Gaming can create a brand community
Yujin Lee, ECD, B-Reel LA
With so many forms of digital media, and new ones always on the horizon, how do you determine which way of pushing content is the most viable? How do you decide what digital media is right for your brand content today?
Meet your audiences where they are, whether it’s an existing or new platform. We have more opportunities to innovate than ever before with new technologies. How you determine the best way starts with the business goal and consumer value, not the technology. But you need to know what’s possible.
How does the boundless framework of the metaverse make it appealing for brands and marketers to get involved in this new form of media? What opportunities does metaverse present to brands?
I think of the metaverse simply as 3D UX, and believe that the potential to tell a story, deliver value, or activate a community is infinite as we’ve only begun to scratch the surface.
What plans, if any, does your agency have to expand its reach into the metaverse?
Hire the right talent (3D artists and motion designers, brand and product designers, forward thinking and innovative strategists and creative engineers). As a design studio, all of us are expected to be attuned to new technologies and its implications on the type of brand experiences we want to create. We have more tools in our arsenal than ever before to deliver experiences that have multi-sensory interactions. With not a lot of examples to copy, our challenge is to pioneer in this space by testing, learning, and failing and doing it repeatedly until we see the edges and begin to define what success looks like.
In what ways can the increase in virtual presence lead to more successful campaigns and what would a virtual space allow you to do that traditional media hasn’t? What’s possible for brand experiences in the metaverse?
We’ve evolved rapidly from watching brand content to engaging with brands. The metaverse (or 3D UX) presents deeper ways to amplify that engagement. Brands today are experimenting with gaming to create sticky connections with users but they often lack lasting value for either the brand or consumers. We see a lot of opportunities to redefine the entire brand system to encompass both physical and digital environments as well as both 2D and 3D UX. Gaming isn’t the point, but through gamification of UX, we can connect lasting value to the science behind how we keep users coming back. Gaming can create a brand community which is a great way to keep the brand relevant, stretching those marketing budgets beyond a one-off campaign.
How do you anticipate the metaverse shaping new forms of storytelling in advertising? How will it change storytelling as we know it? How will it affect how consumers consume and engage with brands?
Brands will continue to tell stories we care about, deliver on a promise and value, and activate a community to action in the metaverse. The metaverse won’t really change that but it’s likely consumers will multi-task even more than they already are (i.e. watching a video while chatting simultaneously or chatting while playing a game or interacting with the brand and others while viewing something else). It’ll probably get overwhelming and distracting at first but we think the human species will adapt. However, brands will need to continue designing focused and simple experiences that earn our time.