Is Real World Marketing Making A Comeback In Second Life?

"The Second Life of Second Life: Why A-list companies are returning to the virtual world" is a feature article from the latest edition of Fast Company, a tech business magazine with a solid reputation in Silicon Valley.  (By total coincidence, it went online as I was giving my talk about virtual world marketing at last week's Web 2.0 in New York.)  The article highlights Joni West of This Second Marketing (Joni Rich in SL), whose impressively successful marketing campaigns with avatar-based "buzz agents" for Harry Potter in IMAX and for Nestlé were covered here last year.  According to Joni, who e-mailed me over the weekend, the Fast Company piece got several key points about her company wrong.  (Contrary to what it suggests, for example, "[M]y business is successful while others were failing is because of my 20 years of experience with live events, digital media, and setting proper objectives for the medium," she writee, "NOT because I cold called people undercutting prices for SL!")

That to one side, I think the article's main thesis is correct:  real world marketing in Second Life can work, if you're willing to play by SL's rules.  Considering Fast Company's readership, I suspect we're about to see a second wave of ad campaigns following that advice.

I put that last point to readers in metaverse development companies: have you seen an uptick in interest from potential clients wanting to market in SL?

Image credit: Fast Company.com.

Comments

[Christophe Hugo]

Bravo bravo CEO M. Linden, you have accomplished your business objective for 2008: chase away real SL creators and artists, replace them with a SL-sponsored 3D shop-window called "Showcase sites" (lipstick on a pig some would say); then now that the place has been "cleansed" (i.e., now that it's more Disneyland-like), you can invite back big-name companies eager to market heavily to teens.

[Ian Lamont]

I think that a second wave of marketing is unlikely for a few reasons:

- Resident population has plateaued
- Failures of first wave still fresh in marketers' minds
- Economy will result in reduced marketing budgets

Ian Lamont
The Industry Standard