What is our view? Brand characters had their peak in the ’50s and the ’60s, the golden era of brand mascots. It was a time dominated by cheerful tigers (Tony the Tiger), joyous clowns (Ronald McDonald), and two-tailed mermaids (Starbucks). But through the following decades, and despite the fact that brand mascots found a footing in social media, those brand instruments fell to the side. 

With the metaverse slowly opening up as a new playground for brands, we can see brand mascots making a comeback. This trend will be encouraged by the visceral/intuitive nature of virtual reality. Brands will need representatives to communicate their products and services in this new world, and those reps might not be human… or at least they won’t look like one. In the virtual world, the equivalent of a human rep, or a customer service AI, will wear a three-dimensional avatar costume or will be a virtual chatbot-bot. In a space not limited by the constraints of the physical world, brand representation will go beyond t-shirts and pins and can have a deeper rooting to a consistent brand narrative, amplified by imagination and creative expression. We can already see in front of us the virtual interactions with Mickey Mouse himself (the embodiment of the Disney brand) for customer support in a Disney+ corner of the metaverse, as opposed to a human agent. Our take is that brand mascots will come back to fill in for that need in this new space, in one form or another.

Although this is a speculation for the time being, one thing is for certain. The looming metaverse will require a brand new lingo and new types of communication tools for organisations to interact with their audiences in meaningful ways. Especially in the virtual space, where brand encounters will be placed in a three-dimensional imaginary world, brand impact and brand recall will be wildly depended on the degree of immersive storytelling that brands can achieve. 

We, at Uncloudy & Co looking at the current state of the metaverse from an enterprise/brand point of view and have identified crucial factors for organisations that are considering entering the space. We have mapped out the opportunities, considerations, and barriers to entry, and have established a roadmap covering baby steps exploration, to designing a coherent metaverse brand narrative and delivering it to your organisation’s target audiences. If you would like to find out what the current state of the metaverse can offer to your brand, what key opportunities you can currently harness, or just familiarise with virtual reality and get inspired, do not hesitate to reach out to us so that we can set up an exploration workshop for you and your team, at hello@uncloudy.se.