Gaming, Marketing, Social Networks, Technology
Apr 5, 2007
Todd Zeigler
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Marketing in Second Life

Wagner James Au of GigaOM has a fascinating look at why, despite the endless hype, marketing in Second Life hasn’t proven to be effective yet. This is a good companion piece to a link I posted yesterday that provides some practical reasons to be skeptical of Second Life’s marketing potential (put me in the big time skeptic category).

Regardless of your personal feelings about Second Life, I think Au’s criticism of the execution of Second Life marketing efforts thusfar is illuminating:

To play in Second Life, corporations must first come to a humbling realization: in the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal, and unimaginative. Car companies are trying to compete with college kids who turn a virtual automotive showroom into a 24/7 hiphop dance party, and create lovingly designed muscle cars that fly, and auction off for $2000 in real dollars at charity auctions.

Faced with such talented competition, smart marketers should concede defeat, and hire these college kids and housewives to create concept designs and prototypes that re-imagine their brands merged to existing SL-based brands which have already proved themselves in a world of infinite possibility. Or as the Komjuniti study suggests, they can keep building sterile shopping malls, and continue wondering why Residents prefer nude dance parties, giant frogs singing alt-folk rock, and samurai deathmatches– and often, all three at the same time.

I think the same thesis applies to MySpace or Youtube or any of the new so called “social” marketing channels. Bringing an old mindset to a new medium doesn’t accomplish anything. Your only chance of having real and sustained success is if the mindset shifts as well.

  • http://blog.rebang.com csven

    Nothing new here except the fact that people are starting to get a clue it seems. Why wasn’t the marketing community listening to those of us who regularly blog about Second Life? Or reading what I and others have been writing for a long time… such as:

    “The gist of that draft, before I stripped it to nothing and posted the result, was that it appeared Nissan was trying to use Second Life as a marketing platform (for their real world Sentra) and not as a brand-building platform (and the article I read yesterday about Nissan’s real world situation suggests they could use some help in that department). In any event, I thought theirs was a mostly worthless idea because, as some of you know, I’ve been arguing for some time that SL isn’t ready for marketing primetime and shouldn’t be treated like other media. Furthermore, people – most especially people immersed in these virtual environments – don’t aspire to own an “average Joe” car; they aspire to own luxury cars, tricked out street racers, customized hot rods… and the concept cars that the automotive manufacturers show but almost never mass produce.” – http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1158

    This is just a repeat of the “user number” fiasco, afaic. It took someone on the outside with effectively no experience using SL to get the attention for the same issues being raised by others (and that person, Clay Shirky, *still* got it wrong!).

    Perhaps if blogging and other media was viewed as something other than a means to advertise, none of this would be news now because these issues would already have been covered.

  • http://blog.rebang.com csven

    Nothing new here except the fact that people are starting to get a clue it seems. Why wasn’t the marketing community listening to those of us who regularly blog about Second Life? Or reading what I and others have been writing for a long time… such as:

    “The gist of that draft, before I stripped it to nothing and posted the result, was that it appeared Nissan was trying to use Second Life as a marketing platform (for their real world Sentra) and not as a brand-building platform (and the article I read yesterday about Nissan’s real world situation suggests they could use some help in that department). In any event, I thought theirs was a mostly worthless idea because, as some of you know, I’ve been arguing for some time that SL isn’t ready for marketing primetime and shouldn’t be treated like other media. Furthermore, people – most especially people immersed in these virtual environments – don’t aspire to own an “average Joe” car; they aspire to own luxury cars, tricked out street racers, customized hot rods… and the concept cars that the automotive manufacturers show but almost never mass produce.” – http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1158

    This is just a repeat of the “user number” fiasco, afaic. It took someone on the outside with effectively no experience using SL to get the attention for the same issues being raised by others (and that person, Clay Shirky, *still* got it wrong!).

    Perhaps if blogging and other media was viewed as something other than a means to advertise, none of this would be news now because these issues would already have been covered.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    Good comment and post. I think marketers need to realize that with Second Life just showing up isn’t enough.

  • http://www.bivingsreport.com Todd Zeigler

    Good comment and post. I think marketers need to realize that with Second Life just showing up isn’t enough.

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    [...] Marketing in Second Life, Todd Zeigler/The Bivings Report. The key is Todd’s final couple of sentences: “Bringing an old mindset to a new medium doesn’t accomplish anything. Your only chance of having real and sustained success is if the mindset shifts as well.” [...]

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    I just caught Susan Finkelpearl cheating on us with Democracy in Action! Moreover, she’s brazenly flaunting her Tips (for Sprucing up Your Website) in public, too!
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