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Kenneth Musante is a writer and technology whiz from the heart of Central Wisconsin. He joined ADOTAS in June 2005, where he writes news and editorials. He's particularly fond of new and innovative ideas like podcasting and online video.

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Second-Guessing Second Life: Is this Virtual Playground Worth Your Marketing Dollars?

Written on
March 12th 2007
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by Kenneth Musante  |
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In one campaign, Millions of Us worked with Butler, Stein, Shern & Partners to generate spillover by creating virtual screenings in Second Life of a series of funny videos called Hammer and Coop promoting the MINI Cooper S. The series stars Starsky and Hutch-esque crime fighters named Hammer and his buddy Coop, a KITT-styled talking MINI Cooper. Users are encouraged to share different elements of the campaign through other forms of social media. In one instance, they were encouraged to take photos of themselves and upload them to Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing service. The creator of the most popular photo in turn will win a prize.

Still, there is no surefire guarantee that a campaign will resonate with the blogosphere or garner mainstream attention. Millions of Us has had both successes and failures. Steiger believes the key is to make campaigns that are as open-ended as possible to allow for maximum user interaction.

Marketing within Second Life itself also has technical hurdles to overcome. For example, Second Life’s search system makes it difficult for users to find obscure items and locations like the Hammer and Coop screenings. Linden Labs’ user interface is also complicated and confusing to new users, which can prevent them from exploring further into the world.

There is also no way to measure a direct correlation between a marketing campaign in Second Life and sales. Any exposure is currently used for brand recognition and testing. For example, when it created the virtual store, American Apparel also used the virtual space to test people’s reaction to a new style of jeans before they were released in stores.

“Businesses are still going to check it out even if it’s just in their R&D budget,” says Clay Shirky, a faculty member at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a critic of Second Life’s business model. Shirky believes that the number of actual users within Second Life is much too small to have a real commercial impact.

Aside from extra publicity, Linden Labs actually has little to gain from marketers in Second Life. Linden’s income comes from the sale of virtual land, user subscription fees, and Linden Dollars (Second Life currency)-to-US Dollars transaction fees. All advertising and marketing transactions are handled by third-parties like Millions of Us.

Linden Labs’ director of marketing, Catherine Smith, contends that Second Life is a platform that anyone can build on, marketers included. But she was unable to say how much virtual land was purchased by companies and organizations rather than individual users.

“I think a great indication of what’s happening in Second Life would be to look at the velocity of the economy,” says Smith. The economic information is posted regularly on the Second Life home page and details the growing in-game economy, based on the virtual currency of “Linden Dollars.” She encourages anyone thinking about marketing in Second Life to first get involved in the community and get a feel for the culture and then to look at the economic statistics and talk to Second Life software developers to find out what works business-wise and what doesn’t.

So the lesson learned here is to launch a campaign in Second Life, you need the patience to understand the community, the willingness to let users take control of your brand, and the resources to burn if it doesn’t work as-advertised.



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Reader Comments.

I’m glad that someone else has taken the time to point out the rather obvious shortcomings of this over-hyped channel.

Posted by William Fernandez | 12:27 pm on March 12, 2007.

We’ll be looking at this and more in some detail at the Virtual Worlds Conference, taking place March 28-29, 2007 in NYC. VW 2007 is the leading event for Fortune 500 companies seeking to understand and maximize marketing, entertainment and business strategies within virtual worlds. VW 2007 web site is http://www.VirtualWorlds2007.com

Hope to see you there.

Chris

Posted by chris | 11:32 am on March 16, 2007.

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