Future

The Opportunity: CMG Worldwide and Worldwide XR propose to collaborate with Rockefeller Capital Management to acquire the IP rights of select former, existing, and potential CMG Worldwide clients. In acquiring this IP, CMG would circumvent management of the complex, often difficult-to-work-with relationships found in a personality’s estate. By streamlining the approval of traditional licensing agreements, Worldwide XR would have the financial hedging necessary to develop lucrative Web3 IP, such as virtual humans for use in Metaverse Advertising. 

The Details: Starting 42 years ago, CMG built its business on the representation of the valuable intellectual property rights in and to the name and image of the world’s most influential personalities. Unlike traditional agent-client relationships, CMG cannot work with its personalities directly. Instead, a personality’s estate must serve as CMG’s client on the personality’s behalf. CMG works hand-in-hand with the estate to ensure the preservation of a personality’s legacy. Conflicts arise when what CMG qualifies as preservation clashes with the estate’s vision. Complicating matters further, intellectual property rights are often split between members of the estate, each of whom has their own motivations and notion of preservation. Thus, in dealing with quarreling estates, mixed-media projects are often distinct impossibilities. In any case, our contacts must prioritize the responsibilities of their own lives, and thus management of the estate, namely the approval of potential licenses, is apt to fall from their list of priorities. Over its four decades, CMG has watched hundreds of estates squander tens of millions of dollars in potential licenses due to an estate’s disinterest, inactivity, or intra-estate conflict. 

Fortunately, there is a workaround, one which CMG already successfully employs on a small scale but which requires the involvement of a group like Rockefeller Capital Management to see to its fullest potential: Icon Acquisitions. For instance, today, CMG owns 100% of the intellectual property rights in and to the name and image of Bettie Page. While certainly iconic, Bettie Page lacks the name recognition of other CMG clients. Despite this hurdle, our ownership has facilitated the creation of a lucrative market-place for officially licensed Bettie Page products as well as exploration of NFT and other Web3 opportunities for her brand. 

Now, imagine if we owned the rights to James Dean, Burt Reynolds, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, or one of the other legends in our client roster? Each brand could realize its greatest potential through the full-support of CMG’s legal, creative, and marketing expertise. Ownership of the IP would ensure a steady, forecastable stream of traditional licensing revenue which in turn would hedge Worldwide XR’s costly development of digital avatars. Once developed, CMG could license these digital properties to siloed metaverse ecosystems, hire gamers to represent and communicate as these personalities, and develop the community around the IP needed for long-term Web3 success (ie., NFT sales). You can consider this metaverse advertising strategy the next iteration of social media advertising. CMG and Worldwide XR are on the cutting-edge of this nascent industry, but our success must be based in IP ownership. CMG would thus like to begin the targeted acquisition of IP currently owned by the estates of our personalities. Our decades of experience in managing the complex relationships within a personality’s estate provides a unique advantage in negotiating our Icon Acquisitions. In many cases, existing, long-term relationships will facilitate CMG’s below market acquisition of an icon’s IP.

The Opportunity: CMG Worldwide and Worldwide XR propose to collaborate with Rockefeller Capital Management to develop and package new media projects for sale to Over-the-Top (OTT) streaming platforms and/or next-generation Augmented Reality viewership solutions. Our deep catalog of intellectual property, long-term relationships with those behind the intellectual property, robust network of potential partner production entities, and open lines of communication with every major OTT platform position CMG for rapid development and sale of new media. 

The Details: Development of new media today bears little resemblance to the development of new media one-hundred, or even ten, years ago.  Before streaming, if you want to make a movie, you would write a script, create a treatment, solicit a producer, hire crew, shoot, edit, and, if you are among the luckiest few, sell a portion of the film rights in exchange for distribution. While the odds of success never exceed slim, if you did get the movie made, you at least maintained meaningful ownership. You could retain creative liberty, receive proportionate profits (ticket sales, home-video sales, merchandising, etc.), and ultimately control the destiny of the IP. Today, that same film might be made, but it would be made subject to the whims of the distributor.

No Over-the-Top (OTT) streamer, whether  Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or HBO, wants to purchase a fully-developed, new project. For instance, for Netflix to purchase your fully-developed IP, whether feature film or home renovation show, would be to reject the refined new-content stratagems perceivably responsible for their success. Each OTT streamer requires the creative liberty to put their own stamp on a project and to tailor the content to its existing libraries and long-term goals. This begs the question… how far along should one develop a project before they sell? While there is no blanket response, CMG’s experience suggests a sweet spot between 40% and 50%. What does this mean practically? CMG can sell most easily when there exists a complete treatment, synopsis, and logline, but no script. At this stage of the development process, Netflix, or some other platform, knows enough to get excited about the project and to kick-start development of the script, but not so much as to suggest that their creative input is unneeded. To sweeten the proposition, creators can sell a package, meaning a project with big-name directors, actors, writers, or producers attached ahead of its sale. 

While far from a creative’s paradise, this new media-development landscape offers tremendous potential to an organization like CMG which has a robust IP catalog and network, but not the capacity to routinely develop past the 50% mark. Traditionally, CMG would wait for some aspiring producer or writer to reach out to us regarding their vision for a Randy Savage or Lou Gehrig project. If we like their pitch, we’ll provide them an option. Regardless of that producer’s success in getting the project made, the IP rights are tied up for the term of the license. If and when the project does move to production, CMG must devote significant resources to mediating the relationship between the licensor and the estate. In the modern media landscape, CMG would not provide that option. Instead, CMG would devote its resources to bringing a project to that half-way developed sweet-spot. Utilizing its massive IP catalog, CMG would create a treatment, synopsis, and logline, package the project, and sell to one of the many content-starved OTT platforms. CMG would draw on its network of co-production partners, including the likes of Cindy Kimball Entertainment, Will Smith’s Westbrook Productions, The Rock’s 7 Bucks Productions, Lebron James’ Springhill Company, Steph Curry’s Unanimous Media, and Barack Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, to gain credibility as an up-and-coming development and packaging house. Beyond traditional screen media, CMG and Worldwide XR would develop and create IP for NFTs, XR/AR/VR media, and product integrations. CMG and Worldwide XR would also explore the development of IP for use in the burgeoning digital influencer industry.

The Opportunity: CMG Worldwide and Worldwide XR propose to collaborate with Rockefeller Capital Management to launch a ground-breaking new division: Digital Contracting. Digital Contracting refers to the development of two distinct assets: A digital twin of an environment and mixed reality digital activations laid over a physical environment. As evidenced by a nascent partnership between Worldwide XR and the City of Beverly Hills, as well as ongoing discussions with leadership in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Belize, and the City of Los Angeles, there exists strong demand for a dedicated digital contractor to bring a physical environment into the digital realm. Beyond countries and municipalities, this technology could be applied to environments like universities, concert halls, theaters, museums, and stadiums, among many others. 

The Details: Two months ago, Travis Cloyd pitched the City of Beverly Hills on Worldwide XR’s vision for the Beverly Hills Metaverse. Worldwide XR proposed to develop two primary assets: 1. A Digital Twin of the City of Beverly Hills and 2. Mixed Reality digital activations laid over the physical city and accessible via wearable Mixed Reality (MR) and Augmented Reality (AR)(ie., Apple Glasses, etc.). Each asset provides unique value and promises to reach a distinct audience. 

A digital twin of the City of Beverly Hills allows anybody around the world with a VR headset to find themselves walking through Beverly Gardens Park at sunrise or shopping at Christian Louboutin on Rodeo. The Digital Twin would not be limited to any single platform (ie., Meta’s Metaverse). Instead, Worldwide XR would proliferate the twin across metaverse platforms, allowing for users of all kinds of hardware and software to experience the luxury and beauty of Beverly Hills. To create the Digital Twin, Worldwide XR would meticulously record every inch of the city using state-of-the-art volumetric capture and photogrammetry technologies. From its moment of launch, the Digital Twin would drive profits through, but not limited to, the sale of digital real estate, the booking of virtual learning experiences (i.e., an acting class on the stage of the Pantages), the sale of metaverse advertising (as defined in Opportunity 1), the sale of traditional advertising integrated into the virtual world, and a reinvented concept of e-commerce that blurs the line between virtual and physical shopping.

The Digital Twin, while groundbreaking, is in many ways a logical first step for a city like Beverly Hills to capitalize on the financial opportunities inherent to Web3 innovation. The concept of the second asset, Mixed Reality digital activations laid over the physical city, is perhaps slightly more difficult to grasp, but more in-line with what many experts, including Travis, consider to be the true future of the metaverse. Picture yourself walking down Wilshire Boulevard, wearing Apple Glasses or some other MR/AR set. As you walk past Beverly Hills City Hall you see a floating icon indicating an available digital experience. By engaging, you find yourself face to face with legendary actors and Beverly Hills pioneers Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. Douglas and Mary guide you down the street, calling out the location of their first kiss and their old home.. Each wears an outfit in promotion of, for example, the recently inked Beverly Hills Shield x Sketchers collaboration. As you near the end of the experience, Douglas and Mary lead you to their favorite, hole-in-the-wall café before bidding farewell. An hour later, once you’ve finished lunch, you notice another icon floating outside the café. You scan and prepare for another experiential journey. 

Travis already provides Web3 focused counsel to the leadership of nations like Saudi Arabia and Belize and cities like Los Angeles and Dubai, each of which has expressed interest in retaining Worldwide XR for the development of digital twins and digital-activations to layer over their physical space. Beyond work with municipalities, Worldwide XR’s plan to serve as Digital General Contractor seamlessly extends to venues like museums, theaters, stadiums, and schools. For example, if a high-school Senior in Georgia wants to tour the University of Southern California today, they might spend well in excess of $1,000 to do so. However, with a Worldwide XR developed digital twin, that same student could tour the campus, interact with students, and even hear the marching band for a flat access fee of $20.

The Opportunity: CMG Worldwide and Worldwide XR request funding from Rockefeller Capital Management to spur the growth of our proprietary Augmented Reality viewership solution, VueXR. VueXR is already established as an industry leader on the cutting-edge and is poised for exponential growth. 

The Details: Whereas the aforementioned opportunities in IP Acquisition, IP Development, and Digital Contracting are nascent, the already valuable VueXR, Worldwide XR’s proprietary Extended Reality (XR) viewership and sharing platform, is poised for exponential growth. 

The current Extended Reality (XR) market has seen a great focus placed on creating content and tools with robust smartphone compatibility. Every year, the world’s biggest brands and businesses create one-off XR apps that showcase their products to their customers. This soloed development is remarkably costly and reliant on the also costly subsequent publishing and marketing efforts. It makes XR seem like a technology only a few can afford to use. Even the innovators of the XR technology adoption cycle will, at a certain point, refuse to download yet another XR viewership platform. The ability to implicate digitally created objects in real-world environments already has and will continue to transform industries, including entertainment, e-commerce, gaming, education, and tourism, but there must be a universal XR viewership solution. 

Enter VueXR – Visual User Experience in Extended Reality – the world’s leading online platform for users to upload, manage, share, and profit from AR, VR, and XR content. VueXR aims to make all forms of XR mainstream by bridging the commercialization gap between the public and immersive media industries. Using VueXR, organizations can save money by creating free, branded XR channels, individuals can get noticed in the world of XR art and develop a fan following, and both organizations and individuals will make money through ad revenue sharing and the promotion of XR NFTs. VueXR is already available on Android via Google Play, on iOS via the App Store, Unity Plugin via Asset Store, and on traditional browsers via the official VueXR website. In the short-term, VueXR will generate revenue by showing XR ads to its users once the user base exceeds 100k and by promoting and selling XR NFTs. On the near horizon, VueXR will sell premium accounts and cloud creation models. In the long-run, VueXR will become a content aggregation platform that allows developers to use free APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and SDKs (Software Development Kits) to integrate the VueXR player and advertising modules into their projects and earn from it. Already, VueXR boasts over 10,000 active users, 2.5 million pieces of XR content published by over 1000 active creators, and an industry-leading average use of 20 minutes per user per day. VueXR has completed numerous, high-value projects with brands like the US Space Force, Porsche, and Ford as well as NFT marketplaces like OpenSea. Notably, VueXR has received tens of thousands of dollars in government grants, making VueXR the only publicly-funded XR viewership platform in the world. 

While VueXR has already established itself as an industry leader, the company is prepared for exponential growth in the near future, with the ultimate goal of dominating and growing the $3.5 billion dollar AR market. VueXR is expertly positioned to capitalize on the nearly 70% of media planners in want of AR/VR ads in their next digital marketing campaign. No other XR viewership solution provides more than a handful, let alone all, of the following functionality provided by VueXR: supports AR, Supports VR, Horizontal and vertical plane tracking, geo tagging, web browser viewing, cross platform support, no coding required, metaverse ready, video recording, free use, no file size limitations, no server setup required, and no up-skilling for 3D creators. This suite of functionality makes VueXR the single most attractive proposition to businesses and individuals alike and defines the platform’s unique value proposition.