A viral marketing tool to try in SL?

by Eloise Pasteur on Nov 3rd 2007 6:30AM

Anyone who has watched the various attempts by big businesses to come into Second Life knows that some of the succeed, some fail. The ones that succeed tend to try things that are a little bit different, building a corporate headquarters and expecting the people to come to you doesn't work. Creating things that mimic your RL clothes lines fall even flatter.

But this week I came across a tool for RL marketing a new product that would, and indeed does, work a treat in Second Life. The premise is simple - try our software on a 15 day fully functional trial and then pay to register it. Don't fancy paying? Write a good blog review, send your link and get a free license key. Does this work in SL too? You bet: how many people that are in any way associated with the SLogosphere don't know about CSI:NY coming into SL and the tie to the OnRez viewer? The trick, of course, is working out how to get talked about - look at how quiet we all were about The Office in SL -but free products is always a good notion as long as you have something that will get the good reviews, no?

Tags: CSI, OnRez-viewer, Second-Life, SLogosphere, viral-marketing

Reader Comments (3)

Very nice idea indeed! It does make some solid marketing sense. Now, to implement it... hmm :) Well, a few things are obvious, like useful HUDs.

You've given me excellent ideas, Eloise :) Maybe I'll do a version of my infamous dance bracelet that works that way!

"The trick, of course, is working out how to get talked about - look at how quiet we all were about The Office in SL"

CSI:NY was part of a massive cross promotion of the show in SL and SL in the show. I never got the sense that NBC had any intention of cross promotion with "The Office", viral or otherwise; they just wanted to integrate some realistic SL into their storyline and we helped them do that. There was no promotional followup on their part, and Clear Ink was never engaged to promote "The Office" in Second Life. We did see the fan reaction happen spontaneously, and provided the fans with some easter eggs to help them have fun with it all.

I agree Kiwini, The Office didn't obviously try to promote
themselves, and I wasn't trying to suggest that this was a failure on your part or theirs.

I was, instead, trying to illustrate that some people get a lot of coverage, some very little, whilst illustrating it with a
like-for-like comparison as far as possible. Comparing two TV shows, one with lots of coverage, one with little, that have both broadcast in the last couple of weeks seemed like a comparison it was easy to follow for most of us.

The initial part of the comment still stands I believe. In the
context of the rest of the article suggesting that getting talked
about is important makes sense, and although The Office did not seek out this type of advertising, it is still accurate to say they didn't get it.

Purely as an illustration that you might not get coverage, without any suggestion of failure, I think it's justified still. Don't you?

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