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Decentraland: A Virtual World Built on Ethereum | Gemini

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Decentraland is a user-owned, Ethereum-based virtual world where you can play, explore, and interact with games and activities. You can also purchase parcels of land on which to build your own environments, marketplaces, and applications. Opened to the public in January 2020, Decentraland is an Ethereum-based virtual world, or metaverse, that is owned by its users and governed through a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) .

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Creative Prototyping | Marketing resources | Facebook Gaming Marketing

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DISCOVER MORE

The Big Catch

Put Creative Prototyping into practice by experimenting with motivation-led ad creative. Reach bigger audiences, understand what motivates people to play, and increase the quality of your ads. Find out more in The Big Catch Playbook.

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Creative Prototyping | Marketing resources | Facebook Gaming Marketing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
DISCOVER MORE Put Creative Prototyping into practice by experimenting with motivation-led ad creative. Reach bigger audiences, understand what motivates people to play, and increase the quality of your ads. Find out more in The Big Catch Playbook.

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The greatest impediments to changes in our traditional roles seem to lie not in the visible world of conscious intent, but in the murky realm of the unconscious mind.

-Dr. Augustus Napier

The Metaverse

The Zuck is obsessed with another Augustus, world-conquering emperor Augustus Caesar. But the boy-who-would-be-emperor has a problem, something standing between him and greater wealth and power. Not the Facebook board; he's neutered that via dual-class shares. Not the government; his 900-person comms department, coupled with a massive increase in lobbying expenditures, has dispensed with that nuisance. The last remaining obstacle is the world itself ... it's distracting.

So Zuck envisions a series of virtual worlds to absorb our remaining attention. The arbiter of activity algorithms in that world would be a god - and able to serve a shit-ton of targeted Nissan ads.

Virtual Fantasy

In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2.3 billion. Oculus was a Kickstarter-backed venture with a head-mounted virtual reality display in pre-production that was targeted mainly at immersive video gamers. The deal was controversial, but co-founder and boy genius Palmer Luckey defended it on Reddit: "I guarantee that you won't need to log into your Facebook account every time you wanna use the Oculus Rift."

By August 2020, Luckey and his co-founder were gone, and Facebook announced you would have to be logged into Facebook to use the Oculus headset. Luckey admitted that the skeptical responses to the deal "from people with more real-world experience than me were justified."

VR headsets, along with similar products from Vive and Sony, will sell about 6 million units in 2021. A real market, but not a category that's registered broad consumer adoption. Some heavily hyped projects have flopped, such as the notorious Magic Leap, which has raised $3 billion in venture capital over 10 years while frantically pivoting from one vaporware announcement to the next. Or Google Glass, which launched in 2013 but was pulled two years later. People swiftly realized it could do only a handful of things the iPhone could, and worse. Google won't give up, though, as it refashions the wearable from Tron to hipster.

Wired's David Karpf called VR the rich white kid of technology. "It never stops failing upward, forever graded on a generous curve, always judged based on its 'potential' rather than its results."

And who loves VR headsets? Rich white kid Mark Zuckerberg. He plays virtual ping pong with the President of Indonesia and sneaks into the company's VR demo room after hours. But Zuck isn't pushing VR for gaming. "You've known me for a long time," he once told a journalist. "I don't optimize for fun." He sounds like the absolute worst person on the planet to roll in Vegas with - a decent proxy for any person's true character. But I digress.

I hate sitting in the passenger seat of my British SUV, as I'm certain I can drive better than whoever is behind the wheel at that moment. I can feel my feet pressing and depressing as if I'm actually driving. Take this times a billion, and you'll be getting warm re understanding Mr. Zuckerberg. A guy who decided it was a good idea to hold an American flag while commandeering an e-foil electric surfboard after depressing our teens, perverting our elections, and making our discourse more coarse. Reportedly, a voice from the boat was yelling, "I'm proud of your progress - but we need to do better!"

That last paragraph has almost nothing to do with this post, but it felt good writing it.

Facebook You Can Wear to Work

To extend its run of success, Facebook must establish vertical distribution (i.e., hardware). As powerful as the platform is, the sixth-most-valuable company on Earth rests behind five others that all have more control over their distribution (i.e., iOS, Playstation, Android, Oil Wells, and Alexa). Facebook relies on other firms, including Apple and Google, for distribution. So the company is investing massively in hardware. With Oculus, Zuck sees a way to leapfrog mobile and laptops to connect people to Facebook in a more immersive and engaging way. And, more importantly, to enable him to treat Tim Cook as he does every elected official and technology ethicist: ignore him.

Facebook has also registered limited success penetrating the world in which most of us spend the majority of our time: work. Last week, Zuckerberg unveiled an attempt to use VR to expand Facebook's reach into the corporate world.

This is the commercial Facebook made to launch Horizon Workrooms, its VR-based challenge to Zoom, Slack, and the world of work as we know it. The promo video would be concerning if it weren't so lame. Instead of meeting over Zoom (or just joining an easy, old-fashioned conference call), everyone puts on a one-pound plastic headband and meets in a conference room that looks like something from Peacock's newest animated series about corporate life. A woman snaps her fingers to change the color of her virtual shirt, and then she makes a magenta swirly line around some virtual documents, causing them to pile together and ... sort of ... merge? Oh, and nobody has legs.

Word is, the technology is going to mate with Microsoft's Bob and give birth to Rosemary's Baby. I'm especially proud of the last sentence.

Broadcast media is so desperate for relevance, they will all but guarantee to be a cartoon of access journalism. Alongside the official commercial, Facebook manufactured an even more craptastic "exclusive" virtual interview with Gayle King on CBS This Morning. I haven't been this grossed out by the fawning of a TV journalist ("Wait, Mark, this is so cool ... I can see all your hands.") since Charlie Rose exalted Bezos and his octocopter delivery drones. BTW, that was eight years ago, and there's zero chance a fucking octocopter is going to deliver the edibles I'd like (check that - need) right about now.

King didn't see fit to inform viewers about the product's numerous glitches and bugs, and she declined to ask any of the sort of questions a ... wait for it ... journalist might ask, if it were an interview vs. an infomercial. Like: How will Facebook protect private conversations? What's the business model? Will Workrooms integrate with other companies' hardware or virtual spaces?

The answers: poorly, ads, and NFW.

That's So Meta

The most interesting aspect of the announcement, however, is that Facebook is pitching Workrooms not as a 3D version of Zoom, but as something called the "metaverse."

Defining the metaverse is the kind of thing nerds fight to the death over. (Here's an excellent nine-chapter epic to get you started on the literature.) I can tell you two things about it. First, it's a future vision of the digital world beyond today's internet, in which people socialize, work, and play across multiple domains, that is socially and economically integrated with the physical world. Second, Horizon Workrooms isn't it.

The metaverse is a concept that's been floating around tech for decades, and it is legitimately interesting. But also, legitimately not anywhere near real. Interest spiked after Epic Games announce d a $1 billion funding round devoted to its "long-term vision of the metaverse" - well timed after a year of lockdowns and Zoom calls that have made a virtual world feel more real.

Multiplayer games are an illustration of what the metaverse could look like; they have the trappings of persistence and community. World of Warcraft is the most popular, and Eve Online is now part of MoMA's permanent collection. Both are large online worlds populated by a mix of computer-controlled characters and human avatars who socialize, fight, create culture, and trade goods and services for (in-game) currency. (There are 10 million transactions a day on Warcraft, with some items trading for the equivalent of almost $1,000.) In the novel/film Ready, Player One, the hero lives in a dystopian trailer park but spends all his time going to school, socializing, and working "inside" OASIS, which is essentially World of Warcraft 2045.

The hot metaverse game of the moment is Fortnite (disclosure: investor). Once a relatively simple game in which 100 strangers fought one another elimination-style for sole possession of an island over and over again - think Hunger Games - it's now a multibillion-dollar enterprise that hosts Travis Scott concerts and Christopher Nolan premieres. Its publisher, Epic, is all-in on the metaverse hype. The company opened its antitrust trial against Apple with its CEO claiming Fortnite isn't a video game at all, but "a phenomenon that transcends gaming," no less than the metaverse itself.

But 3D graphics and fantasy/sci-fi trappings are not what makes the metaverse. Twitter is also a virtual world, and in some ways it's closer to the vision of the Metaverse than online games. It's a persistent, online extension of reality, with a large and diverse community of contributors who trade in the true universal currency: our attention. Imagine Twitter, but with graphics and a currency ... and you are getting there.

Cryptocurrency and its offspring the non-fungible token are tokens from the metaverse future, pieces of digital ephemera that are portable across digital spaces and can be exchanged for real-world goods.

The full metaverse lies in a distant future in which distinct virtual worlds coalesce into a single integrated online world that is in turn integrated with the physical world. Your identity, your relationships, your money are the same online and off, and among different communities within the Metaverse. It's probably not a proprietary, branded environment, like a single website, but a linked world of multiple environments of varying public and private nature, like the Internet. Put another way, the interoperability of a metaverse is the key to becoming THE metaverse.

MetaFace

Zuckerberg has been on a metaverse kick lately, telling people that, in five years, he thinks Facebook will be known as "a metaverse company," and mentioning the term 16 times on the company's most recent earnings call vs. once for "advertising."

Yet the metaverse, a technologist's dream, is Facebook's nightmare. It would essentially render the social network irrelevant. Facebook's most valuable asset is its social graph, its dataset of users, links between users, and their shared content. In a metaverse future, we'll all have identities on the metaverse, and anyone can open a virtual space for sharing photos of your 10-year-old's birthday party or arguing over vaccines. BTW, they work ... really well.

There will be trillions of dollars in value created by the creators of these spaces, and the infrastructure to support them, but an open world of interoperable identities and information is antithetical to Facebook's project, which is to keep you on Facebook. (The same is true for Twitter, of course, but two of Twitter's great advantages are that it isn't a well-run business, and that it has far fewer legacy assets to inhibit a pivot into a metaverse-friendly model.)

So Zuckerberg has a different vision. Make Facebook the metaverse. He told Gayle King that he saw that as a five- to seven-year project, which tells you what you need to know. The metaverse, as everyone but Zuck defines it, is decades away. The technical challenges alone are immense. Zuck's plan is clear: He'll build out a VR presence so Facebook looks like the metaverse, extend it into the corporate environment through Workrooms, brand the whole thing "metaverse," and then fight off all challengers with a war chest of ad money the model generates.

Will it work? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it isn't a cause for concern. We've been having these structural arguments about the digital world since the web first emerged 25 years ago. In the 1990s, America Online was a "walled garden," while the Internet was an "open ecosystem." And though the market has tended to favor innovation, the trend toward consolidation and anti-competitive behavior is troubling. A single-owner metaverse is not an ideal future.

I believe Mark Zuckerberg's passion for the metaverse stems from a desire to exit this one. A man who's become the fifth-wealthiest person in the world before turning 40 and has more influence than any individual in history (I believe this), and yet he's increasingly viewed as a menace. I believe he likely finds this bewildering and frustrating. And maybe unfair. We should acknowledge his achievements. We should set him free, into the metaverse.

Life is so rich,

P.S. The team at Prof G Media is taking off next week to rest up for fall. We've got a lot on tap, with new email products coming (let us know how you like Chart of the Week), more video content, and ... something big to be announced soon. No Mercy / No Malice will be back in your inbox September 10. Enjoy the Labor Day weekend.

P.P.S. Registration for my next Brand Strategy Sprint closes on Tuesday, August 31, at midnight. Get in there.

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The greatest impediments to changes in our traditional roles seem to lie not in the visible world of conscious intent, but in the murky realm of the unconscious mind. -Dr. Augustus Napier The Metaverse The Zuck is obsessed with another Augustus, world-conquering emperor Augustus Caesar.

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Skip to main content

The metaverse is coming. Which brands are leading the way?

Adults, kids, gamers, and social media-lites alike are spending more time online than ever before, driving demand for updated spaces in the digital realm. As the metaverse grows in popularity, brands are rushing in to stake their claim on it.

Social media

At the end of July, Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's plans to become a metaverse company. He defined the metaverse as "a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces," a forthcoming "successor to the mobile internet." Betting on social gaming through VR, the company unveiled Facebook Horizon as their first step into the realm. Facebook's presence in the metaverse indicates social interaction and connection will be at the forefront of the evolution of the metaverse and of digital communication as we know it.

Gaming

Epic Games announced $1 billion in funding towards their own vision of the metaverse in April 2021. Their stated mission: "to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services." A recent host to concerts with massive audiences (their Rift Tour on Fortnite) and widely-played gaming platforms (Battle Breakers, Shadow Complex, Spyjinx) the company has already tested its ability to navigate the metaverse realm with positive results. Building on the technology they already have, the company has its virtual foot in the door to digital gaming interactions.

E-commerce

Tencent has full or partial ownership of gaming giants including Sumo Group, Epic Games, Bluehole and Ubisoft, an interesting addition to their broader focus on FinTech, advertising, cloud computing, and a self-described "technology for good." Ultimately, Tencent's ownership of WeChat, the largest digital transaction app, presents a huge economical advantage for the brand in the metaverse. Their venture in WeChat's digital transactions, advertising, and social commerce within the metaverse indicate that the company will have a well-rounded role in metacommerce possibilities.

Facebook Horizon

AI and automation

In April, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced plans for the company to join the metaverse and transform the future of the world's largest industry operations. The company is pulling up their gaming roots for a hand in other sectors: currently partnering with BMW to create a digital twin of a factory, where engineers will virtually plan and establish new workflows before deploying them in their physical factory in Regensburg, Germany. Huang was interviewed by TIME about his focus on AI and the automotive industry in the metaverse: "Humans' fundamental technology is intelligence. We're in the process of automating intelligence so that we can augment ours."

The Gucci Garden on Roblox

Luxury

In May, Gucci revealed the Gucci Garden Experience on Roblox. Made up of themed rooms, interactive pools and social spaces, gamers can shop for luxury digital products by the brand. Gucci is also selling goods on Aglet, a free mobile shopping game, alongside Chinese sportswear brand Anta and Adidas. CMO Robert Triefus told TechCrunch that the "Gucci Metaverse [is] not necessarily a digital manifestation, it's a narrative." By expanding its presence in the gaming metaverse, Gucci is building on its brand awareness with a new generation of consumers while setting the groundwork for its future in metacommerce.

Ultimately, Jensen Huang anticipates the technological advancements and digital evolution of the metaverse will lead to "the fusion of the virtual world and the physical world." These companies are taking advantage of a timely opportunity: establishing their presence in the metaverse and being a part of its growth from the ground up.

Stay tuned for more on brands staking their claim in the digital realm in our upcoming report, Into the Metaverse, on September 15 th.

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Skip to main content The metaverse is coming. Which brands are leading the way? Adults, kids, gamers, and social media-lites alike are spending more time online than ever before, driving demand for updated spaces in the digital realm. As the metaverse grows in popularity, brands are rushing in to stake their claim on it.

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What is the issue that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, progressive representative Katie Porter, Trump advisor Mica Mosbacher and BLM activist Chi Ossé can agree on? The need for a more just education system. For the next episode of 'Real Talk, Real Change' from The Carlos Watson Show and Chevrolet, we take a unique look at education in America. After a pandemic year that forced us to rethink our education systems, is this the perfect time to build greater education justice, from policing in schools to equity in funding? Along with hearing from celebrities and policy experts, we sit down with those most impacted - students, teachers and parents to hear their thoughts on how we reset American education. Tune in now for a one-of-a-kind conversation!

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TikTok's Strange (and Wonderful) Subcultures

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When I think of TikTok, the scream factory in Monsters, Inc. comes to mind. The app is a conveyor belt of doors, opening and closing, on some strange reality. You can quickly find yourself reeling from information overload - from real estate gurus and religious evangelists, to kink lovers and fashion trendsetters.

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Daxue Consulting - Market Research China

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The term "Metahuman" first appeared in the DC comics universe and used to refer to "human beings with superpowers". Now, the term is used to describe super-realistic digital humans, the most realistic form of virtual influencers. With the development of technology, the 3D sphere included digital simulation which is very close to a real person. In the future, the possibility of metahumans in China to replace people in marketing will greatly increase, as they are cheaper and never tire.

In the past 18 months, 51 "Metahumans" appeared worldwide, and AYAYI, "born" on May 20, 2021, became the first in China.

How metahumans in China are created

With artificial intelligence, a brand can obtain unique models for advertising. Namely, a brand doesn't need to search for a model, but can just ask a 3d artist to create one. New technology can generate ideal model faces for advertising campaigns.

The metahumans creation process consists of three critical components: model creation, motion capture, and real-time graphics. A person puts on special markers to create a 3D model of his face. Their face and body movements require continuous shooting with multiple cameras, which transmit each frame and angle of these movements to the system responsible for rendering the digital character.

Advantages of marketing with metahumans

Metahumans in China provide cheaper and faster solutions for marketing campaigns

When using metahumans for advertising campaigns, brands have the opportunity to easily adjust the model to suit different audiences. Basically, brands can make infinitely changing models and use various visual effects to target customers based on detailed demographics of the audience.

Full control over the metahumans is a big asset for the brand. For example, real influencers may opt out of some part of the collaboration or refuse to express some social brand value s.

In addition to the fact that a brand can control metahumans, it can also control the environment in which it interacts. For example, metahumans can pose with a product anywhere in the world without visiting them. For this reason, they can be especially valuable for travel brands in China that don't need to spend money on real influencers.

Some other advantages are:

Metahumans never age

They have unlimited working hours

They have scalability and can be in many places at once

Metahumans are more reliable

Metahumans in China are less risky than KOLs

With the rise of various social platforms, brands have hired celebrities, KOLs and KOCs for marketing and promotional activities. It has long been one of the common and effective means in brand image building. However, comparing to KOLs, metahumans are able to create unforgettable experience using new technology + human marketing.

Important aspect of using metahumans is lower risks for brand's reputation. For example, a popular KOL in China, Chris Wu, was blamed for sexually assaulting a teenager in July 2021. The former EXO boyband member denied the accusation, which sparked a flurry of criticism in social media against Wu. Brands such as Porsche and Bulgari ended partnerships with him after the NetEase report.

The engagement rate from the audience is higher

According to Beauty of Fashion, metahumans are on the rise in China. For example, in 2020, the Chinese video platform Bilibili saw a 225 percent increase in the amount of time users spend watching live video of virtual idols every month.

Some studies show that the engagement rate of virtual influencers is almost 3 times higher than that of real influencers. In addition, 55% of the audience on social media made a purchase as a result of following metahumans, while 53% followed the brand and 52% studied the brand.

However, people still find real influencers more inspiring, authentic and entertaining.

One of the leading AI companies in China producing metahumans is Rosebud AI. The company claims that the first event using their artificially generated models showed a 22% increase in click-through rate.

Another Chinese company dealing with 3d technologies and metahumans is Ranmai Technology based in Shanghai. In 2021 this company launched metahuman AYAYI, which exploded on the Internet. So far, it has reached 94,000 likes. French company Guerlain invited AYAYI to attend its' event. The content of this metahuman attracted a lot of attention and became one of the few brand's collaborations with digital human.

Metahumans in marketing

Samsung and the first "artificial human"

At CES 2020, Samsung-supported STAR Labs launched NEON, known as the world's first "artificial human". The virtual humans launched by the company can conduct dialogue and show sympathy just like humans. Therefore, they are not just models of marketing activities, but virtual assistants of the future. However, it is worth mentioning that the technology is still in its early stages, and the dialogue skills and visual quality of these artificial people have yet to be developed.

Metahumans in banking services and search engines

In 2019, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank and Baidu jointly released the digital employee "Xiaopu", which is also a virtual digital person produced by artificial intelligence technology in China. It has such features as natural language processing, speech recognition, and computer vision. It can provide users with "face-to-face" banking services through mobile devices.

Recently, a virtual character named Lingling appeared on Weibo search, arousing discussion among netizens. This virtual character participated in the show " Colorful Youth" - the event related to 3d and Chinese virtual reality industry.

Tmall's virtual spokesperson

In August 2020, the avatar "Qian Miao" of Jackson Yee (Yi Yangqianxi) became the spokesperson of Tmall, which created buzz on the Internet. In addition to publishing a short advertisement, the company created "parallel world" website, where consumers can interact with Yi Yangqianxi. It also lets users interact with each other through fan groups.

AR celebrity for Mango TV and Zhejiang Mobile

Companies can also use virtual humans to create unique digital content, increase exposure opportunities, shorten the distance between users, and enhance interactive experience. For example, Diejing Digital uses artificial intelligence and other technologies to fully "engrave" real celebrities. They use metahumans in China to create "visible" 5G AR celebrity interactive applications to Mango TV and Zhejiang Mobile. In addition, Dianjing has also created virtual people such as fitness, yoga, and dance teachers.

Key takeaways for brands interested in leveraging metahumans in China

Metahumans have some significant advantages comparing to KOLs: they are cheaper, more effective, less risky and adjust to brands' needs.

The ability to control metahumans and create the desired environment makes them attractive for brands' marketing.

Metahumans in China show higher engagement rates from the audience, however it might be only temporary trend, as it is something people never seen before.

Metahumans can become a part of marketing in a form of a virtual spokesperson or in interactive applications.

See our report on China's AI ecosystem

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Metahumans in China: The next frontier of KOL marketing

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The term "Metahuman" first appeared in the DC comics universe and used to refer to "human beings with superpowers". Now, the term is used to describe super-realistic digital humans, the most realistic form of virtual influencers. With the development of technology, the 3D sphere included digital simulation which is very close to a real person.

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Is Unreal Engine the Future of Filmmaking?

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App users in the UK and US are spending more time on TikTok than on YouTube, a new report suggests.

Data from app monitoring firm App Annie indicates that average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok, indicating high levels of engagement.

App Annie characterised TikTok as having "upended the streaming and social landscape".

However, YouTube retains the top spot for overall time spent - not per user - as it has many more users overall.

The Google-owned video giant has an estimated two billion monthly users, while TikTok's most recent public figures suggested it had about 700 million in mid-2020.

App Annie specialises in analysis of the apps market.

The "time spent" metric in its report only accounts for Android phones - but also does not include China, where TikTok - known locally as Douyin - is a major app.

'Mass audience'

"YouTube still leads TikTok in overall time spent, including in the UK," explained Jamie MacEwan, from Enders Analysis.

"YouTube's mass audience means it's getting more demographics that are comparatively light internet users... it's just reaching everyone who's online."

The most-invested YouTube users probably "match or surpass" the engagement of TikTokers, he said.

But "none of that's to say TikTok isn't a success", he added.

"TikTok was spending big to attract users, but they were not necessarily hanging around for long compared to other social media," he said.

"Now we know that in the US and UK, TikTok has overhauled YouTube, and is reeling in Facebook... that's a huge seal of approval."

The "time spent" metric in App Annie's report only accounts for Android phones - but also does not include China, where TikTok - known locally as Douyin - is a major app.

It shows that in the UK, TikTok surpassed YouTube back in June 2020, and has maintained its lead since. In the US, TikTok and YouTube traded places multiple times late last year before TikTok emerged on top in April 2021.

Other metrics tracked by the firm reflect TikTok's increasing importance.

Among social, communication, photo, video and entertainment apps, TikTok is ranked as the most-downloaded worldwide since 2020. It also competes with YouTube for the top spot in consumer spending since last year.

Spendy streaming

App Annie's report also suggests that apps with live-streaming - including TikTok - are fuelling a surge in money spent on creators.

Apps that have live-streaming as "a prominent feature" accounted for three-quarters of money spent in the top 25 social apps in the first half of 2021, the report says.

On gaming site Twitch, for example, viewers can purchase "Bits" - a virtual currency - and spend them to "cheer" streamers during a live stream. Or they can set up a recurring subscription to a creator's channel in exchange for subscriber-only benefits.

Tiktok lets users tip creators with "coins" - its own version of "bits", while YouTube runs similar programmes for its live streams.

"Live-streaming is driving growth in engagement for social apps, which sets them up for consumer spend," App Annie says.

The report also highlights another winner in the past year - Snapchat.

The augmented-reality focused messaging app saw its downloads outside the US grow by nearly 30% year-on-year, and by 45% on two years ago, App Annie's data suggests.

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TikTok overtakes YouTube for average watch time in US and UK

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App users in the UK and US are spending more time on TikTok than on YouTube, a new report suggests. Data from app monitoring firm App Annie indicates that average time per user spent on the apps is higher for TikTok, indicating high levels of engagement.

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The Future of TV Briefing this week looks at how TikTok has been subsumed into video makers' approaches to other platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat and even YouTube.

The TikTok takeover

Measurement's free-for-all phase

WTF is Ad-ID?

Agnes Chu's impact on Condé Nast Entertainment, Amazon's smart TV plans and more

The TikTok takeover
The key hits:

The pace of videos is speeding up, with a heightened emphasis on the opening two seconds.

Visual effects artists are in demand to recreate TikTok's effects for use on other platforms.

TikTok (and the pandemic) has helped to open audiences to less highly produced clips.

Over the course of several months this year, Group Nine Media's Thrillist started to see viewers of its Snapchat Discover channel drop off earlier than they had in the past. "It was harder to get people to stay and tap through the editions. Even halfway through the edition, watch time started to drop off," said Erin Weaver, senior director of audience development at Group Nine.

It turned out the falloff wasn't a Snapchat-specific phenomenon but a TikTok-induced impact. "The cuts were too slow," Weaver said.

TikTok's surging popularity over the past year and a half appears to have coincided with audiences on other platforms adopting similar behaviors and programming preferences, such as a lower tolerance for slow-paced videos. That is particularly true of platforms that share an aesthetic and audience with TikTok, like Snapchat, which is oriented around short-form vertical video and is popular among teenagers and twenty-somethings. But media companies - including BDG, Donut Media, Group Nine, Tastemade and Team Whistle - are finding that applying their TikTok video strategies - such as quicker cuts and more visual effects - can improve their videos' appeal to audiences on the likes of Instagram and even YouTube as well.

"In the past two years, in particular through quarantine when everybody's been at home consuming all of this, has been when we've really seen [TikTok] start to influence YouTube and other platforms," said Jesse Wood, chief creative officer at Donut Media.
Two seconds or less
TikTok's biggest impact so far on the broader digital video landscape is how it seems to have shrunk the window for videos to capture audiences' attentions. "You get roughly two seconds to get people's attention now. On Facebook, it used to be 10. On YouTube it was 30 seconds," Weaver said.

"The first two seconds are now the most important two seconds on every platform," said Wesley Bonner, head of social and audience development at BDG.

When BDG began using TikTok roughly two years ago, the platform advised the media company on the importance of a video's opening frames, recommending that BDG include a video's headline text within the first second or revealing the final look for a makeup video off the bat, according to Bonner. That may sound counterintuitive when juxtaposed with traditional TV's tease-only ethos, but the idea on TikTok is to give people the final result so they are more inclined to stay to see the process. And it doesn't only work on TikTok. "That's one we pretty much do across the board now," he said.

TikTok's accelerated pace seems to stem from its origin as lip-synching app Musical.ly. In addition to people singing, dancing and acting to the beat of a song, videos are being edited to the beat. "That's something that naturally as a viewer you start to notice how fast the pacing is. Every couple seconds, there's some sort of visual stimulation on screen," said Lauren Arso, gm of social at Tastemade.

To regularly refresh what's seen on screen, though, means recording more clips with different looks. For example, when Tastemade is shooting an action shot for a food video, "we're thinking through what are two or three different action shots we can get and what are some creative angles we can do."
The visual effects ripple effect
Within the past 18 months, TikTok has influenced Team Whistle's digital video creation as well as how it hires the people to make those videos. "We've increasingly emphasized that any newly onboarded social programmers have chops with [Adobe's visual effects editing software] After Effects," said Joe Caporoso, evp of media at Team Whistle.

Those visual effects skills have become even more important for two reasons. First, TikTok has made visual effects a bigger means of captivating audiences, similar to what Snapchat has done with its augmented reality filters. Second, as other platforms like Instagram have rolled out rivals to TikTok, they have begun to penalize posts repurposing TikTok videos and carrying the latter platform's watermark. As a result, video makers are pressed to recreate TikTok's native visual effects to replicate them in videos posted as Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts or native Facebook videos.

The ability to internally recreate TikTok's visual effects can also be a boon business-wise. Visual effects have become a bigger component of Team Whistle's branded content campaigns this year, and being able to apply them to other platforms opens up the distribution options, which is advantageous heading into the heady holiday marketing period. The interest in visual effects in branded videos is "not going to change in Q4," Caporoso said.
Redefining production quality
TikTok is not solely responsible for shifting the standard for production levels. The pandemic-impose production hiatus and shift to remote production primarily precipitated the proliferation of professional videos that were shot on people's phones and in people's homes. But TikTok has helped people realize these videos can still be quality content.

TikTok "has definitely shifted the standard and requirements and expectations for the audience in terms of production value," said Wood.

While the media companies interviewed for this article, including Donut Media, still aspire to high production levels, they have also observed a different bar for quality. For example, the blurry background that corresponds with a shallow depth of field may be associated with a cinematic aesthetic, but contrasted with the score of TikTok videos filmed on people's phones, such cinematic videos can come across as commercials.

Group Nine's PopSugar saw TikTok's redefinition of production quality come into play for a mental health series it produced for YouTube earlier this year. The series' videos incorporated clips from interviews with mental health experts that wererecorded over Zoom. Typically, the Zoom-shot clips feature a limited picture and audio quality and have coincided with viewers dropping off when those types of clips appear. However, said Weaver, "we didn't see any of those drop-offs the way that historically we would have on other channels pre-COVID, pre-TikTok."

What we've heard

"Even though we're back in the studio, our best video is still someone in front of a green screen talking to the camera."
- Digital video publisher

What we're watching

Two decades after its debut, the advertising industry's attempt to institute a universal ID system for ads and cut down on overexposure is gaining some traction among media companies.

If you're unclear on what Ad-ID is or need a refresher on how it works, we made a video explaining it (there's also a written explainer for the text-minded).

Numbers to know

3.42: Number of streaming services the average TV household is expected to subscribe to by the end of 2021.

$950,000: Price to run a TV ad during the NFL's Thanksgiving slate of games.

$1: How much Hulu will increase the price for both its ad-supported and ad-free subscription tiers in October.

17: How many months ahead of time Fox Sports will start selling ad space for Super Bowl LVII.

76 million: Number of expected subscriptions to streaming services among Latin American households by the end of 2021.

Stay tuned: Measurement's free-for-all phase

Based on the uptick in measurement providers in my inbox as the Media Rating Council has suspended Nielsen's accreditation, right now appears to be the biggest opening yet for companies to usurp the dominant measurement provider's position.

But from conversations I've had with executives at measurement firms, media companies and ad agencies, I'm thinking the more likely outcome is that the days of any single dominant measurement provider are done. Either that or Nielsen will reclaim its perch (which for the purposes of this item is a less interesting idea).

Nielsen has been the gold standard for measurement for decades. While many questioned the accuracy of its panel-based approach, TV networks and advertisers have continued to cling to it, if only because Nielsen's viewership numbers have become ingrained as the basis for their deals. Nielsen's role has been further reinforced as connected TV platforms and streaming services have adopted it. But that is unraveling after the MRC confirmed the VAB's claim that Nielsen undercounted TV viewership during the pandemic.

Now there is no gold standard for measurement, and eventually, there may not even be a standard.

Nielsen rose to its position by virtue of the uniqueness of its panel and retained its roost through its continued usage over time. At some point, Nielsen became not so much a measure of actual TV viewership but a yardstick against itself. Ad buyers and sellers knew - they had to have known - that Nielsen's numbers were more indicative than empirical.

Maybe 100 million people don't actually watch the Super Bowl, but it's pretty clear that plenty more people watch the NFL's championship game than any other program on TV and, at the least, Nielsen put a number on it.

Maybe a connected TV campaign didn't actually reach 3.2 million people, but if Nielsen said it did and that the linear TV delivery fetched 5 million people, then that's enough to compare the cost efficiencies.

Now, the snowballing effect of Nielsen as a measurement standard seems to be melting. What that appears likely to create is a sea of measurement solutions sans any singular standard.

There's an argument to be made that the new standard will not be any single company's measurement solution but the concept of census-based measurement, i.e. counting audiences on media properties directly as opposed to relying on a panel of people and projecting their behavior across the broader population.

But then what becomes the difference between Measurement Provider X and Measurement Provider Y? And how do ad buyers and sellers decide on what metrics to base their guarantees and judge their performance and evaluate the full playing field?

Either there is some meaningful differentiator, which then would likely lead to a fragmentation of measurement solutions as ad buyers and sellers find reason to support some but not all and maybe not even all the same ones. Or there is no meaningful differentiator, in which case the door is left open for Nielsen to repair itself to remain in the fray and potentially even retake its position.

Nielsen was ubiquitous because it was unique and unique because it was ubiquitous. But it had to be one before it could become the other. In this potential post-Nielsen era, it will be hard for any other company to become both.

What we've covered
Women of Color Unite's Cheryl L. Bedford is fighting 'exclusion by familiarity' in entertainment:

Women of Color Unite operates two programs that are aimed to help women of color get in the door and move up the Hollywood ranks.

Its #StartWith8 program originated after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and gets established people in Hollywood to commit to giving their time and energy to support eight women of color apiece.

Listen to the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast here. Barstool Sports will launch a channel on Sling TV:

The bets-focused sport outlet's channel will be programmed with a repository of existing programming.

Barstool Sports will also carry a number of live college football pre-game shows.

Read more about Barstool Sports here.
What we're reading

How Agnes Chu is building up Condé Nast's entertainment business:
After taking the reins of Condé Nast Entertainment in 2020, former Disney+ executive Agnes Chu has overseen a division of the magazine publisher that has increased its revenue by 33% this year, according to The Information. But, while Chu is boosting CNE's traditional entertainment bona fides by bringing in other Disney alum, CNE's business is still largely dominated by ad-supported digital videos posted online and to platforms like YouTube and Facebook.

Amazon preps its own smart TV:
Amazon aims to debut its own branded smart TV in the U.S. potentially this fall, according to Insider. The Amazon-branded smart TV will mark the e-commerce giant's entry into the burgeoning smart TV landscape, which is a growing segment of connected TV viewership and where smart TV makers like Samsung and Vizio are toeing up against the likes of Amazon and Roku in the broader CTV platform war.

Documentaries have become prized programming:
Streaming services like Netflix have been increasingly investing in documentary films and shows as audiences have gravitated toward the nonfiction fare, according to Variety. However, the uptick could come with downsides, such as lowering standards for factual programming and a narrowing focus on proven genres like true crime.

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How TikTok has influenced media companies' videos on other platforms

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The Future of TV Briefing this week looks at how TikTok has been subsumed into video makers' approaches to other platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat and even YouTube. The TikTok takeover Measurement's free-for-all phase WTF is Ad-ID?

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Ciao Attention Economy, Hello Creator Economy: Why creators and their communities are leading us ... [+]
SUPERSTOCK

We are at the beginning of the end of an era. The Attention Economy-the ad-based revenue model that has dominated the creative industries in the 21st century and made the incumbent social platforms some of the most valuable tech companies in the world-has paved the way for its own demise.

The Creator Economy-made up of the platforms, marketplaces and tools democratizing creative expression and entrepreneurship; empowering an independent creative class to make a living on their passions-represents a paradigm shift.

Over the last decades, we've gone from a material-based economy, to a digital and information-based. In the 2000s, as the amount of information exploded, our attention became more scarce and valuable and many digital products and services were made free in exchange for selling our attention and personal information to advertisers.

As the tired saying about free and ad-supported products goes, 'if you aren't paying for a product, you are the product.' Companies have their customers best interest in mind and in the Attention Economy that doesn't necessarily refer to the users creating or consuming content. And so the bills for the presumably free products started stacking up: the privacy scandals, the misinformation behind click-baiting headlines, an increasingly polarized society, the toll on mental health, a struggling longtail of creators...

To be clear, social platforms are not bad-quite the opposite-but to live up to their mission to bring the world closer together they need to treat content creators, big and small, as their primary users. The revenue model that made them their first trillion dollars won't make them the next.

In the early days of social media and the Attention Economy, the creators needed the platforms' audience. As (1) the creators and their leverage increased, (2) the barriers to micro-entrepreneurship decreased, and (3) people with niche interests around the globe were able to discover like-minded to convene against the so-called mainstream, there was a subtle but acute power shift and the platforms now need the creators' loyal communities. The Attention Economy monetizes an audience they speak at while the Creator Economy turns that audience into a real asset: a community they engage with. The audience itself is a liability dressed up as an asset in that it costs more to acquire than the value that you capture from it*.

The social players are responding to the power shift, in the content creator's favour, by introducing a range of features to help individuals on the platforms monetize their fans-realizing that if they don't the creators will take their communities and potential revenue streams somewhere else. As The Information recently put it, 'there's a paradigm shift away from 'selling eyeballs at scale' to the platforms 'taking a cut of what the creators on the platform are getting paid directly.'' It seems the future of digital capitalism is in the hands of many micro-entrepreneurs who are closer, more connected, and by virtue of being niche understand their patrons better than the big brands-whether selling content, products, or knowledge.
Investing in the Paradigm Shift
If the Creator Economy is the next big shift in our digital economy, then how can we understand and ultimately value that market?

To start, the Creator Economy sits at the intersection of the gig economy ($300BN market forecasted to reach $455BN by 2023, with 40% of the US workforce making at least 40% of their income via gigs and 64% of full-time workers saying they want to do "side hustles") and the creative industries (generate around $2.25 trillion annual revenue and employ more 15-29 year-olds than any other sectors). The largest number of gig workers (14%) are in creative industries.

Example of existing Creator Economy darlings are Patreon (surpassed $1BN valuation this quarter; enabling individual creators to collect payments directly from fans), Shopify (quadrupled in size to £133BN during the pandemic, now the world's 87th largest company) and Etsy (one of the best performing S&P 500 stocks 2020). On the earlier side, a16z fought their way to lead Stir's (business management tool for creators) Series A last month at a $100m valuation.

If the community is the Creator Economy's equivalent of an audience, then what is it worth and to whom? As a heuristic, top-earning writers are making $500k a year on Substack, the streamer Ninja earns over $500k a month on Twitch, eight-year-old Ryan is making $26 million a year reviewing toys on Youtube, and Kylie Jenner turned her Instagram fan base into a cosmetics empire becoming the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

The longtail of smaller communities is arguably more valuable, if considered in aggregate, in the sense that niche communities tend to have more hardcore fans resulting in higher engagement, retention and conversion. So far, the longtail has been underserved and-as a result of lacking infrastructure to support them and misaligned business models-undervalued and ultimately underpaid. When considered along the fact that around 30% of kids in the US and UK want to be a Youtuber and that 70% of Americans say they would like to have their own business, it seems there is a lot of value to be captured in aggregating and empowering smaller passion pockets.

For investors looking at the space, the Creator Economy can be divvied up into four categories aimed at the creative class: platforms, tools, monetization enablers and creator-led businesses, with many companies combining building blocks from each.

The first include the social and professional platforms giving rise to new creators, democratizing access to an audience, allowing creators to showcase their talents more effectively or enabling new forms of digital entertainment. Most successful social networks solve a utility-oriented need with a new tool in a new category and then allow for platform-natives stars to develop (users come for the tool, stay for the network, and are locked in if you help them make money).

Second, there are the 'picks and shovels' powering micro-entrepreneurs and the creative tools improving the creative process itself. As the number of independent creators and micro-brands grow in number, the companies serving them by lowering the barriers to entrepreneurship will grow in value. Here, we talk about the "enterprization of individuals": the tools often start out as easy-to-use consumer products that grow with the consumer as their passion becomes a business.

Third, there is the tech to help creators monetize in new ways or via direct payments from fans, whether that's via NFTs, marketplaces, or novel payment solutions.

Finally, there are the creator-led businesses themselves-a small subset of the most ambitious businesses built by the creators leveraging the platforms and the infrastructure discussed in category 1-3. Those that can grow a community while keeping engagement high have many ways to monetize that asset.
Towards a creative digital utopia?
The business case for the Creator Economy is hopefully clear: the dollars and the power is shifting from the Attention Economy to the Creator Economy, from the audience to the community, with individual talent unbundling big corporations in the creative space.

Adding a bit of romanticism, if we reclaimed our Attention (ciao Attention Economy!) and interact directly with the Creators behind the media and the products we love (hello Creator Economy!) we return to a world in which makers and consumers are more connected. Over the last century, we've complicated supply- and value chains to the extent we've almost forgotten there's a creator behind the things and the content we consume. The Creator Economy is a digital and global version of a world we used to know-one where we support and celebrate digital artisans directly.

-
*Disclosure: Shamelessly stole the concept of 'audience as a liability, community as an asset' from a recent phone call with Mark Adams, Head of Innovation at Vice Media and former Chief Digital Officer WME.
... Read More

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From The Attention Economy To The Creator Economy: A Paradigm Shift

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We are at the beginning of the end of an era. The Attention Economy-the ad-based revenue model that has dominated the creative industries in the 21st century and made the incumbent social platforms some of the most valuable tech companies in the world-has paved the way for its own demise.

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Welcome to the Sociology of Business. If you are not subscribed, join the community by subscribing below and share it with everyone you think may find it useful. You can find my book, The Business of Aspiration, on Amazon, and you can find me on Instagram and Twitter, too. For those new here, I wrote last about the true cultural and commercial significance of brand collaborations. Image: Samutaro and Banana Republic
There's no mistaking an Acne Studios store for any other. Regardless of whether you're in London, Stockholm, New York, or Tokyo, Acne Studios stores are stages, with carefully considered lighting, layout, ambiance, furniture, art, and a cherry-picked cast of shop associates.

"Artists, architects, and furniture designers have always been part of Acne Studios' DNA," says Dan Thawley, Editor-in-Chief at A Magazine Curated By, a fashion publication which has worked with some of the world's most innovative fashion designers - including Martin Margiela, Kim Jones, and Thom Browne - as guest curators. When Thawley originally pitched his idea to create a magazine titled 'Floragatan 13 Curated by Acne Studios' (Floragatan 13 being the address of Acne Studios' new headquarters, situated in the former Embassy of the Czech Republic) to Acne Studios in 2019, Thawley was inspired by the strong physical presence that Acne Studios always had, as well as the opportunity for a deep editorial dive into the brand's beliefs, ethos and curated aesthetics.

The partnership is simply one example of a shift towards curation as a preferential strategy for modern brands to differentiate themselves, gain relevance, build equity and ensure longevity. With a good reason: the aesthetic world and the narrative that curation creates is much harder to replicate than a brand's visual handwriting and a tone of voice. For Acne Studios, a curatorial point of view lives as a store experience; a carefully chosen influencers and friends of the brand and what architects and interior designers the brand collaborates with. It also lives as a company headquarters, as the mood it creates in its stores, as a piece of furniture, or now as an issue of a magazine. The variations are endless, and that's precisely the point.
The Democratization of Curation
Modern curation is a far cry from the art curators of lore, who were revered and feared, and who could make or break an artist. Yayoi Kusama famously threw herself out of the window when she couldn't make it in the New York art scene, which in the '70s was stiflingly white and male.

More recently, curators went from the capital "C" to the lowercase one. Democratization of curation changed the role and value of curators in form, but not in cultural importance. For Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, the role of curation has always been to democratize, to bring art to different sections of society and "build exhibitions into society." Obrist brings up the idea of "civic curation," where curation is linked to generosity and has a bigger social role.

"Places where exhibitions are presented are inaccessible to large parts of society. I was always interested in creating exhibitions that can be seen by as many people as possible, shown in many cities and open to many audiences," he notes, adding: "Curare, curatus means to care. Initially, it meant to install objects in the museum. A curator was a caretaker of objects. Curation is also about curiosity. But then it happened that curation has expanded, and that has to do with art having expanded."

This expanded meaning of curation makes products only one of the currencies individuals and brands trade in. "It has a lot to do with proliferation of ideas. It includes non-objects, quasi-objects and hyper-objects, like the weather, that are more complex systems," says Obrist.

When brands moved from manufacturing products to manufacturing culture, design, luxury and art, curation zoomed onto taste, aesthetics, identity and social status. Curation became the fuel of modern culture: it is indispensable in the cultural landscape where products, people and experiences are all comparable in value: a concert can be equally desirable as a bottle of vintage bourbon as a pair of rare sneakers. It is not hard to see how this crowded cultural landscape can lead to the consumer choice overload, and why curation gained prominence as the obvious way out of it. The role of a curator is to sort through culture and show us what we need to know and why.

"There's value in having someone who's amongst what's happening in culture. The value is having me as a narrator and telling the story, telling you what's relevant," says popular Instagram curator Sam Trotman, more commonly known under his IG moniker Samutaro. "A good curator does the research, writes and edits, and doesn't just repost images." Trotman sees himself as an educator and a dot-connector. "A lot of my followers enjoy reading the context and history behind images," he says. "I connect what's happening in culture right now with the past. There's value in finding a new angle on old things and connecting them with new things."

Beyond simple empathy for consumers' attention spans, there are wider cultural shifts that took curation from the art world and made it part of our everyday consumption. Curation shifts attention from products to the curatorial point of view, which is infinitely more valuable. This flips the script of brand strategy from product benefits to the story, and makes it imperative for brands to think like curators. Case in point: Floragatan 13 Curated by Acne Studios is infinitely more exciting than any item that Acne designed in years. In the 80:20 framework of brand growth, which claims that 80 percent of brand success can be attributed to storytelling and 20 percent to its products, this does not matter. The Floragatan 13 curatorial halo will urge many former fans to consider buying Acne Studios again.

Democratization from a few curators to many inevitably results in the acceleration of culture and the compression of trend cycles. People get bored quickly and want to move on to the next thing. Hyped up by media, celebrities and brands, a new collaboration or the latest drop lasts only as long as people pay attention to it. Curation gives them longer legs and allows them to reincarnate in a number of future iterations. Original Air Jordans enjoy iconic status partially due to their proto-context (an unrivaled sports star, a popular sport, a critical mass of fans), but mostly to many curatorial interventions since.
Curation as 21st Century Creativity
Under pressure for newness, brands struggle to actually create new stuff, but by curating the old, they give it renewed meaning and purpose in consumers' eyes. Curation contextualizes product within a specific time and a point of view. "I look at what's happening across culture. Someone like Supreme may reference an artist, and then I'll bring it back to the original sources or look into the history behind where Nike Dunks came from," says Sam Trotman.

Trotman mentions My Clothing Archive, a niche Instagram account that is oriented towards OG Japanese designers like Junya Watanabe, Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto and gives context to a new audience. Consumers are ready to spend premium on products that belong to a curated collection and that are enriched with cultural and social value. Curation turns items into collectibles and more often this value is created by curators, showing the importance of brands becoming curators of their own.

Viewed through the lens of creativity, curation becomes a perfect connective tissue in our niche and micro culture. "The curator is a junction-maker, a catalyst, a sparring partner, somebody who builds bridges," says Obrist. The Internet created micro-collectives of menswear, streetwear, luxury watches, artisanal coffee, and Japanese denim aficionados who share ethos, style, reference points, even a vocabulary. It is easy to link up with others who share our taste, interests and hobbies and ignore the rest. Curators bridge the gap between different taste communities and introduce them to one another. They also often connect people, products and ideas in a way that creates something that's simultaneously new and familiar (think LVMH x Supreme, IKEA x Off-White, or Nike x Dior).
Brands as Future Curators
Consumers today are omnivorous in their cultural interests, and they treat everything as an opportunity to flex their aesthetic muscles. And so, a good starting point for any brand to think like a curator is to create your own aesthetic world instead of simply relying on your product's aesthetic or your visual handwriting. A brand's aesthetic world is infinite: it extends to a pair of sneakers, a piece of furniture, a playlist, and even collaborations. Telfar expresses its aesthetic world through the brand's multimedia performances, experiential retail, zines, Bushwick Birkin myth, artist and brand collaborations and its diverse community. Telfar's clothes are simply one expression of Telfar's taste and point of view.

Telfar's example also shows how curation gives mundane objects, like White Castle's uniforms, value by connecting them with a point of view and a subculture that makes them stand out in the vortex of speed, superficiality, and newness. Beyond making products more valuable, curation as a brand strategy extends to the entire value chain. Menswear and furniture retail platform Bombinate curates the suppliers and producers the brand works with according to its values of quality, craftsmanship, localization and sustainability. By doing that, the retail platform not only protects and preserves the work of human hands by connecting craft brands to consumers seeking high-quality lifestyle products, but also narrows down and directs consumer choice.

To curate is also to pick the right retail, distribution or collaboration partners. In 2018, Rei Kawakubo told Dezeen, "I want to create a kind of market where various creators from various fields gather together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos." Places like Dover Street Market or Kapital don't prioritize mass and superficial reach; instead they curate their own kind of niche customer with their elevated and informed selection of choices.

Going forward, it will be very hard to imagine a retail establishment that does not give off an impression of a gallery. Bankrupt department stores and downsized mass brands are a cautionary tale of what happens in the absence of any curation. Good news is that, unlike art galleries of old, modern culture welcomes curators of all stripes and presents endless curatorial opportunities for brands.
This article was originally published on Highsnobiety and edited by Christopher Morency.
Speaking of curation: on June 17th, Banana Republic (where I am the Chief Brand Officer) launched BR Vintage Shop. Imagined as a chest of curiosities that each time it's open takes us to a different world - an abandoned campsite or a caravan route in a desert - BR Vintage Shop is both a time capsule and a brand revival. By tapping into the audacity and aspiration of imaginary worlds, which we created since the dawn of time, we are telling a story as old as time: one of humanity, curiosity and wonder.

Some stuff in there is so camp that it's cool. Other stuff reads as timeless streetwear. The vibe is resolutely modern. Check it out.
"It's about a spirit of adventure, and a spirit of imagined territories. There's a sense of whimsy to the clothes, 'in the sense that you dress up almost in a costume.' The workplace was a challenge filled with unknown dangers to conquer. You just needed the right uniform. And Banana Republic's clothes, Andjelic said, 'made you feel bad-ass.'" - Rachel Tashjian, GQ "Andjelic sees Banana Republic Vintage having a dual appeal - to Banana's older audience moved by nostalgia and to Gen Zers buying up secondhand clothes to support the circular economy and recycling." - David Moin, WWD "Deeply inspired by Banana Republic's timelessly out-of-time catalogues, Andjelic and a team of 'purveyors' went through the archives to select 225 unique vintage pieces from the '80s, '90s, and early '00s. Ranging from classic hunting jackets to graphic tees and caps, the BR Vintage selection is indicative of the worldly ethos that inspired Banana Republic's founding." - Jake Silbert, Highsnobiety "Feed your nostalgia with sharp vintage t-shirts boasting retro Banana Republic insignias or keep with the classics by opting for a chunky knit sweater or chic leather accessory. As trends come and go, inspiration from past decades carries fashion forward, so why not take a page-or outfit-right out of the '90s playbook with a vintage polka dot matching set." - Alyssa Kelly, L'Officiel "BR archives were an untapped goldmine. As we are going through the brand relaunch, we wanted to tap into both the original BR customer, who has a strong nostalgia for our 1980s product, and the next generation, who is obsessed with thrift shopping and secondhand," Chief Brand Officer Ana Andjelic tells NYLON. "It's really up to our customers' imagination to build their own worlds with these pieces." - Erika Harwood, NYLON

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Welcome to the Sociology of Business. If you are not subscribed, join the community by subscribing below and share it with everyone you think may find it useful. You can find my book, The Business of Aspiration, on Amazon, and you can find me on Instagram and Twitter, too.

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The sprawling virtual experience returns this year and it's more accessible than ever.

Of all the live events that pivoted to online experiences in the COVID era, Burning Man was not the most obvious candidate. The 35-year-old desert gathering thrives on chaotic communal interactions under the scorching Nevada sun, where dazed, euphoric wanderers explore vast outdoor sculptures and utopian encampments while adhering to an earthy set of principles established by the founders. Burning Man is the kind of dizzying phenomenon that would never translate to Zoom, but virtual reality is a different story.

In 2020, when Burning Man canceled its physical edition, a team of long-time Burners built BRCvr, a sprawling virtual reality rendition of the Burning Man "playa" that included both virtual renditions of art showcased in years and new offerings exclusive to the environment. Virtual "camps" allowed longtime Burners to revisit their old haunts, DJs played virtual sets, and, of course, there was the virtual burning of the man.

Now, the physical Burning Man has been canceled yet again, but BRCvr is back for the 2021 edition - and you don't even need a fancy headset to experience it (though it certainly helps). The gathering creates an opportunity to glimpse the future of virtual creativity in action: an immersive means of showcasing art and community on a massive scale without an iota of physical impact.

The 2020 event, built on Microsoft's social VR platform Altspace, outdid even the most generous expectations, with over 14,000 people from around the world exploring the sprawling multiverse, including many users who were using VR headsets for the first time. There over 200 worlds to explore and over 1,500 hours of live events over the course of one week. It was a striking illustration of the potential for VR to provide social experiences that could be fully gratifying on their own terms even as they filled the void of a socially distant age.

After winning the PGA Innovation Award last year and elevating awareness for Altspace, Microsoft has thrown additional resources behind the event and fast-tracked a 2D version accessible on Macs on top of the PC version. That means anyone with a reasonably competent computer can create an Altspace account and teleport into the only manifestation of Burning Man available this year.

Meanwhile, the release last fall of the consumer-friend Oculus Quest 2 has brought VR technology into even more households than last year, suggesting that this year's BRCvr could welcome an even more robust turnout of Burners and newcomers alike.

"We've learned a lot about taking a culture and bringing it into a virtual space," said BRCvr designer and filmmaker Doug Jacobson as he gave me a tour of a few worlds earlier this month. Over the course of 40-odd minutes, I followed Jacobson and co-founder Athena Demos, the former regional contact for Burning Man and executive director of the LA League of Arts, as our avatars floated through giant sculptures in the deep void of space, tried on Daft Punk helmets against the backdrop of a towering screen filled with lasers, and took in the neon signage of the main playa. "We brought this whole community with us, and now Microsoft is pouring money into Altspace to turn it into a premiere events platform," Demos said. "But for us, it's a labor of love."

The roots of BRCvr go back to 2014, when VR developer Greg Edwards imported photos of the Burning Man Playa in an effect to recreate it to scale in 3D. That research became the foundation of the virtual Black Rock City built six years later.

Jacobson was drawn into the project through his film work. Twenty years ago, he directed the Burning Man documentary "Journey to the Flames," but has spent much of his career in post-production, and had been experimenting with 180-degree cameras to learn more about how to build virtual environments. Now, he's constantly tinkering with the layout for the event and sees its potential as a new phase of film language. "It's not going to replace 2D storytelling, or passive storytelling, but it's a whole new branch," he said.

The latest edition should please longtime Burners, but it also provides an opportunity to showcase the history of the event, which was previously impossible since Burning Man's "leave no trace" ethos means that its large structures are demolished at the end of every edition. Now, visitors can peruse the Museum of 20 Temples as well as the Museum of the Man, both of which capture earlier live editions. The designers are also taking advantage of Microsoft mixed reality technologies, shooting live performers on green screens at an L.A. studio and beaming them into the virtual space. And they've partnered with Los Angeles arcade Two Bit Circus to host an actual physical room filled with Burning Man art and headsets for Burners in Los Angeles who might want to experiment with merging the virtual and physical experiences.

Once again, the playa will showcase a wide range of art submitted by creators as well as user-generated worlds, which means that visitors to BRCvr can roam freely for hours at a time and continue to stumble across new creations and environments with little to guide them - an experience that longtime Burners say is pretty similar to the physical edition. On September 5, before the Lotus Temple burn, William Close and the Earth Harp Collective will perform at the Temple of Transition via holokey - the same location, in the physical world, where Close preformed at Burning Man in 2011. The performance is a 360-degree green screen recording that will be teleported into the virtual environment.

Jacobson said he has been developing hubs to group together likeminded artwork to allow for a greater sense of curation, but the discovery process is crucial: Whether you come to BRCvr with a headset or on your PC, you'll want to wander around."It's kind of unpredictable," Jacobson said. "We live in a topsy-turvy world."

While the experiences of virtual environments may seem off-putting to people who don't typically experiment with open-world video games or work in emerging media, they have continued to find their place amid COVID as a means of showcasing creativity exclusive to the digital space. The Venice Film Festival begins this week in person with its VR edition once again welcoming an international audience, many of whom will be unable to attend the Italian gathering in person; next January, Sundance will once again include a virtual environment for audiences who might be unable or unwilling to attend the Park City event.

BRCvr is already looking toward the potential to blend live and virtual events in 2022. "Hybrid events really are the future," Jacobson said. "I think we can make that transition. People will come in here, feel that they're there, and everyone will feel connected."
BRCvr runs on Altspace from August 29 - September 7. To RSVP, go here. To create an account with Altspace, go here.
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How to Experience Burning Man 2021 from Your Living Room (Even Without a Fancy VR Headset)

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The sprawling virtual experience returns this year and it's more accessible than ever. Of all the live events that pivoted to online experiences in the COVID era, Burning Man was not the most obvious candidate.

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Global communications group WPP is creating a digital campus in computer game Minecraft featuring replicas of its offices around the world, allowing employees to visit other buildings without leaving their desks.

The "Minecraft world" will allow employees to attend events, launch projects and visit more than 19 offices, according to Colin Macgadie of BDG Architecture + Design who is helping to realise WPP's metaverse.

"WPP is building this Minecraft world of all its campuses next to each other, all at scale and fully realised," said Macgadie, who is BDG's chief creative officer.

"So it doesn't matter what campus you're working in globally, you can visit any of the campuses inside Minecraft."

BDG, which is owned by WPP, has designed a number of the company's campuses including Sea Containers House in London and an upcoming outpost in Detroit.

Speaking during a live talk broadcast from the new Dezeen Studio Space in London, Macgadie revealed that the practice is now helping to translate these buildings into a parallel virtual world, or metaverse, dubbed the WPP Campus Campus.

WPP's Minecraft world will feature the London and Detroit buildings, as well as offices in Madrid, Jakarta, Melbourne and other locations laid out "avenue by avenue, street by street".

"It's not just a way of exploring the campuses but actually experiencing them in a virtual sense," Macgadie added.

"It's early stages but we're now beginning to give them access to the CAD plans and the information around Sea Containers House and other buildings so you'll be able to go street by street to different parts of the world."
Metaverse can improve productivity and build community
The news comes after WPP revealed that only five per cent of its staff in the US and nine per cent of those working in the UK had returned to their offices as of August 2021, emphasising the need for more "flexible, hybrid models of working" post-Covid.

Macgadie revealed details of the Minecraft project during a talk exploring how BDG designs office buildings that adapt to the changing needs of companies and their employees.

Minecraft has already been used by Microsoft to create a virtual version of the company's new Washington state campus so that employees could familiarise themselves with the space.

Watch a live talk on designing future-ready workplaces with BDG Architecture + Design

But according to Macgadie, WPP hopes to push this idea further by using the platform as a means to build community and foster "cross-campus collaboration" while in-person interactions remain rare.

The virtual campus could even be used as a space to pitch to clients and recruit new talent, WPP outlined in an internal document published in November last year.

"What else can we do with this," Macgadie posited. "How can we launch things in it? How can we run events in it? And how can we use it as more than just a communication tool?"

"It's going to be exciting to see how they pull it off," he added.
Technology can't replace real-life interactions
However, Macgadie also believes it is crucial to reinvigorate physical offices post-pandemic, especially in creative sectors where effective collaboration is key.

"I think technology will make leaps and bounds, there's no doubt about that," he said.

"From our own experience of running our studio and having to continue workshops for clients, the online collaborative whiteboards we use have been fantastic but they don't quite replace that physical collaboration."

Minecraft is a game that allows users to build their own virtual worlds. Launched in 2011, it now has over 126 million monthly active users.

Other initiatives in the platform include a virtual library created by non-profit organisation Reporters Without Borders that gives gamers access to censored books and articles, while Argentinian designer Andrés Reisinger created ten pieces of virtual furniture that can be integrated into the game.

Leading figures in digital design predict that the digital metaverse that is being built in Minecraft and other gaming and VR environments will eventually merge with the real world.

"The virtual world and the real world will integrate," said Amber Slooten of virtual fashion studio The Fabricant.

"There will be like a virtual layer on top of the reality that you'll be able to switch on and off," she said during a panel talk at Dezeen's metaverse meet-up earlier this year. "And there will be virtual worlds that you can go into."

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WPP building online "Minecraft world" featuring all its global offices in one place

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Global communications group WPP is creating a digital campus in computer game Minecraft featuring replicas of its offices around the world, allowing employees to visit other buildings without leaving their desks. The "Minecraft world" will allow employees to attend events, launch projects and visit more than 19 offices, according to Colin Macgadie of BDG Architecture + Design who is helping to realise WPP's metaverse.

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Hello, hello! Hope folks are doing well this week. First off, this is the second issue sponsored by Infinite Catalog, and below they've got an interesting take on the rise of profit share deals (i.e., 50/50 deals) across industry sectors. Also, if any college professors would like for me to speak in their classes, please reach out. I really enjoy those opportunities, so hit me up at pennyfractions@gmail.com if interested. Otherwise, let's jack into the metaverse.

A new internet just dropped and it's called the metaverse. Tech marketers, excitable journalists, and billionaire CEOs have all tuned their frequencies towards the latest attempt to convince people the future will be fully subsumed by digital platforms. Ben Thompson of Stratechery noted that Microsoft made an early mention of the idea this year, and Mark Zuckerberg won't shut up about it, whilst promoting dour conference software. Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, is chatting about it and the rapid success of Robloxmay be the root of this sudden interest. (The rise of cryptocurrency also fits into this equation.) The world's biggest tech and video game firms are all in agreement that the metaverse is happening because they tell us it is, but this message isn't for us.

Even though many pieces are quick to cite Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for birthing the term, CNN provided a rather clear appraisal of this marketing initiative (emphasis mine): "Big companies joining the discussion now may simply want to reassure investors that they won't miss out on what could be the next big thing, or that their investments in VR, which has yet to gain broad commercial appeal, will eventually pay off. And, especially in Facebook's case, playing up the long-term potential for the metaverse could be a useful way of distracting from growing scrutiny in the here and now."

Despite the last half-decade of tech backlash, industry leaders remain ready to bet on tech as the future of basic human interactions. This is certainly a much more fun and optimistic narrative to tell investors and potential investors than one of looming governmental oversight. Distracted by the metaverse, it's easier to ignore the Federal Trade Commission's increased attention on Facebook or China's low-grade reshaping of that country's tech sector. This also helps recast the still rather limited commercial prospects of augmented and virtual reality.

While this may be a marketing ploy, it's one the record industry is prepared to strap itself right alongside. Facebook and other tech firms may talk about AR and VR most often, but the widest and most successful implementation of those technologies is seen in video games. Second Life, World of Warcraft, or even early web games like Neopets are cited as proto-visions of Roblox without the ten-figure valuations. From Michael Jackson's Moonwalker tothe Grand Theft Auto/Tony Hawk franchise soundtracks, there was plenty of overlap between these industries well before the 2010s (not to overlook Sony's gaming and music intermingling). However, what's happened in the last decade is a corporate interweaving that's found new forms. So, let's begin in China with Tencent.

Last year, when I wrote about Tencent and its growth in the record industry, I intentionally overlooked its role in the video game industry. The simple reason is that Tencent's reach within the video game industry is ridiculously wide. Here's a short list, put together by PC Gamer, of companies it owns or invested in over the last decade: Riot Games (100%), Sharkmob (100%), Supercell (84%), Grinding Gears Games (80%), Epic Games (40%), Fatshark (36%), Funcom (29%), Kakao (13%), Bluehole (11%), Frontier Developments (9%), Paradox Interactive (5%), Ubisoft (5%), Activision Blizzard (5%), Platinum Games (unreported), Yager (unreported), and several small mobile gaming firms. This is why venture capitalist Matthew Ball, when spitballing about the metaverse last year, cited Tencent as a potential case study; Packy McCormick's newsletter presented a similar case.

Still, those in the record industry are likely already familiar with how this might play out within Tencent properties. There's Travis Scott, Marshmello, and Ariana Grande appearing in Fortnite, and League of Legends spinning up their own digital KPop group. Digital commerce sits at the heart of gaming's metaverse aspirations, where 13-year-olds and 35-year-old marketers stand side-by-side with someone's credit card in hand to purchase digital goods. The collective post-Covid freakout that inspired a boom of livestreaming platforms and digital-first strategies is what's really behind this metaverse push. Major labels are tripping over themselves to further affirm this digital-first future because of the commercial opportunities it provides, not a desire for more collectivized ownership structures.

Last July, only a few months after Travis Scott's digital debut in Fortnite, Sony invested $250 million into Epic Games. The investment was relatively small considering Epic's market cap, but I found this quote from Tim Sweeney fairly telling: "Sony and Epic have both built businesses at the intersection of creativity and technology, and we share a vision of real-time 3D social experiences leading to a convergence of gaming, film, and music." It's not hard to see how Sony, with its vast reach across gaming, music, and film, wouldn't want to sell overpriced digital goods to a captive audience of teenagers.

Not to be left behind, Warner Music Group also got in on the action. The company joined a $520 million investment round into the Roblox Corporation, maker of the highly popular Roblox game. Even if the deal was only for a fraction of a percent, the company also decided to put millions into Overwolf, which allows users to make video game extensions; Genies, a digital avatar firm; and Wave, which began creating digital worlds and has since pivoted to assist with avatar-based live performances. And you know who else invested in Wave? Tencent Music. These deals are contextualized in the press as relating to the metaverse, but they're simply expanding the possibilities for closed-box digital environments while cutting out the analog firms (see: LiveNation or AEG).

Last year, Music Business Worldwide noticed a cluster of Sony job listings that said the roles would be "dedicated to reimagining music through immersive media." This was prior to Sony's investment into Epic Games and before the sudden emergence of this new buzzword in tech and tech-adjacent industries. In the next newsletter, I'll focus more on the financial aspects, but first I wanted to examine the press narrative and how it connects to the record industry.

Record label investment into these gaming companies is too small to hold any corporate sway. In many ways, these are simply bandwagoning moves (in case the awkward 3-D rendering of Travis Scott or Lil Nas X didn't make it clear the record industry is ready for tech's newest trend). Tencent, venture capitalists, and now the record industry are effectively all saying "this is the future" with their millions of dollars in an effort to make sure you know that to be true. A ticketed digital avatar concert that can take place with or without your favorite artists may be the future - or at least, it's the future being presented while touring stumbles out of the gate. This investor-led idea of the metaverse envisions a future in which every interaction is mediated via the American dollar or cryptocurrency.

Hey folks, Hunter from Infinite Catalog here again.

An industry-wide shift to simple profit-share deals - as opposed to the Kanye-tweet-worthy, 80-page-long deals of old - is underway. This "new" model has been proven in the indie community for decades (h/t 50-50 deals), and it works equally well for services like publishing, sync, distribution, management, fulfillment, etc. This means it's now easy for the same organization to offer any/all of these services... if you can keep the money straight.

Infinite Catalog is the first account-for-anything software + service made for catalogs and artists alike, simplifying royalties so you can grow your catalog while being more transparent.
Infinite Catalog is free to try for 30 days, and Penny Fractions readers get a 30% discount off your first three months.
A Note of Financialization

Where to even begin in the world of song rights this week. According to , Olivia Rodrigo and her co-writer, Dan Nigo, will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars by adding Paramore to a writing credit on her song "good 4 u," which is wild. 3LAU, who made headlines earlier this year for his lucrative NFT drops, is fully leaning into that space with Royal, a blockchain-based platform that'll let fans "invest" into their favorite artists' songs. Forbes reports this will be through "autographed digital assets," not actual publishing or recordings. Certainly worth reading the fine print on some of these announcements. Shodement, backed by Axial Capital and Sound Royalties, raised $13.7 million to offer loans for up-and-coming British musicians. The company reportedly wants to be "a music version of Blackstone in artists 'back pockets,'" which is horrifying. There is already too much Blackstone and BlackRock in the record business.

On to this week's acquisitions. Bill Ackman, while still under fire for his failed SPAC purchase of Universal Music Group, revealed that his firm bought another 2.9% of UMG ahead of its IPO, bringing his total to 10%. Reservoir Media, our favorite SPAC, bought the recorded music catalog of the band Alabama. Primary Wave picked up a "majority stake" in the publishing and master royalties of the Gin Blossoms. BMG reported solid financial numbers for the first half of the year and announced it has 71 catalog purchases in the works, valued at over $1.1 billion, so good to see that KKR money is being put to good use. Get ready to see the press releases start flowing out from them soon enough.

Apple buys classical music streaming service Primephonic - The Verge

The current streaming paradigm is fairly disadvantageous for classical musicians, so Apple putting some cash behind a niche app could point towards more mass-market streaming options for less-popular genres. I should hold off on making conclusions to be sure Apple will put any effort behind marketing this app. Still, it feels like a neat move.

Inside Track: Will Spotify Stay Independent - and Should It? - Billboard (Subscription)

This piece hints at a possible merger between Netflix and Spotify, which could give a bit more credence to the company's audio-first push. However, the suggestion that Lina Khan's watchful eye at the Federal Trade Commission could potentially threaten the acquisition makes a lotta sense, though it's not something I've seen reported prior. It'd certainly be exciting to see Khan prevent such a move. Don't let us down Lina!

How Music Streaming's Option Anxiety Birthed Another Single-Serving Economy - New Feeling

Since the United Musicians and Allied Workers began their 'Justice at Spotify' campaign last year, I've wondered if Spotify's impact is best understood within the cultural, rather than economic sphere. This essay shows how those two perspectives are conflated, as certain economic solutions (higher pay) don't always address the cultural issues (gatekept playlists, rewarding passivity, etc.). That's a conflict I think reforms to the current streaming paradigm should address.

Inside Track: NBA's Harden Loses on Social Boxing Flop; $uicideboy$'s Big $$$ Deal - Billboard (Subscription)

A hilarious chronicle of corporate mismanagement by LivexLive with the added kicker of bad celebrity investments.

Understanding Exploitation through the "Saweetie Meal" - Hood Communist

An astute analysis of the McDonalds and Saweetie collaboration, which could be mapped onto a number of recent branded celebrity deals.

Elijah Is Doling Out Music Industry Wisdom, One Post at a Time - First Floor (Subscription)

An enjoyable interview with Elijah, a co-founder of the grime label Butterz, about what he's seen change, and not, over the last decade.

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The Record Industry Invests in the Metaverse (Part 1)

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Hello, hello! Hope folks are doing well this week. First off, this is the second issue sponsored by Infinite Catalog, and below they've got an interesting take on the rise of profit share deals (i.e., 50/50 deals) across industry sectors. Also, if any college professors would like for