, and recently launched a VR supermarket, which is inseparable from computing power and requires 3D modeling and real-time rendering. In June 2021, NVIDIA CEO Huang Renxun introduced the Omniverse Avatar platform, an open cloud platform developed by NVIDIA for virtual collaboration and real-time realistic simulation. Engineers and artists, lowering the threshold of creativity, just like Meitu Xiuxiu lowered the professional threshold of PS to ordinary people.
Take real estate as an example, how to sell a house in the future? In the past, real estate companies used to spend a lot of money to build model houses, which were then demolished after the houses were sold. You can also design your own soft decoration style arbitrarily in the virtual model room, save the plan, and directly place an order for purchase. The model room is essentially a home shopping mall.
The future of the Metaverse
In the past, the Internet was centralized and data monopolized, but the Metaverse naturally has anti-monopoly genes. The Metaverse has no center and no owner. The metaverse consists of countless small metaverses and sub-metaverses.
Neil Rimer, co-founder of Roblox, said: "The energy of the Metaverse will come from users, not companies. It is impossible for any single company to build a metaverse, but to rely on the collective power from all parties." The anti-monopoly of technology giants, the "Network Security Law", "Data Security Law" and "Personal Information Protection Law" have been promulgated one after another. Data returns to users, and Metaverse accelerates distributed commerce in the future again.
Since the Dutch East India Company started the modern enterprise system, more and more companies have become sick, and companies must undergo digital transformation. The digital twin organization is the ultimate goal of enterprise digital transformation. Maybe the corporate system will weaken in the future, DAOs (distributed autonomous organizations) will become popular, economic communities will emerge, and economic communities naturally have their own algorithms and values, attracting more people who love to create, everyone is a free economic person, Unleash your nature and do what you love. You feel like you are playing games, but in fact you are working, because social economic organizations are naturally gamified operations, and the metaverse originates from games and goes beyond games.
With low-code and no-code, the threshold for programmable creativity is greatly reduced, creating various possibilities for everyone in the future. In the future, users have data sovereignty, which can realize data wealth and help achieve common prosperity.
In May 2021, Uniswap, which has 16 employees, has a market value of more than $22 billion, while the market value of Nasdaq’s parent company is about $27 billion in the same period, while Nasdaq has 5,696 employees. A masterless network like Ethereum, a value network based on self-governance, digital currency, digital assets, and digital tokens, and a decentralized large-scale collaborative network are an organizational model of the Metaverse.
The deeper you look at the metaverse, the more it resembles the "infinite game" described by philosopher and religious scholar James P. Carse. In an infinite game, there is no time, no space, no end, no end; there are only contributors, no losers and winners; all participants are trying to make the game continue indefinitely.
The curtain has been drawn, the current metaverse is like the Internet in 1994, and the changes brought about by the metaverse in the next 30 years will far exceed the Internet.
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