Age of Avatars: Meet the new brand ambassadors

While videos of deepfakes of Tom Cruise created by TikToker Miles Fisher periodically go viral whenever a new one comes out, soon it may not just be a maverick fact of life. Celebrities and brands are now embracing developments in AI, the metaverse and virtual reality to breathe new life into legacy mascots, creating new virtual characters and allowing both brands and their celebrity ambassadors to make the most out of limited shoot schedules.

It is precisely this technology that is being worked on at Media.Monks India’s creative labs in Noida’s Film City, as India’s M&E industry, taking a cue from global trends, pivots towards digital avatars. The agency is currently developing its virtual character pipeline, even as it is in talks with advertisers, talent, and other industry stakeholders about what these technologies could actually impute.

“Brands sign on celebrity ambassadors for x amount and get somewhere around four blocked days out of the star’s packed calendar, within which they have to shoot all their promotional media, across all platforms. However, if they spend that time being digitized, under strict terms and conditions of contracts, which allow the talent to have final release, then all manner of creatives and campaigns can be created without needing any extra commitments from the celebrities,” says Robert Godinho, Managing Director, Media.Monks, who believes that shoots can be done in half the time using this technology.

Reshoots are expensive and contractually fraught, planned campaigns may have to be retooled (especially in a culturally sensitive time) in light of later developments, and even superstars are only human and may have their off days. However, digital avatars are always ready to go and can also do things that may be impossible whether due to logistical or safety concerns.

And it’s not just the ever rotating cast of brand ambassadors, but also evergreen classics of old school illustrated mascots that can look to a digital future.

Many Avatars, Many Uses

Amer Ahmad, Director of Technology at Blink Digital, says that many brands have existing brand assets (mascots, brands ambassadors) that have significant brand recall. “Think Colonel Sanders or Ronald McDonald. These can now be leveraged in new and immersive ways, adding layers and character while helping expand these brand assets - in some cases even allowing for new revenue streams. With an easy brand-connect and a direct tap into younger TGs, it's a win-win situation for brands,” he says.

The newer avatars can also play a very important role, especially from a user perspective. “Due to their highly customisable nature, they allow users to express themselves in a far more detailed and unique manner than other social platforms. Brands can leverage these avatars for their own mascots and brand ambassadors to create engaging digital presences. We've already seen AI influencers enter the space and avatars will be a key extension of that - especially across new digital platforms such as the metaverse,” says Ahmad.

Kirubash Kanagaraj, Team lead, Growth- Inbound Sales AdYogi, agrees, saying, "Virtual avatars are now considered the representation of "users of our digital world". These bots have become very popular among digital advertisers. The growing popularity of digital avatars can be derived from the pandemic. Locked-up, and unable to shoot commercials, many brands took to digital avatars as a way to engage consumers.”

Avatars were widespread in gaming to make the experience more immersive and to facilitate the first-person view. “Then avatars were introduced on the second most engaging surface - social media, by Snapchat in 2016, allowing users to customize their Bitmoji avatar through appearance adjustments and digital clothing options, followed by IOS operating system, Meta, and now Microsoft bringing mixed reality and HoloLens work to Teams to revolutionize how meetings occur in the corporate world. We have seen avatars being accepted and used by the consumer, and what brings the immersive experience automatically gets its place in the toolbox of marketing people,” says Sowmya Iyer - Founder and CEO - DViO Digital.

More recently, Hrithik Roshan released his virtual avatar for a gaming platform earlier this year followed by Kamal Hassan on a metaverse. These avatars tend to reach out to the real humans behind the screen - be it for brand consideration or any other marketing goal, hence the growing role.

“Through virtual avatars, brands look forward to forming a relationship with their consumers and also ensuring a more immersive and ‘human’ user experience. Digital ambassadors and digital avatars allow brands to become people instead of just ‘ads’, making the content feel more authentic and personalized,” says Kanagaraj, noting that the one key purpose of a metaverse is to emulate the real world in terms of behaviour, mannerisms, and more.

Into the metaverse

Ankur Pujari, Co-Founder of Hyper Connect Asia, says that digitised legacy avatars are nothing but an immersive reincarnation of the age-old mascots. “Mascots have been iconic in advertising with Utterly Butterly Amul girl or Pillsbury Doughboy or Asian Paints Gattu. Now imagine them coming to age in an immersive world where they can talk, engage and connect with the fans and audiences. As digital marketing gets more and more personalized, avatars will continue to grow and become more real, like in the metaverse.

As to the metaverse, Iyer points out that today, there are an estimated 3.4 billion gamers online, of which 27 percent are between the ages of 21 to 30.

“As many as 67 % of Roblox’s 50 million daily users are under 16, and this is a new generation of metaverse natives. Now, imagine you are a brand that is considered Innovative or would like to be perceived as one and desire to target millennial and Gen Z audiences; what could be the better option than a metaverse? And if the metaverse is to be the future, it cannot be imagined without an Avatar that is essentially an on-screen or virtual manifestation of a user or a brand mascot and a critical element in making virtual worlds feel immersive,” she says.

“In my opinion, metaverse platforms will become as standard as social platforms are today. Whether this happens in 5 years or 15 is yet to be seen. But with increasing access to hi-speed internet and high-spec mobiles and devices, it's inevitable that the metaverse, in some iteration or the other, will be a cornerstone of a user's digital footprint,” says Ahmad adding that this is why, for brands and agencies alike, having a presence on the metaverse, from now itself, will reap significant first mover rewards further down the line.

Pujari says that avatars provide unlimited opportunities to engage audiences in the virtual world in their own unique way. “We at Hyper Connect had created Mr SIP for Kotak Mutual Funds and the key protagonist of the campaign was a model along with a self-learning voice bot with initially 40 questions. Eventually, the self-learning bot now has over 100 questions and answers. Now imagine Mr SIP turning into an Avatar that will automatically learn, engage and educate the audience about SIPs without having to shoot new questions,” he enthuses, adding that this is what the team is working on.

‘Anyone can be an influencer’

Meanwhile, Media.Monks India is using a number of proprietary as well as industry tools to work in the space with John Paite, Chief Creative Officer (Art & Tech) noting that they are creating virtual characters, who only exist online, as well as ‘metahumans’ which are digital renderings of real people which can be maneuvered into doing what is needed of them for content. Paite says that a process known as photogrammetry (which captures a 3D model of the subject from every possible angle) to create a mesh-to-metahuman which finally becomes a virtual Avatar.

“Today there are over 200 virtual influencers, characters who only exist in the digital world, but have massive followings and who engage constantly with their audiences across social media and different metaverses. It really feeds into that idea of ‘anyone can be an influencer’ and brands are zeroing in on the fact,” says Paite, who along with his team has been “digging deep into this for the last one year on Unreal Engine and creating virtual characters.”

Godinho says at present MediaMonks is presently concentrating primarily in three areas: creating the environments in which all these virtual Avatars will exist; having conversations with brands as well as celebrities about rendering metahuman ambassadors; and finally, creating Avatars for the metaverse, which in a couple of years, would be indistinguishable from the real thing. As in, you.