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Bump: Avatar Based Marketing
By Celebrity Trollop | June 22, 2006
Bump: There will be an in-world roundtable with the author of the original Harvard Business Review article, Paul Hemp, as well as the web presence director for American Apparel and several other notable SL residents this Friday, June 23 at 12 noon SLT. Details here on New World Notes.
Forgive me for another business focused post this morning — Mark Wallace (also known as Walker Spaight in his Second Life) posted a short note about an article at the Harvard Business Review by Paul Hemp concerning marketing real world items to avatars in virtual worlds.
Although Second Life culturally retains some of its opposition to the encroachment of “real life” brands in the virtual world, I think the vast majority of residents would be willing to consider shopping at, say, a virtual incarnation of GAP — or let’s get realistic — Frederick’s of Hollywood (heh) as long as the quality of goods available at this “real world branded store” matched what was already available in the marketplace for such things. (Myself, I’d stack the lingerie from LapGirl up against Frederick’s any day of the week!)
And I totally disagree with the premise that the cost to a real world company to enter Second Life (in apparel) at least is going to be minimal. Because the quality of goods on offer is the single most essential attribute for establishing the word of mouth marketing that’s crucial for an item to sweep the grid. With respect to apparel, there’s a huge learning curve for every different virtual world platform — how to make clothes look right on an avatar template itself can take someone a while to figure out. That’s going to cost something — and maybe in comparision to the sea of cash a company might spend on promotions it is “nothing” but from a different point of view — especially residents who make their primary income in world — “nothing” can seem like an awful lot of something.
Although the first couple of real world companies would get the publicity of being “first movers” to splash into the Second Life swimming pool from in world and out world media, once the water’s warm no one in world or out world cares any more. It’s the “been there, done that” syndrome.
A real world brand alone isn’t going to be sufficient to pull Lindens out of my virtual purse — even if it’s a brand I might enjoy in my first life. And I think there’s a sort of irony that the best way to market something in Second Life is (currently) external to the world itself, either on forum posts, or virtual fashion magazines, or blogs. In world, the best form of marketing remains the oldest form: word of mouth from your friends. And that isn’t going to change even if Old GapNavy and Fitch sets up shop in world tomorrow.
Topics: Business of Fashion, External Resources |
I have no doubt some people would gleefully hop on board if the Gaps and Hollisters and all that other stuff showed up on Second life but there are some of us who… You know… enjoy the fact that in SL we can buy different things that aren’t available in our first lives. Furthermore, unique designers who wouldn’t be able to start real clothing stores because of the real world costs have a medium of expression and I’m always going to support them before I support a huge corporation who’s just in it for more profit. Gap isn’t hurting for cash. College student with massive debt, however, could use a little extra in her coffers, and should be rewarded for her not-the-norm designs that maybe wouldn’t get off the ground if she had to deal with buying materials and setting up shop in the physical world.
Posted by: Iris Ophelia on May 31st, 2006 at 4:05 pmForgive me, if this sounds a bit rude, Celebrity, but the expectation that RL brand will NOT have a significant impact on the fashion industry of SL seems to be … a bit farfetched at least.
I would not rule this out completely (never say “never”) but it would be contrary to all experiences with the mechanism of brands known to marketing so far.
People love certain brands - not necessarily the big established ones, but *their” brands. And when these brands will offer quality fashion in SL, I am rather sure that residents will buy them. It might not do to just slap on the logo onto some badly designed pair of pants.
But why shouldn’t RL brands not employ experienced designers to adapt their styles to SL in a professional way?
This might not endanger the creative designers inworld who are not limited by the intent to reproduce a certain RL style, but it will certainly appeal to a segment of consumers. This will never be source of much revenue for RL brands - but very interesting for marketing, especially branding purposes.
Posted by: Markus Breuer on June 22nd, 2006 at 12:23 amI don’t find your comments rude at all Markus, but I still remain convinced that big RL brands will not be able to dominate a virtual fashion world for a number of reasons.
Posted by: Celebrity Trollop on June 22nd, 2006 at 12:29 pm