New Second Life Ad Targets IMVU's 18-24 Female Market

Here's the new ad for Second Life which is running in Google AdSense, featuring Apple May alongside her RL owner, Shannon. This looks like a direct bid to go after the audience of IMVU, the 3D social chat game that's quite popular with teens and early 20s, especially very young women. I think it's notable that Shannon is just as attractive as her avatar, and that the avatar is stylized and somewhat cartoonish, in a way more akin to IMVU's avatars, than the photorealistic avatars more popular with SL's fashionista crowd. The images actually contradict the "Become Your Avatar" tagline, because Shannon looks little like Apple, but it does suggest two other messages that will probably appeal to the IMVU target audience:

Despite what you may have heard, the ad implies, Second Life has cute young users like you, and it's not really about having a "second life", but rather, getting a doll-like avatar to customize and style. It's a campaign worth trying out, though to grow the userbase, the first-time experience will also need to offer more IMVU-style social options.

Hat tip: Fred Beckhusen.

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Comments

[shockwave yareach]

I wonder how many IMVU users will get the viewer, have it crash on them the first time they launch it, and give up in disgust?

The viewer crashing is 90% of the cause for the low percentages of people creating accounts and then actually entering SL. You can't enter when the viewer automatically goes into modes known to crash NVidia cards, you know. And most non-geeks aren't going to tweak anything or give SL another try. If it crashes the first time they try it, then they are gone.

[Kadah Coba]

IMVU avatars are creepy.. >__>

[foneco zuzu (@ZZBottomHL)]

Then they need to start using Nirans:)
I already deleted all the other viewers i had and only use it since 1 week ago!

[Iggy]

Shannon is fine w/o an avie.

So what is the purpose of IMVU anyhow?

[Pussycat Catnap]

Um...

The SL fashionista crowd is not into realism. They're into frowning fish-lips, wide hips, crushed pelvises, widely spaced beady eyes, and riding invisible ponies.

Realistic avatars went ----------------> that way...
... sometime in 2011.

People like self on a more realistic look (nvm the tail) are soooooo yesterday...

**************

On the ad. This has been going for over a year now. Not with that person, had a different person before.

Its good to see, because IMVU has been using their own advert since 2009 to spam every website that even has the words second and life within a 1000 characters of each other... :)

[Adeon Writer]

I'm the direct target demographic for IMVU, and my ads show it - they are trying very hard. I couldn't be less interested, personally. I've tried it. It's no SL. Not even close.

[Orca Flotta]

@ Pussycat:
They had different persons before. The SL famous Takamura (sp?) Keiko was just one of them. But so far their ad campaign was about how similar the avies looked to the RL person. In Keiko's case the likeness was really shocking: the headphones, the red strand of hair, the same asian face ...

It was aimed at the "realism" crowd. The new campaign aims at a different demography, namely the IMVU crowd, the chatterers, the social type. Just plant an avie into a room and start babbling away.

[Cyberserenity]

Why dont make a ad that say. "IN Second life you can have sex with your avatar. NOW"

I think that would get some followers.

The problem with IMVU. It is boring.

[Ann Otoole InSL]

oh my she is yummy.

[Iggy]

@Cyberserenity, sex is precisely the purpose of the very advert from LL that keeps appearing on the R side of my screen at NWN.

Note the geeky-hipster male and his shoulder-candy blondie boo-boo gal in her cruel-shoes. Log in, oh ye chair bound misfits, and "watch what unfolds!"

LL is advertising, but only to those already likely to try their product.

@Pussycat, you pretty much sum up why so many female avatars now creep me out in SL: the glistening wet eyes, the lips the size of flounder filets....

[Angie Mornington]

Campaign ads are useless if you don't have a serious retention plan to keep new users interested in coming back. That is what LL should be working on.

[Ajax Manatiso]

Everyone who knows me will be shocked to hear this but -- I think LL has made a good, wise move with this ad. Its on the money, has a defined target, and remains factual. Its a good ad. (Chokes out words: Good job LL)

[Eve Kazan]

@Pussycat Catnap "The SL fashionista crowd is not into realism. They're into frowning fish-lips, wide hips, crushed pelvises, widely spaced beady eyes, and riding invisible ponies."

Really ? this is not my case ^^

And i like the ad, i just hope that beautiful avatars will want do beautiful project in SL :) Beauty is not a way of life.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Eve: You're old, yesterday's news. Don't worry, so am I. :)

This is what's hip:
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/67405i3A8E30804D9ACECF/image-size/medium?v=mpbl-1&px=-1
- above image is a person who "gave [herself] a makeover once for another thread [there] about this.", not a member of the movement, and so she's actually tamer than a lot of the trend in SL right now.

Scan through marketplace, flickr, and fashion blogs... scary stuff.

The ad is nice, but to me it looks a LOT like the old one. Just a new person, campaign identical.

"The problem with IMVU. It is boring."

The problem with SL is that a lot of SL does what people in IMVU do: sit in one place and chat. Marketplace has worked to make SL even more 'non mobile'.

In IMVU, you basically teleport between poses on spots or furniture. No ability to walk around and explore - as far as I could tell from 'how to' videos. It looked like it was all about searching who was on, inviting people to your digs, and sexting them up.
- And of course we've all had folks try to do that with us in SL. :)

Its worthwhile to try and take from the IMVU crowd. It might be rough dealing with them once they get here, for a while at least... :)

[Emerald Wynn]

I think "Become Your Avatar" is horrible. Somebody get Don Draper up in here.

So many people think Second Life is a place for people who have NO lives and no social skills. My brother and his friends – who are in their late 20s and young 30s and would play video games all day if they could – heckled me with jabs along those lines when they found out I have an avatar here. "Become Your Avatar" just reinforces that misconception, in my opinion.

"You don't like who you are in real life so Become Your Avatar in Second Life. It's not for losers. We swear!"

Shannon is adorable. DON'T WASTE AWAY YOUR YOUTH AND THAT FACE ONLINE, SHANNON!!

I doubt people would believe that Second Life users generally look like Shannon. If anything, that approach is going to evoke an eye roll. It's like the dashing, shirtless, muscular male they slap on the Zoosk ads all over my Facebook page. We all know that guy isn't meeting women online.

One of the reasons why I was excited to try Second Life back in the day was because I heard there was a virtual Dublin there. And Paris. And Narnia. We never hear or see much about the amazing builds in LL's marketing campaigns.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I posit that the percentage of strikingly attractive people who play Second Life is indistinguishable from the percentage in the general population.

Every time somebody runs the demographics of video game players, the stereotype gets blown out of the water. And every time, it respawns.

[Lyrical Popstar]

Give us an avatar mesh like in this video, and I'll start logging in again more regularly again. At this point, SL feels so outdated.

Skip the first minute or so, but check out these avatars customizable in-world on Eve Online... why can't LL give us something like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3P7cu4ekuY

[Alia Baroque]

"One of the reasons why I was excited to try Second Life back in the day was because I heard there was a virtual Dublin there. And Paris. And Narnia. We never hear or see much about the amazing builds in LL's marketing campaigns."

I agree with you Emerald, and the "Your world, your imagination" still stays. I so hope LL could see that's the real thing that makes SL different, the ability to create with a load of awesome tools they made and are more and more unused by a new dormient userbase.

Creativity, under all aspects (social, visual)is SL unique richness that no other shared platform till now is able to provide to this level.