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Big Brands in Second Life Attracting Few - If Any - Visitors

Besides the sale of YouTube, nothing's been hyped more this year than companies, from IBM to Starwood Hotels to ad agencies and PR firms, opening in Second Life. Visit them and you're likely to find yourself alone, or maybe find one or two other people there. The biggest problem: everyone's jumping in because everyone's jumping in. They're often not bothering to visit Second Life first, let alone learn the culture.

The second biggest problem: you have to download software to enter the metaverse and big corporations generally won't allow anything downloaded on their servers. And once you do download it, the software is clunky, slow, and hard for newbies to grasp.

Greg Verdino has a great article in MarketingProfs today, with some warnings and guidelines for marketers. He says:

"The best—maybe the only—way to understand the metaverse, is to join as a resident before you join as a marketer.

Big changes are coming fast, and as marketers we would be well advised to learn some lessons about metaverse marketing now, lest we be trumped by more nimble competitors.

But we need to be smart about our approach, realistic in our expectations, and consumer-centric in our executions. Doing it just to do it isn't good enough.

On the other hand, neither is waiting to see what happens."

Categories: Alternative Marketing, Clueless ad agencies, Must-Read Articles, Second Life, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

BL Ochman | Dec 19 06 9:21 | TrackBack (0)

Comments

I think it's the same early growing pains as all social media based marketing. Brands want it to work like media buying, and it just doesn't.

I'm busy playing around in SL, but not really working in it yet. I want to understand the rules before I start pitching it as a channel to clients

Posted by: CarlenLea at December 20, 2006 1:39 PM

Thanks for picking this up BL. Carlen- YES! That's exactly the right approach.

Posted by: Greg Verdino at December 20, 2006 10:20 PM

I'm not surprised that big companies and their marketing teams are finding 2L to be a difficult place to engage potential prospects. We have several lines to promote to the 2L female audience, but we early on decided it would be presumptious and uncool to simply set up a "store" and hope for some buzz. We opted instead to create a character, and begin building her persona and reputation as our in-world representative and ambassador. Through her interactions -- intimate as well as merely social -- with other avatars, we've already learned that people engaged in this kind of role-play are NOT interested in being "marketed to". In our case, we MAY be able to do some limited selling, since we are in casual humorous apparel for smart women and girls, but we will be going very slow on this front. Instead, we'll be giving away in-world shirts and accessories, sponsoring in-world seminars and events, putting on "street performances", and generally making friends through entertainment. In fact, rather than simply putting up another cavernous, empty, boring "store", we will be creating a members-only social and personal development club for the types of gals who like our stuff.

Posted by: D Yancey at December 22, 2006 8:51 AM

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About BL Ochman

Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the Ethics Crisis blog for SRF Global Translations

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