Killer case, Moutai has mastered metaverse marketing!

The Metaverse is rapidly germinating and growing in various forms in various industries. Many brands are using the Metaverse to seek more innovative forms to attract consumers' attention. This article takes Moutai's Metaverse marketing as an example to dismantle the marketing routines, hoping to inspire you.

How much would you give for a future that seems out of reach now?

The right and wrong of the metaverse.

Many people believe that the Metaverse is a scam under the guise of an ideal future, a gimmick to attract attention, and a grand narrative of capital. However, amid doubts and controversies, the Metaverse is like a beacon, allowing many fields and industries to move forward.

If 2021 is the "first year of the Metaverse", then 2022 will be the year of the Metaverse's rapid development. After the hype and capital cooling, the Metaverse is rapidly emerging and growing in various forms in various industries. In particular, many brands regard the Metaverse as a new strategic location for brand building and marketing, and spare no effort to find new growth points in the world of the Metaverse.

Data shows that among the top 50 brands in Metaverse Marketing, automobiles, food and catering, and clothing are the industries with the highest proportions, accounting for 22%, 18%, and 18% respectively. Among them, 70% of brands choose virtual space marketing, 22% choose virtual human marketing, and 56% choose digital collection marketing. Of course, these forms of Metaverse are not mutually exclusive, and most brands will choose two or more types of Metaverse Marketing.

It is understandable that in a business world where attention is extremely fragmented and competition is fierce, brands urgently need to break through conventional marketing innovations to seek growth breakthroughs, and the Metaverse is a sufficiently subversive, narrative, and integrated guide.

1. How does the Metaverse empower brand marketing?

From an industrial perspective, the metaverse is a new type of Internet application and social form that integrates the virtual and the real, which will reshape people's production, life and social relations and build a digital twin of the real world.

However, as many people have expected, the ultimate form of the metaverse requires technological development and breakthroughs in multiple fields such as extended reality technology, blockchain technology, and digital twin technology, and even involves issues such as politics and human ethics. It is a long way off and we can only imagine it at the moment.

Fortunately, the development of everything is gradual. I think that if we look at it from a magnifying time scale, everything is a parabola in time and space.

Looking back at reality, the real universe we live in was not formed overnight.

After the Big Bang, the temperature dropped sharply, and the particles that make up matter were formed in about 3 minutes. After 380,000 years, the temperature dropped to a certain level, the atomic structure was formed, and light began to propagate in the universe. Later, about 200 million years later, the nebulae in the universe gradually formed various stars under gravitational collapse, and finally formed the universe we see, and the universe is still expanding rapidly, without stopping for a moment.

The formation of the metaverse must also be such a long-term path. It is generally believed that the ultimate form of the metaverse will go through a process of a single metaverse, multiple metaverses, cross-metaverses, and super-metaverses.

A single metaverse is a single metaverse established by some leading institutions, that is, an enterprise or platform establishes its own metaverse. After the vigorous development of a single metaverse, a multiverse situation is formed, where everyone coexists harmoniously and each manages the beauty of their own universe. The world has never been an isolated island. When these single metaverses cooperate with each other and share what they have, a cross-metaverse is formed. The ultimate of the cross-metaverse is the super-metaverse, which is the ultimate appearance of the metaverse.

Why mention the development process of the metaverse?

Because from a single metaverse to a super metaverse, without commercial practice, everything is just a mirage. Metaverse marketing is a more realistic path to put aside the difficulties of the industry, eliminate disadvantages, promote advantages, and explore the future of the metaverse.

Whether it is a commercial organization or an enterprise, they all have an infinite desire for growth, hoping to change the relationship between people, goods and places by building virtual scenes and providing immersive interactive experiences, and to reconstruct a more sticky and friendly supply and demand logic in a new and attractive model.

The development of the metaverse industry may be a long process, but metaverse marketing can take the lead.

The metaverse provides brands with an integrated approach and concept to deal with marketing weakness and solve the problem of fictitious marketing efficiency and energy consumption. When a brand builds its own metaverse, it integrates narratives around the brand connotation or characteristics to build a metaverse based on the brand core. We call this metaverse Brand-verse.

For brands, subjective commercial harassment disappears in the Brand-verse, replaced by users' active exploration and immersive social experience, and even various co-creations based on the brand-built framework. In this friendly process, brand concepts and product information are subtly output. For consumers, consumption is no longer just a one-time transaction, but a long-term entertainment experience or social experience, taking into account both material and spiritual needs, and can obtain a better brand perception and consumption experience.

The Metaverse empowers brand marketing, which is a new way for companies to rebuild the social relationship between brands and users, integrate brand narratives, and rapidly promote the deep integration of the real economy and the virtual economy.

2. What are the high-energy gameplays of Metaverse Marketing?

As market dividends disappear, it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire users, attention, consumption, and sustainable user retention through conventional marketing. From this perspective, the Metaverse is an answer to the question “where is brand growth?”

Moutai officially launched the Metaverse platform "Xunfeng" on January 1, 2023, opening up the Metaverse digital world of Moutai, which can be called a killer case of Metaverse marketing. Taking this case, I will share how to do high-energy Metaverse marketing from three perspectives.

1. Immersion

From a marketing perspective, metaverse technology is the foundation, but the cultural core is the root. Brand-verse is a virtual world built based on unique brand genes and temperament, with a complete and highly experiential brand narrative, all of which can only be formed around the cultural core.

Xunfeng Metaverse has created a "parallel world" for Moutai and its users. After completing the authentication, you need to select your gender, face shape, and enter your nickname. After entering the APP, you can have fun. The entire Xunfeng Metaverse, from the name to the scene to the gameplay, is centered around the core of Moutai culture.

In the Book of Changes, the "Xun" hexagram is the wind hexagram, which is the southeast position of the Eight Trigrams. The Xun wind is the southeast wind, and the wind direction that dominates Maotai Town is the southeast wind. For example, the "Source of Maotai Liquor" is Maotai Town, where Maotai Liquor originated and the origin of the Xunfeng metaverse. At the same time, the three major distilleries of Chengyi, Ronghe, and Hengxing are all mapped into the virtual world. There are also user exploration activities including collecting wheat and sorghum, learning wine-making techniques, etc., and the brewing techniques and stories of Maotai Liquor are output in waves.

It is the development centered around the core of Moutai culture that makes the entire Xunfeng metaverse extremely immersive. Although due to technical limitations, some scenes and functions are still rough, the strong cultural influence has already formed a great appeal to users.

2. Social

No matter which universe it is, humans are always the center of the universe, because humans are social animals and naturally need to socialize. If immersion is the foundation of the metaverse, then sociality is the core of the metaverse.

Needless to say, in the real world, the virtual human market has maintained rapid growth. Data shows that the current core market size of virtual humans is around 12 billion yuan, and it is expected to surge to 48 billion yuan by 2025. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why it is important to talk about the social nature of the metaverse.

As far as the metaverse itself is concerned, the entire digital world is fixed and a constant. Only the digital twins of people are variables, making this world rich and real.

From the brand's perspective, the main IP of Xunfeng Metaverse is "Xiao Xun", whose prototype comes from "Bai Ze" in "Classic of Mountains and Seas", a kind of auspicious beast in Kunlun Mountain. Bai Ze met the spirit of Moutai's wine yeast and turned into a wise child "Xiao Xun", which is full of mythological colors and oriental interest.

In addition, in the entire Xunfeng meta-universe, there are guides, villagers, winemaking instructors, apprentices, etc., each of whom has his or her own duties and is vivid and lifelike.

From the user's perspective, the user's digital avatar can be customized and equipped with clothes. At the same time, in the metaverse scene, it provides a forum for users to communicate and discuss socially. The digital avatar is the reflection of the user in the virtual world, and it must have thousands of faces, so that it has uniqueness and a sense of belonging. At present, the digital identity of users in the Xunfeng metaverse is slightly monotonous, and there is still a lot of room for improvement in image and social interaction.

However, from the perspective of the super metaverse, the user's digital identity will definitely be unified from the various identities in the multiverse, and it will be unique and irreplaceable. For now, blockchain-based digital identity still has a long way to go, and cross-chain will be a problem in the future.

3. Economical

If the metaverse is separated from the context and human factors, it must still be a complete economic circulation system, so that the entire world can operate and bring greater commercial value, social value and life value.

At present, NFTs and digital points are mainly used to support the economic cycle in its metaverse.

In the Xunfeng Metaverse, users can receive limited edition commemorative NFTs, or find various brewing materials and tools, and brew their own digital collections as the twenty-four solar terms change. The core benefit of digital collections is the qualification to purchase 53%vol 500ml Kweichow Moutai (Year of the Rabbit), which allows the social and economic nature of the collection to circulate.

Similarly, Xun value is the virtual points in the Xunfeng Metaverse app, which can be obtained through exploration, answering knowledge questions, unlocking treasure chests, shopping in the market, etc., and the points can be exchanged for items, etc. The points mall can also play the power of cultural creation, output brand peripherals, and make the points work.

In addition, the various activities that are constantly created not only increase user stickiness, but also make the entire economic cycle operate quickly, integrating immersion and sociality.

With the help of the Metaverse, Moutai integrates cultural output, commercial channels and user interaction, releasing a strong influence and appeal, becoming a hot topic for a while. It can be seen that Moutai is a successful attempt of the brand through Metaverse marketing, and it is also a great exploration of the brand in the field of Web3.

The Metaverse is expanding rapidly just like the real universe. In terms of the application of the Metaverse in various scenarios, 43% of industry experts predict that Metaverse marketing will have a very high potential market size. Even more than 70% of industry experts believe that the Metaverse will only take 1-3 years to mature in the marketing field!

Many brands have already entered the market, especially the leading brands are actively deploying metaverse marketing because no one wants to miss an opportunity for explosive growth.

It is foreseeable that the Metaverse may not be the future of marketing, but there will definitely be Metaverse marketing in the future. The only thing you need to think about is how much you are willing to pay for this future?

Author: Little Monk Kunkun

Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Zen Institute (ID: mandcx)"