![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.”](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/week18marketinginsecondlife-120320045654-phpapp01/85/Week-18-marketing_in_second_life-20-320.jpg)
Week 18 marketing_in_second_life
- 1. Marketing in Second Life The Virtual Brand
- 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.”