Dass die Marketing-Aktivitäten von Unternehmen in Second Life meist auf nur geringe Akzeptanz stoßen, wissen wir spätestens seit einer Studie der Hamburger Agentur Komjuniti – nomen est omen: sie baut Communities. Komjuniti hat 200 Avatare in Second Life nach ihrer Meinung gefragt, das Ergebnis war eher niederschmetternd.
Wagner James Au liefert bei GigaOM jetzt drei Gründe dafür. Die ersten beiden sind eher marketingtechnischer Natur, aber beim dritten geht es dann zur Sache:
To play in Second Life, corporations must first come to a humbling realization: in the context of the fantastic, their brands as they exist in the real world are boring, banal, and unimaginative. Car companies are trying to compete with college kids who turn a virtual automotive showroom into a 24/7 hiphop dance party, and create lovingly designed muscle cars that fly, and auction off for $2000 in real dollars at charity auctions.
Fashion companies have it even harder. A thriving homegrown industry of avatar clothing design (free of production costs and overseas mass production) already exists, largely ruled by housewives with astounding talent and copious amounts of time, and since the designers are popular personalities in Second Life (whose avatars become their brand), they enjoy– and frankly deserve– the home team advantage.
Faced with such talented competition, smart marketers should concede defeat, and hire these college kids and housewives to create concept designs and prototypes that re-imagine their brands merged to existing SL-based brands which have already proved themselves in a world of infinite possibility. Or as the Komjuniti study suggests, they can keep building sterile shopping malls, and continue wondering why Residents prefer nude dance parties, giant frogs singing alt-folk rock, and samurai deathmatches– and often, all three at the same time.
Wie Produkte und Geschäftsmodelle aussehen, die in Second Life tatsächlich funktionieren, darüber spricht Rainer Mehl, Leiter Strategy & Change Consulting bei IBM Deutschland und Nordosteuropa, im Track Parallelwelten auf der next07. Er untersucht, womit reales Geld verdient werden kann und betrachtet Second Life als Möglichkeit, zukünftige Geschäftsmodelle zu testen und bestehende zu erweitern. Zahlreiche Forscher, Ingenieure, Entwickler und Berater von IBM arbeiten bereits in Second Life.