2. The Virtual Brand
Among the
8.3 million
Second Life
residents*
You Are
Here: who spend
$1.7M on
virtual
goods and
services
daily.
*as of
8/10/07
3. The Virtual Brand
Every media outlet has a method of best
practice for marketing. Now that marketers
are beginning to understand the internet has
added to the marketing mix, the newest
addition to this mix is Social Networking and
Virtual Worlds
4. The Virtual Brand
Second Life, the most popular virtual world, is
quickly becoming an important platform for
marketers to consider. These worlds, also referred
to as Massively Multiuser Online Media
(MMOM), are currently in a state of tremendous
growth. This growth provides companies the
opportunity to enter Second Life and establish
their brand footprint, or level of impact, in this
new world
5. The Virtual Brand
Virtual world Second Life has 8.3 million+
participants, 2 million of which have been active
in the last 60 days. Its growing success has
placed it on the cover of Business Week and the
front page of the New York Times technology
section. Countless media outlets, from Wired to
Financial Times have given Second Life coverage,
and a Google search on Second Life reveals over
39 million hits.
6. The Virtual Brand
How pervasive and remarkable is Second Life? As examples:
- Reuters has opened up a news service devoted to the virtual
world. The in-game currency, the Linden Dollar, fluctuates hourly,
like any real-world currency, and is monitored by Reuters Second
Life Bureau.
- Calvin Klein is launching a fragrance on Second Life, ck IN2U,
despite the fact that a virtual world is a scentless environment
- Second Life is more than a virtual meeting space. Jazz pianist
Louis Landon gave a concert in Second Life, “with his keyboard
connected to a streaming media server via his PC.” iv Other artists
who have played in Second Life include Suzanne Vega and
Chamillionaire.
7. The Virtual Brand
Second Life’s residents buy and sell tens of
millions of dollars of virtual products
weekly, creating new markets out of thin air.
This has prompted congressional hearings to
look into the question of taxing this growing
virtual economy
8. The Virtual Brand
Although it uses 3-D rendering tools common to
games like The Sims or World of Warcraft,
Second Life is not a game but a tool for
socializing, sharing, learning, doing business as
well as playing.
Second Life has no objectives and few evil
monsters to shoot, and those that exist are a
small part of a much larger world
9. The Virtual Brand
According to Greg Verdino, digital marketing
executive and blogger, “As marketers, we tend
to think in terms of marketer and media
property per se, Second Life is simply a
technology platform with a commerce
backend, in which everything that happens
inside is created by the residents for the
residents”
10. The Virtual Brand
Linden Lab doesn’t make the products, building
or environments found in-world, but acts
essentially as a virtual real estate holding
company, that rents out real estate in the form
of server space.
Unlike other multimedia environments, Second
Life residents retain the intellectual property
rights to their creations, igniting a new
economy.
11. The Virtual Brand
Second Life has revolutionized the online world by
allowing
residents to own the intellectual property rights to their
creations.
Second Life residents set and pursue their own objectives
and are willing to spend real money to do it. Because it
takes time and effort to create objects in Second Life
ix, there’s a demand for
ready-made virtual products. In response to this, users
have become adept at creating desirable property.
Linden dollars can be sold back for real dollars.
12. The Virtual Brand
Second Life is based on user-driven innovation. For example, you
can go to the virtual Toyota dealership, buy a virtual Toyota for
300 Linden Dollars (just over USD$1) and show it off to your
avatar friends. You can also customize it to make it unlike any
other car in the real or virtual worlds. Many stores allow users
to modify their products.
This allows residents to take a Toyota Prius, design it to
their liking and provide out of the box aesthetic feedback to “real
life” engineers and designers.
13. The Virtual Brand
The Benefits of Branding Within Second Life:
The media has prominently featured stories of how Second Life
economy has enabled entrepreneurs like Anshe Chungxi.
However virtual worlds can also provide a casual environment for:
> Engagement and customer feedback
> Market research and focus groups
> PR/media buzz
> Furthering existing customer relationships and creating new ones
> Contextualizing peer-to-peer and group interaction
> User-driven innovation
> Deepening relationships
14. The Virtual Brand
Second Life is also an excellent platform for market research.
• Adidas allows customers to design their own sneaker in Second
Life, helping them to design more remarkable “first life” sneakers.
• Mazda has also ventured into designing an experiential marketing
vehicle; the car’s designers even appear in virtual form to launch
the new model.
• “Just as the web replaces and extends the capabilities of traditional
print media, Second Life is extending the capabilities of
broadcast media and chat. Second Life now surpasses the intensity
of broadcast advertising at an even more favorable price point than
print.” Source: MediaPost
15. The Virtual Brand
When brands truck brick and mortar tactics
wholesale into Second Life without tailoring to
the unique virtual culture, they may have
a rude awakening when their Second Life
homesteads receive few visitors. Brands such
as American Apparel have been picketed, due
to lack of Second Life cultural respect, when they
created ordinary buildings with very few
options for residential interaction.
16. The Virtual Brand
You wouldn’t market goods and services in a foreign
country without tailoring the message to respect the
social, political and economic culture of that country.
The same rule should be applied to Second Life. In
this case, that means creating a unique and inviting
environment that residents can interact with.
Indigenous resident-owned stores that are manned
in Second Life welcome a greater number of avatars,
who then in turn spend more time and money.
17. The Virtual Brand
Market Truths Limited concluded that the two components of the
metric —
how many people are aware of the brand’s Second Life activities,
and how the brand’s Second Life presence influences overall brand
attitudes —
are determined in large part by what tactics are undertaken on behalf
of the brand within Second Life. Brands that score most highly on
the metric tend to go beyond showing their
products, provoking virtual versions and web links.
They provide opportunities for deeper engagement by making a brand-
relevant contribution to the community and creating opportunities
for interaction such as co-creation and customization of products.
18. The Virtual Brand
Task—
In your groups you have to work with one other
team to collaborate on Second Life. This means
one team has to develop and market a product
whilst the other has to test and then answer
market research questions on the product. You
may use a product already created but you will
need to learn how to do this from the following:
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Marketing_Your_Products_In_Second_Life
19. The Virtual Brand
Second Life has traffic ranking, just as Google does, which is
based on, among other things, the number of avatars who are
visiting a sim and the length of their stay. The higher these
metrics are, the more prominently the sims will rank in the in-
world search feature.
Indigenous Second Life businesses routinely pay avatars to camp
out or dance in their sims, generally, one or more Linden Dollars
per hour, less than a third of a penny, effectively boosting their
traffic rankings.
20. The Virtual Brand
Market Truths Limited calculated an overall Second Life brand impact
metric. According to their research, “all of the most frequently
mentioned brands are receiving a positive impact from their
[Second Life] presence, but the impact is greatest for Reuters —
largely due to the fact that most of those who have encountered
the brand in Second Life say doing so has improved their
impression of the company. IBM had the next greatest impact,
but its position is more a result of the fact that it received more
mentions in the unaided awareness question than any other brand.
Toyota, Nissan, and Dell had the next greatest brand impacts.
The black bars at the bottom show the metrics for Toyota and
Sony when their two separate brand names are combined.”
