Metaverse Marketing. I’m Having A Déjà Vu.
Two weeks ago the European Union made headlines for throwing a €387K metaverse party — and only a handful of people showed up. Why am I not surprised? As a tech-enthusiast who’s lived through the nillies, I’m having a déjà vu.
So, as a cautionary tale to all marketers who don’t realize that people won’t show up in your virtual worlds if you don’t offer a compelling reason to attend, I will tell the story of Second Life — a virtual world that boomed and busted in the mid 2000s.
Cyberpunks Leading The Way
The idea of virtual worlds was explored in the ’80s in Cyberpunk Science Fiction novels. These novels describe low-lifes in high-tech dystopian worlds, who hack into a virtual cyber space and risk their real lives, even if they’re just lying in a chair in real life.
The dream of virtual worlds seemed attainable when the computing power of PCs started to increase in the mid 90s. Between 1995 and the early 2000’s, a number of virtual worlds were built combining chat group technology and 3D technology.
The new technology promised to change our lives. The digital thought leaders of the early 90s naively envisioned virtual worlds as safe places to explore the world and bring people together regardless of their real-world limitations or appearances. And while people got married in virtual worlds, philosophers and psychologists discussed whether we would start living in the virtual world and lose touch with our real-world family and friends.
But not everyone had such lofty goals. Many people saw virtual worlds as piles of money — of future revenue. The value of a virtual world was proportional to the amount of inhabitants. But, since the business model was a bit vague, virtual world owners would soon turn to… advertisers.
Enter Second Life
Second Life, launched in 2003, was prophesied as the next internet — sounds familiar? It was considered the epitome of a virtual world. Evidently there were well-intentioned social experiments, communities of educators, universities opening up to otherwise underserved audiences, etc.
But Second Life will go into the history books for its boom and bust, its virtual economy, people getting real-life rich, brands racing to start virtual flagship stores, virtual pop concerts, virtual crime, lawsuits, advertisers and then the sex,… the weird sex.
Second Life was — and still is — an advanced 3D world. People could make avatars look like themselves, but you could just as well embody an animal, an object or a combination. A forty-something man living his second life as a female bunny with exposed breasts would be pretty normal. Just like furry humans with tails. That was a thing too.
Second Life had its own economy, driven by Linden Dollars — they were not on the blockchain, but speculation happened just as well. As a visitor you’d get a standard avatar and you’d get moving. But if you wanted to upgrade your avatar or own a house or objects you would need to build it or buy it.
Second Life allowed graphic designers, 3D modelers and developers to create objects, buildings and scripts. Even though early digital visionaries believed that looks wouldn’t matter, we know from previous virtual worlds that looking good in the metaverse is everything.
Needles to say that digital hairpieces were big business.
But people need events to show off their hair or their furry tails for that matter, so there were plenty of events. There were virtual clubs, which in order to attract people, would employ DJs and exotic dancers, played by real people.
After a couple of digital brawls, club owners needed digital bouncers against so-called “griefers”, who would disturb an event by flying around with penis-like avatars to name one trick.
As Second Life got more press, pop artists jumped on the bandwagon. In 2006 Suzan Vega became the first major artist to perform a live gig in Second Life. Bands like Duran Duran, U2 and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra followed suit.
And conforming to the original internet philosophy of openness, any amateur artist could organize a gig in Second Life. How to attract an audience? That’s the crux. Still today. Ask the European Union.
Avatar-Based Marketing
As Second Life boasted over a million monthly users at its peak in 2007, another kind of audience was attracted: marketers
Retailers like Adidas, Reebok, Nike and American Apparel would set-up virtual flagship stores, creating jobs for virtual shop attendants. Toyota and Pontiac also raced to set up virtual dealerships, not to promote real cars, but to sell completely customizable virtual cars to avatars in exchange for Linden dollars. I’m gonna stop writing “sounds familiar?” after every single paragraph, but just think it.
Companies like Nissan would rent virtual land for a couple of 1000 real dollars and retain their digital agency to design and develop a virtual motor show for a couple of 10.000 real dollars in order to launch their brand-new car in Second Life.
Remember history class, when we learned that not the miners but the providers of food, lodging and shovels got rich during the American gold rush?
Anshe Chung was the avatar of a woman who became the first real-dollar millionaire by developing land and property in Second Life. At a certain point she employed 80 artists and programmers who created objects, buildings and spaces for big brands. She was heralded as the “Rockefeller of Second Life” by business media such as CNN, Business Week and Fortune.
While Second Life claimed that their GDP was reaching that of a small country and high brow publications like the Harvard Business Review wrote about “Avatar-based marketing”, a US Congressional committee was investigating whether virtual assets and incomes should be taxed.
But by 2009 the craze was over and global interest in Second Life plummeted. Brands could get headlines by being the first to open a Second Life presence. But other than that, there would be only a couple dozen avatars attending the launch of a flagship store, never to return. Navigating in Second Life was cumbersome, let alone trading or designing a house. And above all, there was simply nothing to do.
Users would soon trade their virtual existence in Second Life, for a virtual existence in social media on their mobile phone. Their avatar would resemble their actual appearance more than in Second Life, but people could still show a “better” version of themselves on Social Media.
15 Years Later
Market research headlines tell us that about 70% of people, especially Gen Z, believe that the metaverse will change their lives.
Take this at face value and it is self-evident that every self-respecting brand and even government will suffer some serious FOMO if they don’t have a Metaverse Marketing Strategy to attract a young audience: whether it is a presence in a virtual world, building an own virtual experience, using NFTs for exclusive events, putting tokens of attendance on the blockchain, …
… and the marketer’s metaverse wet dream: people signing up to your newsletter with a MetaMask token.
The opportunities are limitless. If only those pesky Gen Z’ers would show up.
