Dear Marketers, Stop Creating Replicas Of Your Shops In SecondLife

Mar 28, 2007

Dear Marketers, Stop Creating Replicas Of Your Shops In SecondLife

In what appears to be the greatest lack of imagination since someone put a radio show on television marketers continue to build shops in secondlife. Just stop it, secondlife is an environment where you can build anything, ANYTHING, replicas of buildings are about the most mundane thing you can possibly build there. For gods sake have some imagination, experiment with something, create something that you can’t create in the real world, create a way to for people to interact with people that they can’t in the real world. No wonder most of these marketing forays are turning into ghost towns, and what’s to blame is a lack of imagination.

12 Comments, Comment or Ping

Zeke Sneaker

In my opinion, there are two companies that are doing noteworthy work in the virtual world marketing space:

Rivers Run Red
http://www.riversrunred.com/

The Electric Sheep Company:
http://www.electricsheepcompany.com/

Mar 28th, 2007
karl long

Cool, i’ve never heard of riversrunred (great name), i’ll have to check them out. I’m pretty familiar with electric sheep, i even did a podcast with some of them

Mar 28th, 2007
Nero

Karl, there are many reasons why we built our store in The Second Life as a replica of our real world store. Mainly because we could not build the replica in the real world. Too many regulations.

I explain more in a detailed post about the making of our store here:

http://insider.prismdurosport.com/inside-durosport/my-dream-has-come-true-in-the-second-life/

Apr 3rd, 2007
karl long

Nero, is your company a joke? A secondlife store, company web site, and blog seems like an enormous investment in a joke? Who the hell are you spoofing?

So many manufacturers are racing to make the world’s smallest media player. Yet, as players get smaller, the price gets more expensive. DuroSport has realized that it is possible to produce a more affordable media player by making it larger. Larger components are almost always less expensive than tiny components required to produce the infinitesimally small nano-style media players. In the process, we have found that these larger players also benefit older consumers who have trouble reading the fine print on tiny display screens, or adjusting the tuning with small dials and knobs.

I am me, Vladimir Concescu, Chief Product Engineer for the DuroSport Electronics Company.
…
I am on the MySpace producting researches with teenage girls for next DuroSport Pütz releasing.

Apr 3rd, 2007
Nero

If we are a joke then please explain how it is possible that we have outsold both the iPod and the Zune COMBINED. In The Second Life.

I was just writing to explain why some choose to build a replica of their real world stores in The Second Life. I did not expect to be insulted.

Apr 3rd, 2007
karl long

Maybe I don’t understand your business Nero, do you sell actual hardware? or are you just selling virtual products in secondlife? If you’re selling virtual products in secondlife then it makes total sense for you to have a virtual store. Anyway, the reason i thought your company was potentially a joke was because a lot of the content seemed amusing, hence the quotes. Anyway, I wish you the best of luck and I do appreciate the comment.

Apr 3rd, 2007
rikomatic

Sadly, it’s not just companies, but also non-profits that get caught putting up “brochure builds” in Second Life: http://rikomatic.com/blog/2006/12/global_poverty_.html

Apr 9th, 2007
Paul Drago

I dont understand why marketers and companies expected Second Life to be different from the rest of the internet. Since when do you just build a basic boring website and expect it to take off? Why would you expect a basic boring structure in second life to suddenly be a hub of activity?

Apr 9th, 2007
karl long

Totally true Paul, as a friend of mine Daniel at Emergence-Media said on his blog this is very much like the 1996 phase of the web with brochureware Prevailing.

Apr 9th, 2007