Extending Second Life In Style
Posted on February 11, 2007
I often hear that a Second Life initiative is not appropriate for a given audience as they are not tech savvy enough. iVillage proves that you can extend the experience beyond Second Life through video and create a multi platform marketing event. This is a great example of a group of people who realize that they are dealing with an emerging platform, have not shyed away due to a small number of users, and are taking a holistic approach whereby Second Life is merely one tool that is being employed. Well Done!
Feb 11, 2007
Adam – It strikes me that the media companies seem to “get it” more than the other big businesses do. In addition to iVillage, NBC’s other forays into SL (including the Assasins game, and adjusting for the squatter wackiness I pointed out on my blog last week), Showtime’s L Word implementation (which for my money offers by far the best onboarding experience for non-techies) and even the new AOL Pointe sim are all good efforts. Maybe it’s because it is in their nature for media companies to put the consumer experience first, because experience actually is their product, whereas many of the other corporations seem to put product before the experience. Thanks for sharing this link – good stuff. G
Feb 11, 2007
Greg
I saw your post on NBC, pretty amazing (and now I have a new place look at in the evening time
)!
Yes, I think that media companies will be more capable of getting Second Life as they are more likely to scrutinize the media platform itself and not simply look at an initiative as an advertising campaign that spans a single platform.
Great media practitioners understand the potential of the mediated space that they are working in, unfortunately everyone thinks they can enter the media business and there are very few people who do it well.
The Sheep and Showtime got it right with the L word. In fact, one can enter the experience as a fan of the L word with little thought given to the fact that they are entering Second Life. The fact that Second Life allows for this type of white labeling is the reason that I believe it is way ahead of other platforms. It is only a matter of time before best practices begin to emerge and there is some type of benchmark for what truly works. It is at this point SL will really take off as a viable marketing channel.