2022 Marketing Disruptors

If the first half of 2021 belongs to new consumption, then the second half will be the home of the "virtual world".

After Facebook changed its name to Meta (short for metaverse) last October, not only did Internet giants begin to stake out territory in the virtual world, but brands also began to enter the fray. Nike announced that it would join forces with Roblox to create the "Nikeland" virtual game world, Adidas released the electronic virtual commemorative badge POAP NFT on Twitter, and brands such as Balenciaga launched metaverse concept commercials and NFT collections.

At the same time, digital people led by AYAYA and Liu Yexi began to enter content platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Douyin in large numbers since the middle of the year. While rapidly attracting fans, they also quickly launched attempts at commercial operations. Some people call them "virtual idols", but they seem to be different from previous generation virtual idols such as Hatsune Miku.

2022 will surely be the year when the metaverse and digital human marketing explode further. Will brands choose to follow suit and grab a place in the virtual world? Or should we continue to wait and see and follow the traditional marketing path?

In this article, we will first focus on digital humans and see what changes these natives of the metaverse will bring to marketing.

From Hatsune Miku to Liu Yexi, virtual idols are transforming into digital people

As early as 2007, Hatsune Miku set off a craze for virtual idols. She was originally a virtual singer created by Yamaha to increase the sales of audio production software, but she created many classic singles in the form of PGC superimposed on UGC, produced a large number of derivative contents of UGC secondary creations, and created the myth of virtual idols.

Since then, from game companies to entertainment companies, and then to digital companies in recent years, major commercial entities have launched countless virtual idols and digital figures.

Among them, game companies have taken the lead in creating virtual idols with their outstanding modeling and world-building capabilities.

The most famous is the K/DA group launched by Riot Games. By seeking real idols to provide voices and producing MVs based on the characters in the game, K/DA has been sought after by both gamers and celebrity fans. The creation of a virtual singing and dancing group also allows the game characters to break through the limitations of circles and contexts, interact with players more closely and frequently, and thus establish a deeper emotional connection.

In addition, some economic companies have also made attempts at virtual idols. SM, one of the three major entertainment companies in South Korea, launched aespa, a group with corresponding virtual images, at the end of 2020. Although all offline performances are performed by real people, in the released MVs, virtual idols and real idols jointly participate in the construction of content and worldview.

There are many similar virtual idols, such as the first generation domestic virtual idol Luo Tianyi, the contestant Hertz in the talent show "The Coming One", and the virtual idol girl group A-SOUL launched by Lehua.

Their characteristics are very obvious. Whether it is 2D or 3D, they are centered on virtual characters and engage in vocal and dance performances and other activities. Virtual idols will release digital albums and performance videos, obtain commercial endorsements, launch co-branded products, or hold concerts, and participate in commercial activities in much the same way as real-life stars.

The digital people that have recently appeared on major content platforms, compared to previous virtual idols, have fewer performances and more displays, and are more similar to the daily life and good product recommendations posted by Internet celebrities KOLs.

The logic behind the evolution from virtual idols to digital people is actually the transformation from mainstream singing and dancing idols in the television media era to national internet celebrities in the social media era.

Compared with previous virtual idols, today's digital people are no longer just about singing, dancing and emotional companionship. They want to make people believe that in the mysterious virtual space, there is indeed such a person who lives a life like an ordinary person and communicates with us through his or her social media account. On the other hand, they are closer to commercialization and can work with brands to explore more marketing methods beyond IP collaboration.

How can virtual idols become a stable business?

Digital marketing practice

Among the previous virtual idols, except for a few two-dimensional idols such as Hatsune Miku and Luo Tianyi who had joint and cooperative activities, most virtual idols relied on virtual concerts, rewards, peripherals, etc. to earn income, which was not very stable.

The current digital humans can be roughly divided into two categories:

One type is a digital person with a real human identity. For example, the digital person Meet GU corresponding to Gu Ailing mentioned above, as well as the digital person Dilireba’s digital person Dilireba and Yi Yang Qianxi’s digital image “Qian Miao”. This type of digital person is a projection of a real individual in a virtual space. They also have a real human identity, and the digital person is their image representative in the metaverse. They can attend commercial events with real stars or alone.

The other type is native digital people. They are A Xi, AYAYI, Liu Yexi and others who became popular last year. They are purely virtual images, native to the virtual world, but have real-world social accounts to show their "digital life" to everyone.

Some of these digital people are developed by brands, such as Huaxizi’s virtual spokesperson, Zoe, the heroine in the Nestlé coffee promotional video, and so on.

【Brand Virtual Spokesperson】

The other part is created by digital human "MCN agencies" and digital animation development companies. The business model of this type of digital human is more like KOL, and they obtain endorsement fees by participating in fashion events and brand promotions.

Before digital people became popular in China, many virtual idols abroad had already been in commercial practice for some time. Lil Miquela, who joined Instagram in 2016, is considered the first digital person on social media. She was developed by Brud, an artificial intelligence technology company in Silicon Valley. Once launched, she received a lot of attention and set an example for the subsequent commercialization of digital humans.

Lil Miquela strives to be authentic in her personality, social identity and appearance. She does not have flawless skin but has freckles. She lives in Los Angeles and is a virtual model and musician. She often updates her social life, photo shoots, advertising endorsements and other content on Instagram, which is very similar to the digital trajectory of celebrities and internet celebrities.

Lil Miquela’s cooperation method is similar to that of influencers, mainly brand promotion. She currently has more than 2 million fans and is the spokesperson for many luxury brands including Prada. According to CCTV.com, Lil Miquela's income in 2019 was approximately RMB 76 million. Despite the impact of the epidemic in 2020, Lil Miquela still basically maintained an income of 10 million US dollars, which is not inferior to that of real-life Internet celebrities.

In the second half of 2021, digital people also made their debut in China in large numbers, including the "Monster Catcher Girl" Liu Yexi. After releasing his first video on Douyin on October 31, 2021, his followers increased by 4 million in one week. She appears in an image that blends ancient fantasy and cyberpunk, positioning herself as a beauty expert and claiming that she can catch monsters.

Although it initially faced criticism for its stiff movements, unnatural special effects, and confusing story logic. But in the recently released videos, these problems have been greatly improved. Coupled with the suspense elements, smooth and natural movements, and the presentation method of combining Chinese fantasy with cyberpunk, the game has regained everyone's attention.

Another digital person, A Xi, is closer to people's lives. According to the developer Jesse, he wants to make a virtual idol, but not a traditional idol, not showing off the body or dancing, but hoping to give people a healing feeling. Although digital humans have emerged in large numbers since then, the excellent production and unique atmosphere have helped Ah Xi attract a lot of attention and commercial cooperation.

Another person who is equally famous is AYAYI. Among the digital people in our country, she is undoubtedly the most commercialized. Since her debut on May 20 last year, she announced her joining Alibaba in September and became the digital manager of Tmall Super Brand. Since then, a series of promotional activities have been launched in conjunction with the release of Tmall digital mooncakes and Tmall super brand digital products.

After joining Alibaba, AYAYI has had many opportunities to cooperate with brands, but the results have been mixed. When signing the contract to become the noise cancellation experience officer for Bose headphones, the technological sense of the headphones combined with the futuristic sense of the digital human himself demonstrated the advanced nature of the product, and AYAYI also matched the brand's tone very well.

Although both are technological devices, the idea of ​​designing clothes for alien computers seems a bit weird. It fails to demonstrate the superiority of the product and the technological nature of the brand. Instead, the flashy clothes divert people's attention from the product.

From a brand perspective, Watsons is also making big moves into the virtual world.

Last June, Watsons launched a new flavor of premixed soda water "X Soda Water" and signed Asia's popular virtual idol imma as its first virtual spokesperson.

This imma also has a prominent background. She debuted in Japan and appeared at the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Paralympic Games. Before cooperating with Watsons, imma had already won endorsements from many international brands including Magnum, Tiffany, Puma and IKEA. The Grop series she released in collaboration with Amazon Fashion in January 2021 was quickly sold out within 30 hours.

After cooperating with imma, Watsons also launched the virtual digital spokesperson "Qu Chenxi". On the one hand, cooperating with external digital people, and on the other hand, launching brand digital spokespersons. This approach is just like the live broadcast era where brands cooperate with internet celebrity anchors while cultivating their own broadcasters. Brands that have experienced the baptism of e-commerce and live streaming will never miss any possible opportunity when facing digital people.

But is this kind of marketing approach that enters the digital human field in a big way really suitable for most brands?

Choices under the tide: Hidden concerns of digital human marketing

According to incomplete statistics, many brands such as KFC, Nike, Balenciaga, and Nestlé have taken the lead in conducting virtual reality marketing experiments. Whether a brand wants to cooperate with digital people depends not only on their cool and youthful side, but also on comparing their own brand tone and the brand's overall metaverse deployment.

You should know that in terms of cooperation fees, digital people’s fees are not lower than real-life KOLs with the same level of fans. In particular, dynamic videos for better display effects are difficult to produce and the cost is very high. Blind cooperation may only “lose money and gain publicity” and fail to truly drive product sales and improve brand favorability.

The first misconception is that “virtual idols will never collapse.” The collapse of digital humans comes more from the creative team.

Since 2020, a series of collapses in the entertainment industry have not only caused fans to cry out: life is not worth it, but also made brands looking for spokespersons tread on thin ice. Once a cooperating artist has major negative news or is banned, the early efforts in cooperating with the endorsement promotion and material preparation will be wasted, and may even have a negative impact on the company's image.

In this regard, the stable and standardized output of digital humans gives brands a great sense of security. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Digital human business cooperation is not as stable and effective as it seems.

The stability of digital humans depends on the stability of the creative team. Planning failures, changes in the main creative personnel, etc. may cause the collapse of the digital human image. The uncertainty that was attempted to be eliminated in real-life idols ultimately returns to the human being.

For example, the digital person "Ling Ling" with a traditional Chinese style personality was originally designed as a traditional Chinese girl who is fond of Peking Opera, calligraphy and Tai Chi. She once participated in the CCTV variety show "Colorful Boys" and performed the Peking Opera excerpt "The Heavenly Girl Scattering Flowers". Her voice was also collected from the third-generation successor of the Peking Opera Mei School.

However, in subsequent operations, the content of many updates had little to do with ancient style and was more like the daily life of a young girl at home. Correspondingly, the attention paid to its content has also dropped significantly. Taking the Xiaohongshu account as an example, the first tweet received 6,220 likes, while the second one was a Gucci lipstick advertisement, which had no connection with the Chinese style at all and received only 1,170 likes. After being boycotted by netizens, it deleted the text content and only left the trial pictures. After that, the number of likes for the push notifications fluctuated and dropped to around 100.

The team realized the style problem and subsequently changed the content back to the ancient style, but it could not hide the downward trend in attention. The most recent Lantern Festival content had 10 interactions and 60 likes, but it is no longer as popular as it was in the past.

In addition to the mistakes made by the planning and creative teams, the persuasiveness of digital people in promoting products also remains to be verified.

Although many digital people are positioned in fashion and cosmetics, inviting virtual people to endorse products may be effective if it comes to product promotion. However, if you want to pursue sales conversion, virtual people are at a disadvantage in terms of product display effects.

In the comment section of Lingling’s product promotion tweet, many people questioned whether the digital human could actually achieve a real trial demonstration effect.

You should know that real-life opinion leaders promote products through the trust relationship with fans or by trying the products on themselves, eliminating the uncertainty of not being able to directly try out the products when shopping on e-commerce platforms. Its essence is the establishment of a trusting relationship.

No matter how realistic a digital person is, it is difficult for people to fully trust their personality and description. In addition, due to the nearly perfect appearance and figure, it is difficult for consumers to imagine the try-on effect, let alone create an effect that attracts imitation and purchase.

Virtual Digital Marketing 2.0

If a brand intends to establish a complete metaverse worldview, cooperation with digital humans is undoubtedly the best key to pry open the door to the metaverse world.

Digital humans and the metaverse seem to be two different trends, but in fact they have the same origins as NFT and blockchain technology, and both demonstrate the ambition of business to enter the virtual world in recent years. However, in terms of application, the two are different, representing two attempts to move commercial marketing from the real to the virtual:

"Walk in" & "Pull out"

First of all, the core component of "Walk In" is the metaverse, which you can understand as a virtual world that interacts with the real world but develops independently. The main circulating products in the Metaverse are currently NFT virtual collections, which achieve the exchange and flow of resources by establishing an economic system and circulation rules in cyberspace. The Metaverse is supported by AI, cloud computing, 3D modeling, and the blockchain technology we are familiar with.

This type of marketing activity is to attract people to purchase digital assets in the virtual world, occupy resources in the virtual world, and guide people to inject funds from the real world into the virtual world for value exchange, so it is called "walking in".

“Pulling out” means that the digital human walks out of the virtual world and enters the real world. Digital people are the natives of the metaverse, and they post updates and content on social media and content media. This kind of behavior is more like "pulling" digital people out, out of the virtual and into the real.

For example, in AYAYI’s commercial endorsements, we saw NFT products. AMX yogurt, which targets young people, officially announced its cross-dimensional cooperation with AYAYI and released its first digital yogurt, which combined with AYAYI's digital image created a futuristic scene.

NFT is the abbreviation of Non-Fungible Token, which is translated as "non-fungible token". Its birth and circulation records are built on the blockchain. Compared with digital currency, it is more like a mapping of collectibles in the metaverse.

The linkage between NFT and digital people makes the metaverse worldview behind it clearer. Digital people are no longer just virtual images that update on social media, and NFTs are no longer just a picture and a string of codes. Together, they echo the brand’s values ​​and empower brand products with digital assets.

Many entities also have this misunderstanding when developing digital human virtual idols: on the one hand, they want to connect to the future, and on the other hand, they want to be close to life to gain resonance. But in fact, no matter how realistic, the vividness of digital people cannot match that of real people.

In real life, we have no shortage of internet celebrities with beautiful faces and graceful figures, nor are we short of new-age idols with independent personalities and remarkable achievements in their own fields. Similarly, there is still no shortage of ordinary individuals who can share their daily joys, sorrows and touches. Why should people chase numbers and trust her recommendations? This is a question that all digital human development teams and partner brands need to think about.

Just as important as modeling ability is the ability to construct a virtual world. The personality of a digital person should not only consist of a self-introduction and a few pictures, but also need his own story line. Behind every successful digital person, there should actually be a "Three-Body Problem" of his own. Obviously, there aren't many digital people who can do this right now.

"Gold mine" or "sinkhole"?

Lindsey McInerney, global head of technology and innovation at Anheuser-Busch InBev, once said, "The future of sports, media and entertainment is virtual. Almost 2.5 billion people are already participating in the virtual economy. This is the direction in which the world is evolving."

Should brands participate in the metaverse? The answer is yes. But is now the best time? I don't think so.

The current digital humans are not very mature from development to operation. For small and medium-sized brands, it is better to spend money on areas that can better enhance the brand's hard power than to spend a lot of effort on "fighting and grabbing land" in the metaverse.

For brands that have already formed stable brand assets and have the capacity to plan for the future in advance, they must also make good plans, and step into the future in advance through systematic operations and metaverse layout, in conjunction with the marketing activities of virtual digital people.

At present, whether it is digital people, NFTs or the metaverse, they are not places for small and medium-sized brands to overtake others, but rather icing on the cake. Therefore, when carrying out virtual marketing, in addition to enthusiasm, brands must also make careful decisions. Digital humans and the metaverse still have a long way to go.

Author: The Beauty of Marketing

Source: The Beauty of Marketing