Real world or virtual world? You choose.
Meta , Facebook's parent company, placed its Super Bowl ad in the metaverse. In the ad, an animatronic dog and his friend, a pink tentacled monster, are physically separated but reunited through the company's virtual reality headset. Very curious.
Last week, Meta shares sank and they went to waste, in part because the company confessed that it spent $10 billion building its own vision of the metaverse, a next-generation internet of shared online environments and experiences, causing its profits to fall rapidly.
The software giant Salesforce turned to Matthew McConaughey to propose an alternative to the metaverse: supporting the real world. Starting with the title “#TeamEarth,” the company's second Super Bowl ad shows the actor adrift in a hot air balloon over the San Francisco Bay Area while countering, without naming them of course, the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and SpaceX, Elon Musk .
“While everyone else looks toward the metaverse and Mars, we're staying here and reestablishing ours,” McConaughey says.
Marc Benioff, who runs Salesforce, was heavily involved in the announcement, the marketing director said.
“We have enough fluffy fuss in the world: let's be realistic and focus on saving the planet, on helping our society and our own, also on supporting our communities and small businesses”… “The Super Bowl is an incredible setting to invest in because we have a lot of attention from people from all walks of life.”
Miller Lite , which is blocked from broadcasting the Super Bowl by the NFL's old exclusivity deal with Anheuser-Busch, instead released its tongue-in-cheek game time announcement in the metaverse, creating an interactive digital tavern serving virtual pool, virtual beer, and realistic expectations.
“We're not taking this issue too seriously,” said Ari Weiss, global CEO of DDB Worldwide, the agency behind Meta Lite Bar. “The metaverse isn't going to save our world, or at least not yet.” Little by little, everything takes time and adaptation.