GigaOM

It’s a classic case of marketer meets gamer. The two races just don’t get along.

“extensive” - Are you kidding me? 200 people is extensive?

SL marketing has a loooong way to go, but I could get 70% of respondees to admit to being a small teapot by asking the right questions.

Slow news day?

I take your point and agree that many brands have failed, but Starwood Hotels did a good marketing run in SL.

Starwood’s story in BW: http://tinyurl.com/ybxkdr

I for one certainly hope the real-world marketers don’t replicate home-grown methods for the ‘green dot effect’.

Camping chairs are the scourge of Second Life.

As long as these companies ‘engage’ the visitors with information, products or just sheer fun, then there should be no problem.

The most important thing is they ‘understand’ SLers and their needs. Most larger SL agencies employed by the big companies have hired some great talent to define and deploy their brand in world.

The builds tend to be good quality, but not always the ‘engagement’.

Many of these islands which are owned by big brands will certainly end up being ‘Virtual Theme Parks’ imho - where the theme IS the brand. So, it’s up to them to avoid that happening. It takes a lot of effort.

Nice overview for the SE newbie-marketeer, thanks. There definitely seems a lot of space left for out-of-the-box thinking and using user-generated marketing.

There’s several reasons why real world marketing needs a massive paradigm shift to work in Second Life, some of which are well covered in the article. My take on the major problems is:

1) The most popular areas by visitor are almost exclusively ‘xxx’ locations where advertising would be almost totally ignored and, amusing though it sounds, I can’t really see a “This Orgy Room is brought to you by Coca-Cola” getting past the company lawyers, but Playboy might not have such a problem!

2) There is a limit to the benficial effect of the ‘Flash Crowd’ aka the ‘green dot effect’ which is exactly that described by Larry Niven in his 1973 story of the same name - the sim gets laggy at fairly low levels and eventually the tp system stops working. Even if a company gets the Beatles to reform with Jimi Hendrix on guitar to publicise an event in sl, a vanishingly small amount of users would actually be able to attend. Companies need to got back to long, slow campaigns rather than a massive spend on shock and awe tactics. AOL Pointe in sl seems to have grasped that idea, for example.

3) There is no way to hold onto the idea of copyright and uniqueness between RL and sl. If users want something tangible such as a guitar, a car or an aeroplane to take radical examples, how can the advertisers persude us we want an ‘official’ Fender, Ferrari or LearJet when the means are available to make your own, indistiguishible from the original, or to find someone who can do it for you for small(er) cost.

Competing against this would either involve the comapnies driving their sl prices close to zero to generate sales or to use the L$ cost of an item against the RL cost, so buying a sl Fender for L$500 gets you a 10% discount against the RL model. Hmm, maybe I should copyright that idea right now…

4) The companies who could engage best with sl residents i.e the tech and design companies are not exactly thick on the ground. I agree that the existing designers should be allowed to design some sl catwalk shows or expos. And how about running some type of ‘Be a Versace / Gucci model’ like the reality TV versions? Involve the movers and shakers of the sl design world as judges and podcast / blipvert episodic chunks out to YouTube / blog channels…

Hey, that’s two ideas, maybe I should be a marketeer?

WJA,

You know and I know that most of the integrations are being completed by what amounts to a glorified software development shop who have no idea what to do once their builds are completed. On top of that the brands are seduced by the eye candy that these firms produce and don’t bother to dig deep into the issues that matter such as sustainability and ROI (Heck Reub even said last week that we shouldn’t pay attention to ROI in SL. Huh?) and more importantly how to create a positive brand experience that is engaging and will create loyalty amongst the general population.

I’ve said this time and time again, it’s not the brands that the community dislikes, but rather the experience. On top of that is the worse case scenario that the community has no idea your even there, which boils down to the basic principles of promotion.

Look at RatePoint. They are a legit corporation albeit a young and hungry start-up. They purchased a significant amount of banner space on your blog, New World Notes, among others, have worked with us to hire an in-world promotion team and built a simple cafe complete with 4-5 live music shows/week just to give the community something cool to do AND have hired residents to manage the cafe and book the artists. In three short weeks they are generating far more traffic than GM, Nissan, Scion, Reebok, Dell, H&R Block, Sony-BMG and every other big corporate giant. To kick a little more dirt in the eyes of the MegaCorps RatePoint is already asking “What can we do to improve this and make it better?” I can tell you, since we built it, their entire SL strategy and execution was completed at a fraction of the cost of what the MegaCorps invested. I don’t know what kind of Kool-Aid they’re being fed, but to them SL might as well be called Jonestown.

I leave you with this. What’s the point of building the most extravagant and expensive widget in the universe (or in this case metaverse) if nobody knows about it?

Marc

Thanks for this great coverage, and critical view of traditional marketing efforts in Second Life! The faster the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’ comes for SL, after the media induced ‘Plateau of Inflated Expectations’, to say it with Gartner, the better it will be. General Virtual Worlds, like Second Life, deserve to be recognized as a maturing platform for social, technological and marketing experimentation, where the interaction has to be very carefully designed or evolved to be sustainable, meaningful, and valuable.

[...] de marketeers van de bedrijven die recent in Second Life gestapt zijn niet begrijpen hoe je daar iets opbouwt dat de moeite waard is om tijd aan te [...]

[...] marketeers from established companies do not understand how to build something that is worth spending any time on.“Any noticeable clump of green dots [...]

200 respondents is not even statistically significant when there are over 5MM SL residents and at least 1.5MM active ones. I don’t think you’re giving Coldwell Banker enough credit. They’re the only real life brand I’ve seen that are in SL as more than just advertisers. At least they’re providing a legit SL service by offering discounted land, and actually giving you a structure to put on that land. Much better deal than dealing with the land barons.

[...] has published a post called Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… Here is why! There are some good points here that relate to careers use of Second [...]

I follow the conversation quiet heavilty today and as a statistic student I can say that all the fools speaking about significant values have really no idea about what they are talking -

I have read the SL article weeks ago on DMG and as the guys from Komjuniti or whatever their name is explain it was hard to find avatars for Q&A!

So what’s the deal - there are only 30.000 people in per day and even TV programs for millions are just based on viewer behavior of 1000-1500 people.

These two facts makes it worthwhile just to listen since there is no real data in the market so far -

probably dave m and nick wilson are working for advertising agencies not knowing anything about what they are talking -

Cheers Steph

[...] GigaOM vejo um post sobre um interessante survey feito junto a usu�rios do Second Life com a finalidade de descobrir as [...]

[...] : Rodica at MOU, Nick Wilson at Metaversed and Wagner James Au join the [...]

[...] Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! [GigaOn] tr { border: 0px } td { cellborder: 10px} table { border: 1px solid black } [...]

I think it’s probably time to evolve past ’second life-ism’ and move on to virtual worlds in general, including taking a retro look at the game space. I’ve seen autozone and cingular and burger king in games for a while not.

And come on, you think Sony is gonna have a problem marketing to people in Sony’s own secondlife thing?

the approach of the companies in SL is too near to the their early strategy for the web presence.
Unfortunately there is big differences ( other world) ,one of the difference is that once you have completed your web site , most of the job is done, in SL once you have completed your Island and building , most of the job is to be done.
The interaction is indispensable to manage a presence in SL and you need a qualified person to manage Avatar in your SLURL.
Metaverse need experiment and company that seek new way to discover the potential of prototyping or new marketing law.

Errr…. lots of people have mentioned that almost all RL brands in SL just have static islands with no avatar interaction… Has no one noticed what we’re up to at IBM…. We have about 23 (last count) islands with more real employees than I can keep tabs on doing real business projects and can often be found out and about updating their builds. Take a look :) search for IBM 1 - 12.

“It’s a classic case of marketer meets gamer. The two races just don’t get along”

I concur, big companies just don’t understand gamers at all and don’t seem to want to listen to their needs or desires.

Though I would never consider SL a community of gamers.

[...] James Au has written an interesting piece on GigaOm, reporting on a marketing survey (PDF). I’ll immediately disregard the survey, [...]

[...] James Au of GigaOM has a fascinating look at why, despite the endless hype, marketing in Second Life hasn’t proven to be effective [...]

[...] Life marketing = failure: GigaOM outlines 3 Reasons Why Marketing in Second Life Doesn’t Work. Oh, good. Now that he’s taken care of that fad, I can go back to bashing covering mobile [...]

[...] Ce qui nous amène à un constat : le marketing ne marche pas sur Second Life ! Certains se sont posés des questions sur la rentabilité de la présence de plusieurs grandes [...]

[...] Life marketing = failure: GigaOM outlines 3 Reasons Why Marketing in Second Life Doesn’t Work. Oh, good. Now that he’s taken care of that fad, I can go back to bashing covering mobile [...]

http://www.getafirstlife.com/

[...] GigaOM » Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! Last week, the Hamburg-based research firm Komjuniti published the first extensive survey of Resident attitudes toward real world marketing in Second Life. It’s been a long time in coming: a British branding agency established a forward operating base i (tags: advertising articles gaming marketing research secondlife branding virtual) [...]

I wish Coca-Cola hadn’t been included in that list of companies, especially since there are arguably other, better examples to cite. As far as I’m concerned, that one occasion hardly qualifies as a genuine effort to take the corporate brand into Second Life. As reported by the author himself, the Coke brand “indirectly sponsored” an event and the organizers brought it in. Sounded to me more like Coca-Cola just didn’t say “No” to what these people wanted to do (perhaps somewhat like how U2 hasn’t said “No” to having their likenesses and names used and their music streamed in to virtual concerts showcasing other brands). Big difference, imo.

This isn’t the first time it’s been reported that Coca-Cola has been “attracted” to Second Life. Question I have is: Why?

[...] life second life: “  bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by [...]

Is Marketing in Second Life a Dud?…

Wagner James Au offers up some interesting reasons why the increasingly popular virtual world Second Life isn’t yet proving a marketer’s paradise. As some commenters on his post note, this may be something of a rerun of the early days……

[...] på, här kommer lite siffror. GigaOM berättar om en liten studie (200 pers) som i sin tur berättar att 72 procent är missnöjda med de verkliga [...]

[...] GigaOM: Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! “The early results from Komjuniti, as it turns out, are not encouraging: 72% of their 200 respondents [PDF file] said they were disappointed with real world company activities in Second Life; just over 40% considered these efforts a one-off not likely to last. As bleak as these numbers may seem, it’s worth noting that they aren’t actually too far off from reactions to traditional Internet advertising.” [...]

[...] GigaOm reports: To play in Second Life, corporations must first come to a humbling realization: in the context of [...]

[...] GigaOM » Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! James Wagner makes some very relevant points about why SL is not geared for branding and marketing initiatives. At the same time, I’ve said this before: It’s not about SL. The web is going 3-D. SL is a good place to experiment. (tags: secondlife) [...]

Suspected this to be the case before these survey results, we blogged sceptically about Brands entering 2nd Life marketing last year starting with this one.

I think the Media brands have got some buzz (BBC Radio 1 for eg) but flogging mundane stuff in 2nd Life just can’t be that sustainable as you note - unless you’re the Ad agency taking the fees off the Brand of course ;)

[...] Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! From GigaOm, this is a really insightful post. Although the survey referenced is quite small (only 200 respondents), and I find the survey’s assertion a bit odd (“72% disappointed with the activities of companies in Second Life”) – the results are to be expected. [...]

What about the traffic problem - Isn´t there a limit that only up to 70 people can visit a certain place at the same time in SL?

• http://www.brandkraft.wordpress.com -

[...] GigaOM » Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! (tags: advertising business) [...]

I totally repudiate this ridiculous study of a tiny sample of 200 people made by one European company, so hyped in the media right now, as skewed, biased, and irrelevant. We’ll need a 100 more studies like this before we can make sense of this very complex and diverse world. While Americans no longer make up a majority of the population, tiny samples of Europeans with an allergy to American-style in-your-face billboard advertising are not representative of SL.

Billboards in fact are used by inworld businesses — and unfortunately for aesthetes — tolerated by a certain percentage of the population. And branding isn’t rejected even when placed as a visible ad — that’s not at issue. If anything, people who say they are “disappointed” in branding or condemn companies for having inactive trade-fair type exhibits actually want more of their presence, not less.

The “green dot effect” only applies to clubbers going to the top events, which are mainly about sex (though “Popular Places” is very misleading, as the venues shown there pay their patrons to remain on the parcel to drive up traffic stats).

Most people explore and interact with other people and events either in real-life similitude along the lines of houses/relationships/shopping or in a “long tail” of more unique-type of activities which they access through SEARCH combined with traffic, as much maligned as it is, and through the Events calendar, which the college kid developers working for the sherpa companies sneer at as “low-culture”.

Normally, Hamlet roots for the people who make up the tiny percentage of feted developers in Second Life working for the companies like MOU that funds his blog. He’s saying “hire the college kids” to make sure that they people he’s been exclusively covering in his blog for years and whom he’s befriended get the lucrative jobs to be had.

Yet, it’s also a rare occasion for Hamlet, who may have suddenly realized what kind of people actually pay the Lindens’ bottom line and fuel his career — he’s recommending the non-feted kids and housewives who make up the vast bulk of Second Life’s landowners and business owners in SL, who run the clubs, shops, malls, and even non-profit do-good organizations that keep others engaged and entertained and involved.

Companies should be hiring these natives who have vast and very useable knowledge about how to get avatars to stick to servers. They’re the people who have gotten very good at doing it, and have survived the end of subsidies from Linden Lab (which used to pay people to entertain others, too), and survived all the purges that the servers inflict on you (bad performance, inventory loss, etc.).

Microtime, paid for in micropayments, is what companies need to be looking at to staff their presences in SL. This is a prototype of the whole Metaverse. Be there while it’s being formed early, to see how it’s going to work. Lots and lots of people want to be online in virtual worlds, and want to monetarize that time online. They have daytime or part-time or even overtime jobs but they want to make some time and effort to be in worlds at an amateur or even professional level of content or experience production and management. So pay them. Something. Populate your empty server with people and events and then other people will come.

The old media corporations have a historical opportunity to become this century’s Medicis and shape the culture of the next century if they don’t lose momentum.
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/03/the_medicis_of_.html

[...] More Second Life marketing skepticism. Wagner James Au says, “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.” Sounds like a Friday night in Georgetown…(also from The Bivings Report). [...]

I think part of the difficulty in reaching people with marketing in-world has been that it the major brands are focused on getting people to come to their islands. Why not go to them instead? Figure out ways to reach the audience where they are already enjoying themselves, and introduce your brands in a useful way, that actually improve a users experience, instead of just momentarily distracting them.

For instance, there are many great music clubs out there working to represent independent musicians, and struggling to pay their monthly fees to keep the lights on, so to speak. I think there are many, many RL brands that would be compatible with the spirit of these venues, would get major woofie kharma points for supporting them, and could slowly learn about what works and what doesn’t in SL. Plopping down a huge build into the metaverse and announcing “I’m here come and love me!” just doesn’t work.

[...] alle berichtgeving over hoe de meeste bedrijven er niet in slagen (pdf) hun aanwezigheid op Second Life te [...]

Kevin Aires,

“Has no one noticed what we’re up to at IBM….”

Exactly!!!!

I think it’s fantastic that IBM has 23 islands, but with almost 300K new users per week how do you expect everyone to know IBM exists when IBM does nothing significant with promoting these sims? Has IBM purchased one ad banner on NWN, SLH, SLU, SLNN, etc to inform the community of this? Have Circuit City and Sears, that sit on your islands, done anything? That initial press coverage has since faded and I personally haven’t seen IBM engage the community so you can’t expect the 5 million that showed up after I arrived to.

I hear your frustration, but I think it needs to be inwardly directed and not at the community.

Marc G

Thank you for this article about marketing in secondlife. The next step for companies is to leverage crowdsourcing using SecondLife!

[...] Wagner James Au | 译者: 小泡泡 (Blog) | 发表时间：本周 04-08, [...]

[...] visar en undersökning att 72 procent är missnöjda med de verkliga företagens aktiviteter i Second Life. 40 procent tror att satsningarna kommer att [...]

[...] sobre la encuesta sobre marketing en Second Life en Gigaom y [...]

csven, Coke is getting involved in an SL foray in a big way now: http://www.virtualthirst.com/

Too bad none of their marketing execs will read this.

[...] a little article written by Wagner James Au, who writes New World Notes, about marketing in Second Life. Interesting how he mentins how most people don’t respond to the brand initiatives however SL [...]

[...] Wagner James Au over at GigaOM reports that traditional advertising companies find marketing to the Second-Life crowd tough sledding. [...]

[...] GigaOM » Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! Apr 2007 article by Hamlet (tags: advertising secondlife inworld brand) [...]

[...] be bothered to spend time in SecondLife. And there are indications that traditional marketers aren’t getting much value from being there — despite the literal land grab going [...]

I’m very aware of what Coke is doing. I also have some relatively strong opinions on why I think what they’re doing is old school and going to be less successful than it could be.

http://blog.rebang.com/?p=1250

http://gregverdino.typepad.com/greg_verdinos_blog/2007/04/the_coke_side_o.html

[...] GigaOM » Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! (tags: second.life advertising advertising2.0 marketing marketing2.0 business business2.0 branding branding2.0) [...]

[...] in the metaverse just got a lot more interesting. Last month, I noted a survey which suggested that real world marketing in Second Life wasn’t working. That still seems largely true, but now a new study from Seattle-based Global Marketing Insite [...]

[...] just got a lot more interesting. Earlier this month, I noted a survey which suggested that real world marketing in Second Life wasn’t working. That still seems largely true, but now a new study from Seattle-based Global Marketing Insite [...]

http://WWW.GetASLFreelancer.com is an online marketplace for both project manager and freelancer in second life.Here project managers can outsource your projects that you need or dream and freelancers can bid the outsourced projects that you like.
We will provide various kinds of service for you, such as escrow, rating, and messaging system help to make the process simple, safe, and enjoyable.
Welcome to visit us :http://www.GetASLFreelancer.com

[...] Wagner James Au, publica en GigaOM un excelente análisis de por qué el marketing tradicional no funciona en SL. [...]

[...] Life? After attacking the topic from a couple directions (most SL users seem receptive, but so far, are largely unimpressed with existing attempts), we finally have some concrete numbers to work with, at least on the more [...]

[...] Life? After attacking the topic from a couple directions (most SL users seem receptive, but so far, are largely unimpressed with existing attempts), we finally have some concrete numbers to work with, at least on the more [...]

[...] Things only get more confusing when we take into account the findings from the two research reports that detail Second Life residents opinions of brands in world - Market Truth’s report suggests that the majority of residents (almost 50%) are happy with the presence of RL brands while Komjuniti’s report claims that the majority of residents (72%) are disappointed. [...]

[...] interessante Meinung zu Marketing in Second Life: So in a relatively similar space of time, advertisers and brand promoters in Second Life have [...]

[...] read more | digg story [...]

[...] realidad es que hay empresas que retiran su publicidad de Second Life porque sencillamente nadie les presta atención ahí dentro. También podría decirse que estas empresas no han sabido adaptarse y hacer buenas [...]

[...] Wells Fargo’s Stagecoach Island, Cisco Systems Island, or other SL corporate playgrounds (reactions to corporate marketing have been mixed at best), Second Life is shaping up to be a networking tool with a lot of [...]

[...] he writes in GigaOM about a recent research report which found a large majority of residents are disappointed with real [...]

[...] the claimed negative perception of SL residents about corporate brands is false, or better, a false myth. In plain words, there is not a sort of shared “anti-social feelings” towards real [...]

Who doesn’t love classic cars? Seems everybody does and hollywood has jumped on the bandwagon too. You see them in just about every movie and TV show now.

[...] the more firmly I believe that marketing in Second Life will never take off.  Others are saying it more and more. Here’s [...]

[...] 3. (Optional) Au, Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work [...]

[...] like Wells Fargo’s Stagecoach Island, Cisco Systems Island, or other SL corporate playgrounds (reactions to corporate marketing have been mixed at best), Second Life is shaping up to be a networking tool with a lot of [...]

Seems to me like people will advertise anywhere and everywhere these days. Pretty soon people will find a way to beam advertisements into our brains while we sleep.

[...] Wagner James Au, Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work.  Gigaom.com article.  April 4th, 2007.  http://gigaom.com/2007/04/04/3-reasons-why-marketing-in-second-life-doesnt-work/ [...]

[...] Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! « GigaOM has published a post called Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… Here is why! There are some good points here that relate to careers use of Second […] [...]

Why market real products in a virtual world? Virtual world use virtual products, they should know better.

[...] Marketing in Second Life doesn’t work… here is why! From GigaOm, this is a really insightful post. Although the survey referenced is quite small (only 200 respondents), and I find the survey’s assertion a bit odd (“72% disappointed with the activities of companies in Second Life”) – the results are to be expected. [...]

I am very upset, i’m glad you posted my blog, but i have more to say then just that!! I am whatever you say i am if i wasn’t then why would i say i am. In the paper in the news everyday i am.

[...] marketing and advertising-driven 3D experiences. For some reason, we don’t put up with marketing in Second Life, but the latest Papervision-based corporate marketing site will spread through the blogosphere like [...]

[...] total of thousands of square miles of vacant ghost-sims left in the wake of last year’s hasty marketing boom. But, just for the sake of argument, lets imagine that technology continues to advance [...]