BRANDEblog

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

One World is Enough. Or is it?

The Police are coming to Madison Square Garden August 1st and I’ve already got my tickets – something I’m pretty happy about. So I guess it’s no wonder that as I think about my recent discovery of Second Life, the virtual world creating a big buzz in the world of marketing, I realize that Sting's song titled “One World is Enough" may be slightly dated.

Apparently we need more worlds, and more words, such as “Avatar”. Second Life offers people the opportunity to create online personalities called Avatars (think role-playing), and interact with other Residents to socialize, trade, interact and do business- basically everything we’re doing in this world. It already has 3.3 million registered users, adding 230,000 per week.

Linden Labs, the creator company of Second Life has received more than $19 million in investment dollars from such big names as Jeff Bezos (Amazon) Mitch Kapor (Lotus) and Pierre Omidyar (Ebay). Digital convergence teams are paying attention and we need to as well.

The thing about Second Life that makes it so interesting is that people are making and spending real money on it. You can use real dollars to convert to play money and buy real estate clothing and entertainment experiences. Real companies like Toyota, Cisco and Circuit City are partnering with Second Life to set up virtual showrooms, storefronts and dealerships and you can buy a car (fake) for a buck (real).

I’m sure there will be opportunities to get virtual jobs which will spawn the virtual job board which will keep everyone very busy keeping up with this life, the second one and the one after that.

Soon, instead of Madison Square garden, I’ll be able to buy tickets (maybe this time in front of the stage) for $5 to hear The Police. Maybe even Jerry Garcia will be making a comeback. (Or will that be on a new site called AfterLife).

Sting, maybe it’s time to replace the guitar with an Avatar.

Labels: Avatar, employee communications, Second Life, The Police, Virtual Branding

Written at 6:55 AM by JODY.

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