Real-to-Virtual World Laguna Beach Markets Real-to-Virtual World Fashion Line

Wanna look like Lauren Conrad, the Orange County blonde and burgeoning fashion designer? Your kid sister probably does— but the question is how much she’s willing to pay. Lauren ConradMTV’s semi-reality television show Laguna Beach has a virtual world analogue built on Makena Technology’s There by metaverse developers The Electric Sheep Company. And to use the term that’s become popular with online world folks, this will be a “mixed reality” release, since it leverages one of that show’s top stars to market a product line in both the virtual world and real life:

MTV Networks and Lauren Conrad— the star of MTV’s popular series “The Hills”— today announce the first-ever celebrity-inspired digital fashion line to be introduced in the Virtual Hills virtual world. In addition, Lauren will develop a real-world fashion line that will be available in high-end boutiques, retail stores and online later this fall.

As with the recently announced online world Home for the Playstation 3, this is yet another incursion by a massive media corporation into the virtual world space. The question is how successful it will be. Previous attempts to market real world brands in online worlds have had remarkably ambivalent returns; in my Second Life reporting, I’ve noted how big corporations trying to interest the world’s subscribers are regularly trounced by homegrown competitors. It’s a canny move on MTV’s part to associate their product line not with a brand, but an actual celebrity— especially since Laguna Beach is a mix of reality TV and fictionalized narrative, which already makes “Lauren Conrad” a kind of real world-based avatar. But will Lauren’s fans pay real money for virtual copies of her clothing line?


(Hat tip: Om.)

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