Digital Marketing in 3D
Monday, July 23rd, 2007I’ve been a member of Second Life for approximately a year now. Admittedly I don’t get down there as much as I would like, mainly due to a busy work schedule. For those of you not familiar with Second Life, it is in a nutshell a virtual world. Second Life goes further and has created its own currency including a stock market, financial exchanges and everything you would expect in a offline commercial world including the purchase of clothes (for whatever alter-ego you have dreamed up), cars, motorbikes, weapons (If you feel like a bit of action), slot machines, discos and bars, movies and just about anything you need.
A while ago I came across a presentation for the New Media Consortium (NMC) which is a virtual creative learning center/think-tank. Albeit the video is a little old now, it is still quite effective and representative of events in Second Life:
Could marketing in a virtual 3D environment become reality? I believe so and so do many others. A good example is In Game Ads – Activision’s popular WWII action game Call of Duty featured In-Game ads with BT Broadband in the guise of 1940’s styled wall ads, very effective and neat, while dangerous at the same time. (I stopped to look at one and immediately got shot by a German sniper). In Game Ads has the potential to garner large market share of advertising revenues, There are a games developed around most subjects and in particular sports with some of the PSP3 and Xbox360 games that feature Grand Slam Tennis and Formula 1 racing, it would make financial sense that the large gaming companies will be tailor-developing their applications to meet advertiser needs.
As for Second Life, it’s a source of de-stressing entertainment where one can take on as many alter-egos than you could wave a stick at.
Second Life let you choose your first name but give you a limited choice of last names, I ended up as a Vincent Leonov! More about Second Life can be read on their Official Second Life Blog
