What Should Have Been at this year’s Digital NewFronts:
Meet MegaBot, the New, NEW Native Ad
Meet MegaBot, the New, NEW Native Ad
Originally published at www.linkedin.com.
This is the fourth in a series about the digital advertising industry.
The first post you can read here.
The second post you can read here.
The third post you can read here.
Since leaving the digital media company I co-founded and sold, earlier this year, the question I’ve been asking myself is, “What’s next?” Being a digital media geek, most of the entrepreneurs and visionaries I encounter will tell me about a new mobile or video content play, or some new ad format. And I, being a bit tired of talking about digital advertising for reasons I’ve well documented, proceed to pepper the conversation with skepticism: No, but REALLY, is that something new?
Reading about the latest innovations by media players at the Digital NewFronts last week I confess I was not blown away by what I consider to be just updated flavors of branded content (I’ll be curious to see if Saturday Night Live really can pull off sponsored replacements to commercials that don’t feel like ads).
On a coffee date with an investor in my previous company, I hit paydirt.
“You’re gonna think this is crazy,” he said.
“Crazy in general? Or crazy for someone in media?” I thought.
He started searching on his phone and handed it over to me. I saw what I can best describe as a Transformer for grown-ups.
“Meet MegaBot,” he said.
MegaBot is what entrepreneurs call a “Minimum Viable Product” or MVP. It is 15 feet tall, 15,000 pounds fully loaded, and its operator sits in its head. If MegaBot’s creators play their cards right, it will be the genesis, not only of a robotic version of the WWE, but of an entirely new media franchise that lives on TV (think live streaming on OTT), virtually, in real life (IRL), and in some combination of all three.
I would argue, MegaBot is the Web 3.0 version of a new media platform.
We’ve just scratched the surface on digital ad alternatives, such as experiential marketing, and native advertising, but by and large publishers and advertisers are still interrupting a user experience, not enabling it.
Speaking with MegaBot co-founder Brinkley Warren, you almost forget that the franchise currently exists as only a business plan and one MVP, initially funded via just over $500k in crowdsourced funds and now with a $2.4 million seed round of funding. Warren explained to me that the plan for world domination starts with an invitation to robot makers in Japan to a fist fight that will take place in the fall.
As stated on the MegaBot Website:
“MegaBots is not about building a single robot or fighting a single duel against Japan. MegaBots is about empowering robot pilots and teams from around the world to field their own giant, human-piloted robot, and then hosting epic live-action sporting events where teams compete for glory, the honor of their fans, and the chance to become the world’s ultimate mech champion.”
It’s an inverted form of VR, where the sci-fi robotic creations of a generation of young geeks are brought outside the virtual world to duke it out in real life.
“This is a whole new form of entertainment, “ Warren says, “blending reality and fiction. We took advantage of something you see in every sci-fi franchise and brought it into the real world.”
From here, the MegaBot team will issue more challenges, and presumably gain more audience. And like with any emerging medium, standardization will be applied. The MegaBot team will license a kit of parts (or an API, if you will), to other developers to set the baseline for innovation and partnered with NASA to develop 200 safety protocols for manned robots.
Growth-hacking an engaged audience won’t be a challenge, but scaling the product will be. It’s hard for many independent developers to get access to warehouse facilities and welding equipment to even meet the baseline standard, but that doesn’t mean there are no takers in some of the least expected places. In addition to the Japanese team, oil drillers in Texas with access to facilities, Iraqi developers who have collected busted tank parts, South Korean roboticists, and Russian investors have also shown interest in adding to the franchise.
And MegaBot is in conversations with a global game developer and distributor, who is interested in developing a game that enables users to customize their own virtual robots with a digitized version of the MegaBot kit of parts.
So, why is MegaBot the shiny new answer to innovation to the digital ad industry? It may or may not be. Ultimately MegaBoth is a metaphor of the thinking that will have to be applied to brand experiences in the future.
Megabot, itself, is a native ad for its sponsors: Companies such as AutoDesk and military-grade vehicle and robotics manufacturer Howe & Howe Technologies supplied software and hardware for the prototype. Shell is providing the gasoline powering the MVP and, perhaps, the new additions to the franchise.
This begged the question for me: how does a non-tech, non-gaming, non-mechanical brand integrate into the experience without deferring to the age-old billboard model of slapping a logo on a pre-conceived, pre-built product?
Warren turned the page of the business plan in his mind. It would be entirely possible for other brands to participate, he explained, as the franchise would extend to other media — TV, for example — and as additional dimensions of engagement would be made possible at MegaBots live events. For example, borrowing from virtual gaming, all spectators at a live event could participate by engaging via mobile app, where they can assist robots by providing much-needed virtual supplies from their personal control panels, which, in-turn, could be supplied by brands.
MegaBot is an example of the innovative thinking around content, audience, and distribution that will have to be applied to this platform-agnostic, ad-blocked world. There’s no way back in with consumers who have opted out of an experience without traversing between the physical and the virtual; without enabling an ecosystem on whatever platform it uses.
And what does it mean to enable an experience, or a robot? Will brands spend thousands — or even millions — on building content, virtual goods, or robots? We half-joke that brands are the new publishers, but will they also become game developers, inventors, or world changers? Will the next cure for cancer be brought to you by McDonalds?
The short answer is, probably not, but co-creation — and co-innovation — with brands will be table stakes for digital publishers moving forward.