The recent Martechopia event, organised by B2B Marketing, was a great opportunity to connect with marketers and vendors in the martech space, with a focus on optimising people, processes and platforms to drive performance.
As well as taking to the stage, it was a chance to meet with like-minded marketers and hear about the latest trends hitting the martech landscape. Here are a few of my highlights from the day:
- AI is everywhere – most speakers touched on it in some way. Many vendors are looking to integrate and enable their SaaS martech solutions with Chat GPT or similar technologies.
- However, there is still a healthy dose of caution when dealing with AI models like Chat GPT. Most marketers are seeing it as a great productivity tool but not the panacea to all marketing ills.
- Building a strong community is one of the priority drivers for B2B marketers. It’s a worthy goal but one that takes time and effort to bring to fruition.
- With many businesses looking to streamline their martech investments, delivering and proving value is more critical than ever.
- The skills gap still exists – the industry is crying out for more talent, whether in-house, nurtured or bought in.
Now on to my own session! I teamed up with Korby Hayre of House of Block to lead a session focused on ‘The rise of the metahumans’ – it was fantastic to receive such positive feedback so thank you to all who attended!
For anyone who missed it (!), here is a quick recap:
- Marketers are under huge pressure to deliver meaningful experiences and the deluge of content we are facing is going to make that even harder.
- At the same time, there is a wave of new technology – including Virtual and 3D video production, digital humans, the metaverse and AI – that is accelerating the pace of change.
- Bringing these together creates the perfect storm of opportunity for marketers to leverage new tech and meet increasing buyer demand for good, personalised, authentic and relevant visual content.
- Metahuman Creator from Unreal Engine, Synthesia and similar platforms are enabling marketers to develop and use lifelike high-fidelity avatars or digital humans of incredible quality. Here are just a few of the ways marketers are bringing them to life:
- Virtual influencers are playing a significant role in social media, with some like Miquela Sousa gathering millions of followers and capturing sponsorship deals. Other examples include Kami, the first virtual influencer with Downs Syndrome.
- Digital employees like Yun Sheng of Huawei are carrying out a role in communicating the company mission and product vision.
- Smaller brands, like our customer SWARM Engineering, are leveraging digital humans like AVA – their AgriFood Virtual Advisor – integrated with ChatGPT as the human interface to their solution offerings.
Other use cases include ABM, live events, interactive experiences, website concierge and so much more.
The metaverse offers huge opportunities for brands, with 25% of us expecting to spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse by 2026 and spending within the metaverse to hit $5trillion by 2030.
Today, marketers have opportunities – previously only available to movie makers and gamers – to tell their stories in new and exciting ways, leveraging AI and digital technologies to create personalised experiences at scale.
At Marketing Fusion, we're working with leading B2B tech brands to bring these ideas to life, helping marketers connect with audiences by leveraging next and exciting technologies, while remaining grounded in sound marketing principles.
To understand how we can help your brand explore the metaverse, get in touch or sign up to our hear more metahumans updates.
