A famous Business Week cover story arguably kicked off the hype around brands and Second Life, so it's interesting to note a new special report on the site written by New World Notes blogger Wagner James Au, looking at what campaigns are actually working within virtual worlds.
He lines up some key tips. Fostering community is the first, citing the success of the Second Life presences for TV shows The L Word and Gossip Girl. The second tip is to ‘embrace the fantastic’, making amazing-looking virtual environments rather than merely trying to mirror real-world shopping malls. Au cites L’Oréal Paris’ decision to launch virtual products in the Greenies locale of Second Life as an example (the clear implication is that any brand doing the traditional ‘x opens a shop in Second Life’ is missing a trick).
Finally, Au advises real-world brands to leverage existing metaverse brands: “Instead of superimposing them on the virtual world, everyday brands should seek out the most popular content creators, and then hire them to merge the real and virtual brands into a product release that only exists in Second Life,” he says, pointing to Playboy as an example.
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