Marketing in Metaverse: Blurring the Lines Between Real and Virtual Worlds
A metaverse is a digital universe where you can be anyone, do anything, and go anywhere. It merges the real and virtual worlds, allowing remote work, virtual concerts, global exploration, and much more.
It is where people can interact with other people and digital objects in a more immersive way than it is possible online now. A metaverse is not only a place where everybody could have their avatars and live a real life, it has the potential to revolutionize how we live, work, and play, blurring the lines between physical and digital existence.
Imagine if you needed to go to work, but instead of physically going to an office, you would join a co-working space in a virtual world. Wouldn’t it be also amazing, if you didn’t have to go shopping in crowded shopping malls and you could just try products in a metaverse using your avatar? These are just a couple of examples, but the opportunities and experiences in a metaverse are limitless which brands are successfully using to market their products.
Benefits of Marketing in Metaverse
It goes without saying that metaverses have become a lucrative place for promoting brands and many companies use this opportunity for their marketing campaigns. Metaverses are already very popular among millions of people and it is expected that the number of users will grow significantly over the upcoming years. Moreover, a metaverse is a popular place not only among gamers but also among people who like connecting with their friends in a virtual world and getting access to new experiences and opportunities. This is especially true for Gen Z since it is a generation that grew with the internet and digital technologies. All these factors make metaverses a prime opportunity for brands to reach a wider audience.
The main reasons why marketing in the metaverse is beneficial are the following:
- The metaverse is a rapidly growing platform with a large and engaged audience. The global metaverse market size is predicted to attain USD 936.6 billion by 2030, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. As more and more people spend time in the metaverse, businesses will need to find ways to reach them there.
- Metaverses can help businesses to build stronger relationships with customers because a metaverse gives an opportunity to interact with customers in a completely new way. Brands and companies can reach out to their customers in a manner that is not available ‘through the screen’. Since metaverses erase the line with reality, it can provide customers with brand-new personal experiences by means of real-like interaction with a brand. can interact with customers in a more personal way.
- The same goes for marketing and selling products. Opportunities for creating unique and immersive experiences for users of a metaverse are almost limitless. Just imagine that potential customers can see and try your products but without any physical limits such as the location or availability of some particular products in a shop. Even though selling products in a metaverse may not work for all product types, marketing and advertising have immense potential. Holding events, playing games with brand influencers, creating virtual showrooms and interactive demos – the sky’s the limit!
However, in order to leverage the abilities of the metaverse to promote a brand or product, companies should somehow integrate into a metaverse. One of the tools to achieve this goal is to use advergames as a way of carrying out a marketing campaign.
Advergaming As a Means of Reaching Customers
Advergaming is a form of advertising in which companies create brand-focused video games to launch a product or boost brand awareness. Advergames are customized based on how brands want to present themselves to their target audiences and showcase the features of their products. They are usually free to play and customized to direct users to enjoy the game and eventually be more interested in purchasing a brand’s products.
Advergames can be used to host virtual events and experiences because they are a great way to engage with customers and promote a brand in a metaverse. Advergames can be created and integrated for product launches as well as for other brand events.
Even before metaverses appeared, brands were using advergames to the fullest. Take, for example, Volkswagen’s campaign called ‘Polowers’ which used advergames as a tool of solving the problem of brand awareness. The campaign was launched in Spain in order to create a stronger social media presence and raise awareness among younger followers. Apart from the creative touch applied to the name of the campaign “Polo + Followers = Polowers”, the power of competition was realized through an advergame.
To play the game, users had to first become followers of the Volkswagen Spain Twitter account. Once they were followers, they could start playing the game by tweeting using the #polowers hashtag. Every time the polower twitted, they would get the first position in the race. The polower who would have the first position when the race stopped would win the Polo. Yes, that easy!
By creating a game with simple rules and leveraging the ‘Competition and Accomplishment‘ core drive, the campaign could achieve a huge success. It generated more than 150 thousand tweets for just 8 hours at a speed of over 5 tweets per second and became the most trending hashtag in Spain. Also, the game generated a vast amount of visits to Polo´s product section on their website reaching a record in its history.
This is just one example of how efficient advergames can be when it comes to promoting a brand or product. However, with the appearance of metaverses, advergames can offer even more exciting and engaging opportunities.
Fortnite: Metaverse for Marketing Success
When it comes to advergames in metaverses, Fortnite is the first one that comes to mind. It is difficult to come up with a better example since Fortnite has a long list of brands that collaborated with the Fortnite Metaverse in order to create advergames. Let’s look at some of the recent advergames created in their metaverse.
Fortnite x Coca Cola
In 2022 Coca Cola introduced a new product ‘Coca Cola Zero Sugar Bytes’, which they named to be ‘the first Coca Cola flavor born in the metaverse’.
In order to promote the Pixel flavored drink, Coca Cola collaborated with Fortnite metaverse and created a Pixel Point Island shaped like the bottle of Coca Cola. Players can play different mini-games on the island, participate in a race and have competition with their friends.
The campaign created such a buzz that it was not left unnoticed by other food giants. Adam Harter, SVP of media, sports and entertainment at PepsiCo said: “Gaming has exploded to such a massive audience. It’s not just about those competitive gamers … I see this now as an opportunity to become more surgical in how we reach consumers.”
However, not only food giants see the importance of integrating their products into metaverses by means of advergaming, companies from other industries such as automotive, clothing, sports and others see metaverses as one of the main tools for marketing.
Fortnite x Nike
Nike also decided not to stay aside from the opportunity to promote their brand among the younger generation and collaborated with Fortnite. They created a Fortnite island called ‘Airforia’ that features the latest products in an exciting and entertaining way. Airphoria brings to life the future of sports experiences at the intersection of games and culture, removing the barriers of physical products and bringing together Nike’s iconic Air Max brand and the immersive world of Fortnite.
The Airforia island provides users with very exciting experiences. They can play mini-games, receive gifts, find special products, and enjoy the Nike-world created with cutting-edge technologies.
Apart from the examples above, there are many more companies and brands who collaborated with Fortnite including NFL, Marvel, UEFA, Ferrari, Balenciaga, Monopoly, Air Jordan, and others.
‘Assetto Corsa x Fiat’ Advergame
The Assetto Corsa Tournament, organized by Fiat Türkiye and Multiplayer Agency has brought together the most important names in the Turkish esports and racing worlds.
For this campaign, Fiat’s latest car models were modded into the Assetto Corsa game. By doing this, The campaign became a pioneer in the Turkish racing world for innovative marketing and made sure that gamers had a realistic driving experience.
The Assetto Corsa Tournament became a very successful campaign for Fiat as well. Thanks to the campaign, Fiat’s latest car models reached a wide audience. The campaign was followed closely by many racing and esports fans. Therefore, the brand’s place in the racing world became stronger.
To sum up, marketing campaigns are leveraging more and more on integrating the products into different metaverses and games. The metaverse is a rapidly growing platform with a large and engaged audience, making it a lucrative place for promoting brands and products. Companies can use a metaverse to build stronger relationships with customers, sell products and services in new and innovative ways, and host virtual events and experiences.
Advergames are a great way to engage with customers and promote a brand in the metaverse. They can be created and integrated for product launches, brand events, and other purposes. As metaverses continue to grow and develop, we can expect to see even more innovative and engaging advergames being created.
