marketing

We don't normally cover contests at Metaversed unless they're very innovative or are making a statement about the way marketing should be in virtual worlds. The latest contest from 1-800 Flowers, a photo contest loosely framed around "inspiration", doesn't particularly leap off the page. Still, 1-800 Flowers has consistently been able to do something that other companies only wish they could do: impress the residents in Second Life. The otherwise aloof and cynical press of the virtual world has always given this company a warm welcome and regular attention. I decided to find out why.

I called Seth Lasser, the Director of Special Projects at 1-800 Flowers, and asked him what it was that brought them to the virtual world in the first place. "The thing about a 2D website is its really hard to interact with people," he said, "We want to ask people directly: ok, it's your wife's birthday, what are you trying to say?"

Success for them is measured by the amount of time they spend interacting with customers. I asked him what kind of build was best to help that happen. "Making a large static build just doesn't make sense," said Lasser, "the game's all about events and activities." To that end, when they ran their bouquet-creation contest in June they hired around 30 people providing 6 hours of live in-world presence daily. This meant real interaction and engagement with the brand. "We were more focused on training our people than we were on how things were going to look."

They were advised right at the beginning by Jonie West fo Second Marketing not to sell anything at all - advice they stick to to this day. "People would come up to us and try to order flowers. We'd tell them: 'We're not really selling anything yet', and people would look at us like we were crazy." Regardless, they held firm. Selling virtual copies of real world goods wasn't going to impress anybody. The goal here was brand engagement, not virtual currency trade.

The original build was just a small greenhouse, and people would have conversations about what made a nice bouquet. The contest winner, Vlad Bjornson, created 'Multibloom' (pictured above) that changes shape and color. After the winner was chosen, the greenhouse closed up. Flowers are seasonal, and if 1-800 Flowers was to continue in the virtual world, they were going to do something new.

Trying new things has become habit for the company. They had one of the first 800 numbers, sold flowers over Compuserve where they'd fax all the orders to the company once a day, and they were the first merchant on AOL. Going to the virtual world, for them, wasn't much of a leap.

So what's next? Experiments in mixed reality of course! The new Second Life contest asks for pictures of whatever inspires the contestant. It doesn't have to be flowers, or even something pretty, but just something that can help the company understand and gain new insight into what influences its customers. Once again, the site is minimalist and only as big as it has to be to get the job done.

This time when the winner is selected, 1-800 Flowers will dive into the world of machinima. A short film starring the winning avatar will be created and played in Times Square in November

Will they ever sell virtual flowers? While Lasser feels that the community has "given permission" to them to do so, it's not an immediate plan. Having said that, they've hired Cranial Tap to create virtual bouquets for them - some like the real world, some un-tethered to anything bound by reality. From the way Lasser talks about them though, they may just be to provoke conversation. "The best advantage to Second Life is the ability to interact with people," he says. "Somehow in Second Life it's easier to meet people and have a conversation."

Coke's Virtual Thirst campaign in Second Life was applauded by many, including me, as being innovative, and remarkable among so many corporate missteps in the virtual world. They promised to reward the imagination of Second Lifer's by providing fame and glory to the inventor of a 'virtual vending machine' that embodied the spirit of Coke. Creative hopefuls could submit their ideas though YouTube, MySpace, in Second Life and Flickr -- it was a big wet sloppy kiss for social media marketing, and the firm behind it, Crayon, along with the marketing digerati echo chamber, were quite beside themselves with glee over the sheer cleverness of this user generated media play by the fizzy drinks giant.

What they didn't count on though, was the fact that Second Life isn't full of the same echo chamber web2.0 commentators that wave and cheer and throw their knickers at mere mention of user generated media. No, it's made up of ordinary folks interested in their own stuff -- their own shops, groups, businesses and friends. And when you realize that, is it any wonder that the figures cited by Joel Greenberg are less than stellar?

• 300 blog posts about the contest
• 33,000 links
• 150+ photos in Flicker
• 31,000 Youtube views with 160,000+ comments.

Now at first glance, you might be wondering why I find this unimpressive. Think of it in the context of a company like Coke though, and in the context of the millions of residents in Second Life. Is 300 blog posts really a good result for a campaign from Coca Cola?

Let's look at some other figures, courtesty of Tony Walsh's excellent additional analysis:

• 175 MySpace friends with 13 comments
• 26 subscribers to the Virtual Thirst YouTube video channel with 12 videos and 2,589 channel views. Most of the videos appear to be created by Crayon, not contestants.
• How many entries were received?

Tony also notes the desperate sounding blog posts coming out of Crayon and the unmentioned 1month delay in judging -- from what I can see, it looks like entries for this competition were less than expected, by quite a mark.

Whereas it would appear that the Virtual Thirst campaign was not a great success, and the Second Life community may need a less valley-centric approach with such efforts, I do still think the general idea was sound. They probably would have been better off using groups in Second Life, events and other less 2.0 ways of reaching the audience, or gasp, not have used Second Life at all, if the point was a marketing 2.0 showcase..

We can learn a lot from observing this effort I think. It will certainly be interesting to see the next virtual world campaign from Crayon, to see what they felt were the lessons here.

Last month Metaversed reported on the growing trend of youth marketers creating custom branded virtual worlds. Mattel's BarbieGirls.com has now reached 4 million accounts, up a million from when we last tracked them only a few weeks ago.

Entry into many of these virtual worlds is being linked to the sale of physical objects. BarbieGirls is releasing an MP3 player that unlocks a variety of functions in their world, and the upcoming Be-Bratz will be completely inaccessible unless you own the right toy. Ganz were the pioneers in this area with their Webkinz toys and world, and their popularity has heralded this new model of selling toys that act like gate keys to other worlds.

Perhaps smelling the blood in the water, Mattel is releasing a toy line built specifically around a virtual world to imitate the Webkinz model, rather than building a world around a toy. U.B. Funkeys are cute poseable little toys that interface with your usb to give you access to the virtual world, but there's a catch: you need to buy a new toy every time you want to access to a new zone, and the new games within. There are 42 in total.

Using "gate keys" to access worlds is officially mainstream.

The Hollywood Reporter carried a story about the wild success of a recent Second Life marketing campaign for the Imax showing of Harry Potter. Instead of building another sim for us all to ignore, they tapped into the key element most seem to be missing: people. About two dozen avatars were paid real-world wages to approach others in the virtual world and promote the show.

By all accounts it was a wild success. They spoke to 15,099 unique avatars about the Imax "Potter" showing, handing out promotional materials and referring them to the advanced ticket sales websites. They were able to track the sales accordingly, and showed a huge percentage of the total opening weekend sales came from this effort. Even those who didn't purchase tickets became walking billboards for Imax, especially if they accepted the 3D glasses that put a big "Harry Potter" box floating over their heads. In total the campaign lasted just one week and covered 840 hours.

This latest effort by This Second Marketing LLC (previously hailed for their efforts with 1-800-Flowers.com) showed a much lower cost way to reach Second Life residents and respected the human factor, so expect to see others try something similar. The only concern we might have is if the trend becomes too popular - dozens of street crews handing out promotional material could become an irritation. The novelty of the idea will have completely worn off. Still, like telemarketing, you can't argue with results. Even if the marketing effort drives people crazy, sales are sales.

Nic Mitham, founder of K Zero, gave a presentation delivered at the Mondi Virtuali conference in Turin (Italy), June 2007. Entitled The Seven Point Plan for marketing in Second Life, these are some of the most lucid thoughts on running a virtual world campaign that I've seen in some time.

You can click here for the slideshow with nice graphics, or just see the point-form notes below.

Point 1
Have a plan - Because this is just another marketing channel

• What do you want to achieve?
• When do you want to do it?
• How will you manage it internally?
• What are your competitors doing?

Point 2
Keep the builders at bay - Design comes last, not first

• Projects should be strategically delivered
• Buildings/layouts/areas should facilitate the strategy
• Design is an output, not an input

Point 3
Integrate - Think about all your marketing channels

• Look to create synergy with other marketing projects
• Use existing marketing materials
• Push visitors from outside in
• Push visitors from inside out

Point 4
Giving is better than receiving - Engage with the residents

• Get people
  • seeing/using your product/service
  • experiencing your brand
• Word of mouth advertising
• Zero on-going cost of sale
• You receive metrics

Point 5
Keep the seats warm - Commit to your virtual presence

• If you build a virtual office, make personnel available to be in it
• Manage peoples expectations
• Give named in-world contacts
• Or, create a venue that does not require on-going support

Point 6
Stoke the fire - Once you have entered, you need to exist

• Run regular events
• Deliver in-world presentations/seminars
• Run competitions
• Involve the residents

Point 7
Promote and cross-promote - Leverage all your marketing channels

• Advertise in-world
• Create cross-channel campaigns
• Encourage referred and new visitors

In summary

• Have a plan
• Design is an output
• Integrate other activities
• Engage with residents
• Commit
• Enter and exist
• Promote

Trilogy Studios, formed in late 2005 by ex EA and VU Games execs, has been making announcements about moving into the virtual world business with the construction of a Pimp My Ride online game for MTV. While this isn't MTV's first virtual world experience (they have both Virtual Laguna Beach and The Hills operating on the There platform), Trilogy Studios CEO Michael Pole has been pushing for this to be more than just a way for people to interact with a brand:

"We've developed a business model that enables media companies to successfully monetize their franchises through virtual world networks including micro-transactions, in-game advertising and sponsorships, premium subscriptions and e-commerce."

A brand's presence in virtual worlds has largely been seen as a promotional tool in the past, but the accent on making the promotion itself into a viable business may gain Trilogy Studios clients that other virtual world companies couldn't access. The platfrom of choice, in this case, continues to be Makena Technology's software bundle most famously used on the There.com platform. Pole has, however, been implying that the Pimp My Ride game will be stand-alone and not necessarily available to There residents:

"Why co-mingle a brand like the NBA in a virtual world like Second Life when you can create your own virtual NBA world?" asked Pole. "We think we can attract 10 to 20 million mainstream consumers to a focused virtual world site and deliver a full brand experience."

The obvious hubris of assuming that they can double World of Warcraft's subscription numbers aside, the idea of building a separate and profitable world for each brand's marketing campaign is a unique one. The plan to use micro-transactions and premium subscriptions has been successful in the past for narrowly-focused worlds, so one could argue that a branded world would fit the bill.

As for the rest of the plan: will advertisers will want to place their messages in another brand's world? Also, how many separate, branded virtual worlds can the market bear?

Update: It seems Mark Schiller gave ClickZ a hard time for this story and they're in full retreat over the post. See Mark's comments here.

If you're drinking coffee right now, put it down, away from the computer. It seems at the ClickZ advertising and social media conference, aleady mentioned by Onder, ElectricArtists CEO Mark Schiller announced that his agency were giving up on Second Life. Rumors of Mr Schiller mumbling into his shoes before taking his ball home in a huff are unfounded, but funny nonetheless....

Among other excuses for not doing a good enough job, Mr Schiller stated that "ElectricArtists eventually decided to close client Starwood's prototypical Aloft hotel brand in SL after a launch and feedback gathering period, partly because Second Life residents don't need to sleep and hence don't need to stay in hotels."

What? You can just imagine the client meeting can't you? "Erm... after due consideration, and after careful evaluation of the facts and considering the problem from all angles Mr. Client, we finally relalized the patently bloody obvious..."

Give me strength.....

Part of the reason is that avatars don't sleep? That's not the problem here....

-- The ALoft was built by the Electric Sheep Company and recently threw a big party. Who knew it was a farewell party?

For the terminally bored, or frighteningly easy to please among you, Vauxhall, a UK car maker I tend to class alongside it's Scandinavian cousin Volvo, have put together a buzz gen program in the virtual world of Second Life that only it's mother could love. Pick from a list of pre screened destinations in Second Life, and vote which ones you like best. W00t!

What would have ben far, far better as a way to gear up buzz and awareness over a new corporate presence would have been to team up with someone like Sloog or Gridmarker and allow residents to tag places they love with corsa for example.

If it turns out to be a wild success, i'll happily eat my virtual hat, but right now it just looks like someone had a great idea, then decided to finalize the details by running it through a committee of morons.

via Nic Mitham at KZero

Of course it is. It's fairly useless on the 2D web. With the proliferation of AJAX based web applications which bork the whole concept of a "page view", the rise of social networks and blogs where brand control is a laughable concept and, the widgetization of the web, where content becomes untethered and free, traffic as a measurement of success is ridiculous. It is however, something people can easily understand and digest, so as part of the overall picture, it still has it's uses.

In a somewhat defensive post in response to the "SL brands ranked by traffic" meme that did the rounds a couple of weeks ago, Satchmo Prototype of the Electric Sheep Company calls for a ranking of brands by engagement rather than raw traffic figures, pointing out that many campaigns in Second Life don't even have a destination where "traffic" can be measured. Unfortunately he doesn't offer any suggestions on how we might measure engagement in the virtual world, so I guess we're stuck with traffic and product distribution right Chris?

Tateru Nino just nailed marketing in Second Life. It's a shame none of the real life companies involved in virtual world marketing will pay attention to her for some years yet. As I remarked to a friend just the other day, it's like 1997 again, complete with spinning logo's and brochure sites -- but this time, we're doing it in 3D Wheeeee....

If you want people crowding around your towering marketing icon in Second Life, you need to find out what your market wants, but isn't getting. And give it to them.

Tateru is a Second Lifer of some long standing, so comes at this with a good perspectivie. Unfortunately the biggest problem marketers face in SL at the moment is the biggest problem marketers face in general -- Fear. Fear of being different, fear of being bold, innovative, of leading the way and of taking a risk. Fear of failure. Here's the thing though, are you listening carefully? Good: It's OK to get it wrong, you can just have another go at it. If you wont take a risk, and do something truly interesting, you might as well not bother.

Microsoft launched their Visual Studio Island in the virtual world of Second Life this week with an egg hunt for keen residents and MS fanboys. The first winners were announced on Friday -- They get a 902Msq plot of land on the MS sim, and the warm smug glow that comes with the satisfaction of having beet a bunch of other sad saps to the prize.

Don't mind me, I'm just jealous...

Apparently, Toyota's Scion City [SLUrl] will shortly be allowing residents of Second Life to set up homes and businesses on the virtual Island that promotes the Scion brand. I wonder how they'd feel about someone coming in to set up a giant florescent dildo factory? See the announcement here, and if you care about such things, be at the Island at around 3pm SLT on Thursday where they'll be unveiling the new Scion XB.

A friendly nod and a wave toward Eloise Pasteur writing for SLI for spotting this tidbit of media stupidity. The short story is that Linden Lab, makers of Selcond Life have struck a deal with an outfit called AMPP media and soon to be Google owned DoubleClick to provide billboard and video advertising inworld.

Id be hard pushed to find a more useless way for companies to spend their money. Really, if you want to reach Second Lifers you're going to have to do a whole lot better than putting traditional interruption, broadcast advertising in front of them while they're busy getting on with stuff. Sheesh..

Tell me I'm wrong....

On Nissan's new Altima Island, residents in the virtual world of Second Life can jump into a high tech hamster ball, launch themselves into orbit or befriend a loyal pet bumblebee. These are just three of a total of six (well, seven if you count the actual replica of a Nissan Altima) objects that are being given away free of charge as part of the Altima promotion by Nissan, who now operate at least four islands. What's more interesting though, is that they intend to give away the "codes" as Open Source, so that any resident can learn from the scripting of the objects that were designed by Kage Seraph, Kanker Greenacre and Calum Clifton of the Electic Sheep Company. A quick inspection and play with the gadgets didn't reveal how this worked, but apparently it's so.

Above, you can see me test driving the "Avasphere"

The six gadgets available all relate to an aspect or feature of the Altima, some only loosely, but it's a pretty neat tie in and an imaginative way to promote in Second Life. Let me run through them, you'll see what I mean. They are...

1. The Xtronic CVT Avasphere - a kind of high tech hamster ball you can (barely) drive around. It's actually pretty good fun, but like most vehicles in SL, really hard to drive. This gadget is supposed to represent the Altima's "virtually gearless transmission"
2. The Intelligent Bumble-Kee - a cute but pointless bumblebee that follows you around, or apparently "lets you hitch a ride" (i didnt work that bit out). This represents an itelligent key system.
3. The AVA-NAV HUD - A graphical bookmark type system for landmarks inworld that stores your last 10 hops representing the Nissan's GPS unit.
4. The Push Button Avapult - a mordern looking version of some kind of medieval siege engine that you can use ot catapult yourself or friends into orbit with. For the life of me I just don't get this one, and it's relationship to the Altima is flimsy at best. It's supposed to represent the push button ignition, but in my opinion they'd have been better off with only five gadgets.
5. The Hands Free Grappling Hook - Again this is a little out there, but it's more fun than the catapult at least. This gadget lets you shoot grappling hooks like a maniac then reel yourself in. It represents a bluetooth hands free phone system, obviously...
6. The 270-HP V-Questrian Ava-Suit - a suit that enables Avatars to travel super fast across terrain in Second Life - this one I didn't try. It represents the Altima's engine.

With all the problems with logins after Second Life was upgraded today, there weren't more than a half dozen people there when i wrote this report, but it was fun, and I like the idea of providing the code as open source so that others can learn and of giving away gadgets that represent different aspects of the Altima.

VNUNet has a good roundup of the backlash surrounding Dell's "plant a tree for me" campaign in Second Life. It seems that Dell's drive to have residents plant trees that will grow in SL on private land has outraged green activists as they see this as simply adding to the already large carbon footprint of the virtual world.

Personally I think they're taking it way to far. The point was to increase awareness, and it seems like a case of over zealous teenage rebellion to shout yah boo at Dell just because you can.

I'm starting to work my way through the extensive list of recorded sessions from this years Virtual Worlds Conference posted at the excellent RezNation blog. If you're umming and ahhing about where to start, let me suggest this particular session: Virtual Worlds "Trends and Numbers" with panelists:

• Daniel Terdiman, Senior Writer, CNET News.com
• Chris Collins, Business Analyst, Linden Lab
• Sibley Verbeck, CEO, The Electric Sheep Company
• Joe Laszlo, Analyst, Jupiterkagan
• Steve Prentice, Distinguished Analyst & Chief of Research, Gartner
• Justin Bovington, CEO, Rivers Run Red

This discussion just blew me away while i listened on my ipod whilst walking the dogs in the rain today.. Absolutely awesome, and well worth the investment of an hour of your time if you're trying to grok the whole VW thing.

There seems to be an inexhaustible stream of companies entering the 3D user created world of Second Life of late. Not a day goes by without news of one firm or another taking the plunge and launching a virtual presence in a space fraught with all of the confusion, dilemma and blundering, blind panic of the scrabble for dot coms in the early days the world wide web. It's 1997 all over again, but this time it's in 3D. There are most likely many reasons why companies are falling over themselves in the rush to set up shop in Second Life, but in a recent conversation with friends I managed to formulate a small list of what I believe are the most common reasons for companies to go virtual.

1. GMOOT - Get Me One of Those!

We've all seen it, and most of us have even done it. Gone out and bought something, or done something just because everyone else is. PR blogger Steve Rubel calls this GMOOT, or Get Me One Of Those!

It's not an unreasonable reaction. When you're competitors are all jumping on the bandwagon, it takes balls to not follow suit as the fear of losing out, or being wrong can be overwhelming. It is unfortunate though. As I've noted before, half arsed efforts seem to do more harm than good.

2. Virtual Placeholders

Though I'm no fan of the tendency to simply replicate the company headquarters and hope people will come and click an ad that opens the firms website in a 2D browser, I can see why this is so common. Apart from perhaps showing a frightening lack of imagination, it may well be the simplest way to establish a virtual presence, even a crap one, and then figure out what to do with it later. Though much of this stuff just seems obvious to me, it certainly isn't for many, and hey, I could be wrong right? We know that virtual worlds are important, and many, including me believe they're the future of the Internet, but winning formulas just haven't been established yet. (and nor will they be, but that's another story :)

3. Virtual Investment

One of the smartest reasons companies get involved in Second Life for is what I've recently come to think of as virtual investment. Investment in the community, the medium and the vision of virtual worlds. These companies, a good example of which would be IBM, are not expecting to reap immediate reward, they're simply investing in a three dimensional future we've not quite worked out yet. They're establishing their credentials, building reputation and garnering goodwill amongst the community in the knowlege that this effort will stand them in good stead as the Metaverse evolves.

4. Real World Press Coverage

Naturally I have no proof of this, but it does seem to me that many of the half baked press releases I routinely discard about launches in Second Life have little to do with virtual worlds and a lot to do with jumping on a press bandwagon and milking media attention. Right now, almost any company making a move, or even just talking about making a move into Second Life is news, and unimaginative marketers are taking advantage of that fact.

5. Reaching the Unreachable

No. 5 here is almost a bonus point. Though I often hear people say that Second Life is a good place to reach a media and tech savvy audience that's very difficult to market too using more traditional interruption advertising, I don't quite buy it. What I see are some companies trying traditional advertising methods in Second Life, and no doubt scratching their heads and wondering whey they're even less effective than in real life. Really, if you want to reach this crowd, you're going to have to work doubly hard and be doubly creative.

More?

No doubt there are 101 reasons why companies are coming into the Metaverse so fast. These are just my personal observations and educated guesses. If you have other ideas, comments or experiences to share on this topic, i'd love to hear from you! Just drop your comments in the box below...

Coca Cola wants you to design a "virtual vending machine" in the 3D world of Second Life. Not just any vending machine though, despite a horrifying tendency for companies to mirror their real world marketing in the virtual, Coke actually want to do something interesting. They want you to design an "experience vendor" if you will. A machine that can dispense items that will enhance the Second Life experience and that residents can share with each other.

Its funny. Whenever I mention my belief that companies need to be thinking about viral, copyable, modifiable objects that residents can pass amongst each other rather than building replicas of their real world buildings and hoping people "just come", many of the folks I talk to in SL seem to vitually shrug their shoulders. It's no surprise that Coke is close to the mark though, they hired Crayon and Millions of us for this gig. Two companies that combine a lot of marketing and technical talent and are well suited to making a campaign like this work.

The winner of the design competition, whether they submit via SL, YouTube or MySpace (i've no idea on that last one..) will get to jet into California and work with the Millions of us team to build out their vision into a virtual reality.

If you're interested in learning more, Gideon from Crayon tells me there will be a press event held on Crayonville Island at 5pm SLT (PDT).

Thanks to Mark Wallace for the original tip.

There's been an enormous rush recently of companies bulldozing into the virtual 3D world of Second Life. Many of these corporate efforts seem to be of the "Get Me One Of Those!" variety. In my short time as an SL resident, I've noted quite a bit about what's working and what's not, as well as made a lot of educated guesses as to what could work. Below are what I consider to be the 5 biggest pitfalls for businesses coming inworld, and some thoughts on how best to avoid them.

1. Replicate your real life business

Simply replicating what your company does in real life shows an amazing lack of imagination and more often than not, is just pointless. The normal rules of physics, and business do not apply in Second Life, and nor should they. Companies need to let their hair down, let their imaginations run wild, and create memorable, remarkable experiences that residents will want to show to their friends, not lifeless copies of the stuff we know already.

2. Build it, and they will come

This almost never works in real life, so why would it work in Second Life? If you're building a virtual presence, whatever that may be, and you want people to come to you, you need to promote! Creating events like this is one good way to do that. Others might include giving away imaginative, useful freebies, holding discussion groups, organizing community events and participating in  related events. There's a lot you can do, but sitting around waiting for hordes of people to descend on your SL presense is not going to work past the curiosity phase.

3. Forget to staff your business

Amazing as it may seem, many real life companies with a stake in Second Life have no one there to help the people that do bother to come and see them. Though comparisons to real life are limited, this one is not. You'd not build a business in real life and leave it empty would you? SL is about people, it's a social space, an interactive space, and a space that demands human contact. Real estate firm Coldwell Banker provide both a good example of an exception to point #1 above, and an demonstration of how to provide real human help inworld.

4. Fail to protect your investment

Lots of fairly harmless but embarrassing vandalism has occured to companies and organizatins in SL, but it's easily avoided. Before opening, just check with whoever's doing the work for you that they've taken precaution against "griefers". Who wants their virtual offices literally shat on?

5. Make Assumptions about the Second Life community

Making assumptions of any kind in marketing is an iffy business at best, but in Second Life, where the culture is still defining itself, has multiple levels of subculture and at the extreme can be pretty whacky, it's sheer folly to assume you know what will work. Here's a thought: Instead of guessing, or having some "expert" tell you, or instead of just assuming it'll be the same as in real life, why not talk to the residents? Seems an obvious one doesn't it? I'd bet a great many companies do not do this prior to entering the Metaverse though...

Have more?

Go ahead and share your experiences and thoughts on this. It's not a comprehensive list, just some loose observations and if anyone want's to fill in the blanks that'd be great!

I wrote recently on the way that marketers were approaching Second Life, mentioning the obvious similarities between blundering corporate marketing efforts in the Metaverse and the early days of the Internet when many clearly felt the way forward was to put the "company brochure" (often as one huge graphic per page!) online in all it's broadcast, 2D glory. Today I see two marketers I have a great deal of time for chime in on this issue. First, Karl Long, who works at Nokia in their games department says "Dear Marketers, Stop Creating Replicas Of Your Shops In SecondLife". The post is a short rant, but one I feel much passion went into:

In what appears to be the greatest lack of imagination since someone put a radio show on television marketers continue to build shops in secondlife.

Secondly, Daniel Rivelongof Emergence Media picks up on Karls post saying:

The Web is not a PDF repository for your company brochure. Why are the big brands on Second Life following that pattern?

Unlike Daniel and Karl though, I'd contend that it's not lack of imagination that's at fault here. It's fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of standing out from the crowd. Fear of failure, fear of losing face in front of ones peers. Marketing guru Seth Godin would say it's fear of criticism, not failure, but it amounts to the same thing.

Brands in Second Life need to innovate, not replicate.