A Second Life for Your Ad Campaigns (Page 1 of 4 )
Where consumers go, businesses and advertisers follow. With all the attention focused on Second Life, it’s no wonder that huge corporations (from Coca Cola on down) have been establishing a presence in this digital world. Is it time for your advertising campaign to start reaching out to avatars?
Never look at a new opportunity to expand your business without first doing your homework. Second Life, according to Wikipedia, “is a privately owned, partly subscription-based 3-D virtual world, made publicly available by San Francisco-based Linden Lab and founded by former RealNetworks CTO Philip Rosedale.” Unlike other online virtual worlds such as EverQuest or World of Warcraft, there is no specific “goal” to achieve in Second Life; users (known as Residents) create avatars, hang out, interact with other users, and explore the world.
There are other important differences between Second Life and other online games: all of the content is created by the users. Residents can not only create objects such as watches, clothes, buildings, and so on, but they can buy and sell them for Linden dollars. Premium subscribers (those who pay a fee rather than maintain a free account) receive a certain number of Linden dollars per week regardless of what they do. Linden dollars can be exchanged for real U.S. dollars. The exchange rate is typically such that a premium user who doesn’t spend or earn any Linden dollars over the course of a year will come close to breaking even one way or another on the yearly subscription fee.
These cold facts about the set up of Second Life do little justice to the world, unless you have a vivid imagination. Residents are living actual second lives, selling digital items to each other. You can buy virtual real estate to build up, get a virtual architect to help you, create artworks or other items to sell (such as clothing, jewelry, even spaceships!), and more. You can even get financial or legal help in Second Life – or an education, as a number of universities have started offering classes there.
It should come as no surprise, then, that a number of real-life companies and other organizations have embraced Second Life as another way to reach their target market. Intel, Reuters, Sony BMG, American Apparel, Wired, Pontiac, Amazon, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Nike and others own and maintain their own property in Second Life for avatars to explore. With larger companies paying attention to this space, shouldn’t you?
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