What Matters To Me:

VirtuReality: Navigating The
Emerging Market Mindscape
By Ray Poder

Marketing 3.0
A digitized, virtualized physical world not bound to a fixedtimeline consciousness, and with the ability for individuals to make intelligent networked decisions throws more than a few currently accepted marketing paradigms out of whack.

Concepts like “segmenting” and “targeting” become nearly impossible with exponentially increasing variables of intersecting timeline, location, mood,
intent and more compounding the difficulty of executing on previously acceptable marketing thinking. While some symptomatic fixes focus on more clever ways of trying to hold onto what used to work, the adaptive approach may be to rethink what’s really next.

First, in a VirtuReal world, there is no online or offline. There are no real distinctions between business model, brand or competitive strategy. There are only connections and meaning. Human nature and the nature of systemic connection design are the only constants.

In a VirtuReal world, thoughts are the ultimate drivers of reality. Imagine how our thoughts (virtual) equal actions (real), and then translate that into a collective thought effecting collective action for real time supply and demand. In other words, how we collectively “feel” about something now becomes more important than ever to determine whether or not that “something” survives in our market ecosystem. The real focus now should be on how your brand provides value to the system by design, communicates just-in-time by vibe and understands how
it is experienced in both virtual and real contexts.

Systemic Value by Design
In a VirtuReal world, people are not going to come to you, you have to make your offering available to fit into how they personalize and subscribe value for themselves. The real value is enabling the connections not managing the
content.

The open APIs of Googlemaps and Facebook are examples of this in action. Plaxo is a contact and task management brand that also does this well. When your
contacts are Plaxo members, you don’t have to worry about ever updating their contact info; the design allows for each member to update their own info, the end value of which is a“self-updating” address book.

A good design like this Moving Earth Widget, which connects seamlessly to any customizable user space should be the de-facto standard to play in VirtuReality. Virtual and real goods need to move seamlessly in market spaces based on collective mood or “vibe”, much like the ideology we hold in our heads affect the ideas we accept or reject. Design of the system is critical to ensure survival where access is open and the real and virtual are indefinitely connected. A bad design example is like the inventory updating models of Expedia which are potential dinosaurs as long as they require manual updates of third party info marked up from their original suppliers.

In a VirtuReal world, the first question for any service or productis its relative value to market ecosystem. If it is not a symbiotic relationship, and it causes friction within the system, the system (the connected collective of all of us) will eventually reject it.

Tuning into the Network Vibe!
As our inboxes and RSS readers fill up with increasing frequency, our ability to consciously read, evaluate and act become much too tasking for our cognitive limits. Brand experiences that can enable us to manage our participation at a “gut” level stand a much better chance at connecting with us, than those whose experience requires our conscious attention.

The idea of Awareness=Relevance is not only tired, but less likely to succeed when repetition in our attention limited mind spaces actually generates more indifference than interest. Instead, it’s about action relative to circumstance and “mood”. This is where virtual “vibe” rules, and physical reality conforms to it.

Microblogging like Twitter or Pownce, or 1-click commenting like Click Comments may seem like idiotic ramblings by people who have too much time on their hands, or gross oversimplifications, but their growing popularity is an undeniable indicator of the importance of gauging “vibe” within a network of our connected
peers.

This does not mean that thoughtful communications are replaced by rapid, pulsating forms of communications, but rather, these simplified “feelers” over time allow us to ACT on what is the most meaningful without getting drowned in information.

Living in Multi Dimensional Contexts
Regardless of the seemingly limitless potential of the virtual world, the real driver of change is first and foremost human desire. Human desire cannot get fulfilled from virtual experiences alone, otherwise online porn would kill men’s desire for real sex.

Similarly, watching Food Network or the Travel Channel increases the desire to try new recipes and visit new places, not satisfy them. Our primitive hardwiring simply prevents us from infinitely expanding the virtual. In VirtuReality, the more engaging the virtual experience is, the equivalent is expected in the physical world and vice versa.

The Apple Genius Bar, Starbucks’ Hear Music Stores, Circuit City 24/24 Reserve and Pick Up, and these shop offline/buy online stats are today’s living examples of business models capitalizing on the emerging VirtuReality.The next generation of brands to survive and thrive in VirtuReality may need to adapt even quicker and reinvent business model and brand value on the fly according to the network “vibe” of the moment. Influencing vibe may become the predominant activity of marketers over the mass market paradigm of “messaging” which is already dying an uneventful death.

Still, as long as our desire to communicate, interact, exchange and learn from each other remain, commerce will continue to be the unifying factor. Although commerce is independent from ideology, politics or religion, it is not independent of change.

So What does VirtuReality really change?
We know that our hardwiring simply won’t allow us to accept the virtual as a substitute for the real and vice versa. As our mental and physical constructs get blurred influencing “vibe” will likely put the desire for peace of mind at the top of the list.

However, the key aspect of living in VirtuReality is understanding the limitations of both the virtual and real within our collective consciousness. As virtual experiences get more immersive and as real items and locations have measurable data and “vibe” attached to them, what we think about and how we think about them will play a much larger role than ever before. Our points of reference to share common contexts will change much faster than ever before.

The prior example of pop culture references being more relatable than historical ones is a clear indicator of that. Especially when time, place and collective “feeling” can turn those points of reference into a soup of confusing information instantly.

But as long as we know that we can’t share meaning until we’ve shared context; we will look for ways to connect on common contexts even if it means shedding some tried and true mental constructs from the past. The human need for connecting on shared meaning is not going away anytime soon, and if we can truly embrace VirtuReality, a world of infinite possibilities await...

NOTE: Ray Podder works with emerging brands to dream up the next ideas to make our lives easier, more enjoyable, more connected to each other and hopefully better than before. He uses his vision and thinking as a designer, strategist and entrepreneur to create the when, now. To learn more, please visit GROW.