Worlds With User-Created Content Are Good Marketing Venues:

{"subject":"Worlds With User-Created Content Are Good Marketing Venues: ","link":"http:\/\/btlmkt.egloos.com\/2304035"}So last year, most people decided that marketing real products in virtual worlds like Second Life doesn’t work. Since then, however, I’ve come across some avatar-driven advertising campaigns with very impressive numbers. In Gaia Online, for example, users grabbed over a million virtual copies of a Toyota Scion; in Second Life, a promotion for the IMAX screening of the latest “Harry Potter” movie was credited for boosting the movie’s ticket sales online.

Why do campaigns like these work where others have failed? I discussed that at a presentation I gave at the Web 2.0 Expo this week in New York. Here are my main reasons, packaged into three tips for future marketers:

Worlds With User-Created Content Are Good Marketing Venues:
Habbo Hotel from Finland-based Sulake Corp.reports strong results from its marketing of real-world products,primarily those associated with pop stars and TV/movies. Jeremy Monroe,Sulake’s North American director of marketing and business development,attributes this success to Habbo’s open-ended, creative game play. “Atits core, Habbo is about social interaction, having fun building aworld for self-expression and creative experiences,” Monroe told me.“Products…that exemplify these traits or can add to the existingsandbox of user-generated content game play are a great start.” (WhileSecond Life is entirely user-created, its most notoriously unsuccessfulmarketing campaigns failed to leverage this aspect of the culture.)

Market to the Web 2.0 Ecology Around The Virtual World:
Because virtual worlds are by their very nature dynamic andsynchronous, a tremendous amount of activity related to them actuallytakes place elsewhere, in the Web 2.0 content-sharing ecology —screenshots sent to Flickr, machinima uploaded to YouTube, blogs andconferencing systems where users discuss their latest experiences. InGaia Online, for instance, 30 percent of user activity occurs in thesite’s messaging boards compared with 10 percent in the virtual worlditself. To capitalize on this for the Scion campaign, Gaia VP JoeHyrkin told me, they offered Scion-branded “driver’s licenses” thatGaia users could add to their forum signatures.

Serve Existing Community Needs:
With Second Life, new users enter a strange, overwhelming world withoutmany objects in their inventory, and are usually too intimidated totalk with the locals. To serve this need, the agency behind a promotion for IMAXcreated “buzz agent” avatars who cheerfully engaged “noobs” in SecondLife’s Welcome Area, offering them tips on using the interface — allwhile handing out “Harry Potter” memorabilia and directing them toIMAX’s retail site.

Of course, while these success stories might encourage marketers totake a second look at Second Life and other virtual worlds, the metricsof success still haven’t been agreed upon. That’s why many are eagerlyawaiting a Forrester Research report that will try to define and standardize virtual marketing ROI. So am I. Stay tuned.

Disclosure: I gave a single paid speaking appearance at Gaia Online about my Second Life book.

Image: Gaiaonline.com