Playing Golf in a virtual world. Golf is a tough game in the real world – so what about in Second Life? The Holly Kai Golf Club in Hollywood (here’s the SLurl) is hosting coaching sessions for residents on Feb 4. And the cost? Well, pretty cheap – L$25 for 30 mins on the driving range and putting green. You need to go to the club house to get more information.
And despite what Beyonce says, you need to go to the right (to register).
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SL major brands no.16: Toyota (Scion City): The main Toyota presence in Second Life to date is Scion City – a heavily urban designed island with a slightly futuristic feel to it. Set the sun to ‘sunset’ to get the best feel for the island.
One of the main features of Scion City, apart from showcasing different models of cars is ability to take one for a test drive (always a nice feature – especially when supported with functionality to request a test drive in real world) as well as the ability for owners of the cars (on sale around the $300l mark) to customise them. Now we’re talking. In fact, announced today is a two-week program at Scion teaching new SL residents basic skills in customisation.
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Second Life residents almost at 3m. Tick tock tick tock. The hard thing about trying to do predictive graphs of anything that’s growing rapdily is that they tend to look like ski ramps.
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Galveston Isle: Tourism marketing in SL: In a joint venture between Galveston.com and the Galveston Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, sometime in May 2007, Galveston Isle will officially open in SL. This is one of the first virtual tourism cross-overs within SL (the others being Dublin, Amsterdam and new Paris to a certain degree), although this venture is the first initiative directly aimed at tourism marketing.
Galveston Isle will feature re-creations of many real world landmarks and places, with the overall objectives of increasing awareness and ultimately real world visitors.
One of the first completed elements is the Galveston Welcome Centre. This building will be used as an information hub with podcasts and video available to view and download from inside.
Currently under development is the East End historic district and according to Link Pippen, (the guy in charge of the Isle) this area should be ready by the end of February. Another feature of Galveston Isle will be the ability to rent out virtual real estate – so get in early to secure the best view.
Another part of the Isle currently being worked on is the harbour with the Tall Ship Elissa and also the Grand 1894 Opera House. Multimedia interaction is being planned for this as well.
Virtual tourism as a ‘sweet-spot’ application for SL due mainly by the ability to create life-like replicas of real world buildings and places and shows the weaknesses of standard websites as a marketing tool. Clearly this will be a growth area within SL, so it will be interesting to see how different organisations decide to integrate SL into their real world marketing strategies.
One thing’s for sure, I’d never heard of Galveston before today. I do now.
More information can be found here.
Related posts: The 7 point plan for SL marketing strategies
Integrate: 7 point plan for SL strategy, point 3. Marketers realise that the best way to great syngergy from marketing campaigns (and budgets) is to take one over-riding concept and deploy it across several media platforms at the same time. This is classical integrated marketing.
There are several benefits to adopting an integrated approach to marketing and advertising campaigns:
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Keep the builders at bay: 7 point plan for SL strategy, point 2. This is the second of seven key points that marketers need to consider when developing a strategy to enter Second Life to maximise the opportunities within it.
An analogy
When you’re given, provided access to or obtain something new, it’s very tempting to dive in and start playing/exploring/using it straightaway. A little bit like not reading the instruction manual when your new Apple iPhone arrives (now that will actually be very hard!). The point being, some things are intuitive and some things are not. And some things need to be thoroughly assessed prior to starting. Second Life, from a design and building perspective is not particularly intuitive (from a build perspective). It’s reasonably easy to make an object, but monkeys can draw – you should sit on your hands at this point and think about what you’re trying to achieve.
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K Zero featured in B2B Marketing Magazine. Here’s the link and here’s the full article:
B2B jargon watch: The ‘sleminar’
One thing’s for sure – there are no traffic jams on the way to meetings in Second Life – you can just teleport (or fly) from one destination to another. There’s been a great deal of press coverage recently about the virtual 3D world of Second Life – an online ?¢‚ǨÀúmetaverse’ where web-savvy individuals create ?¢‚ǨÀúavatars’ of themselves and build virtual offices, cars and just about anything else.
At first glance, this is an application tailored towards consumers and B2C businesses. Interestingly, a select number of B2B businesses have already launched their brands into Second Life. Reuters, Cisco at PA Consulting and Sun Microsystems have all recently opened virtual offices and see Second Life as an important tool in their marketing armory moving forward. But for what purpose?
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This is marketing, so have a plan: The 7 point plan for SL strategy, point 1.
‘I need a website. I’m not sure why, but I need one‘. It wasn’t too long ago when companies didn’t really have much of an idea how to utilise the internet to augment their marketing strategies. This have come a long way since then.
The emergence of Second Life as a platform for interactive customer relatonships online is gathering pace day by day. Last week, Vodafone launched, this week it was Sears. Next week? Well, a little time spent exploring the private islands in the northern regions gives a few clues to the companies preparing for entry.
Since launching K Zero in late Dec 2006, I’ve spoken to several organisations about how they can benefit from entering SL. The most and arguably most important factor to consider when assessing the strategic benefits of SL is the existing marketing strategy. There needs to be a ‘fit’ in terms of the future marketing objectives of an organisation with:
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Vodafone opens up in Second Life: The much anticipated launch of Vodafone into Second Life took place over the weekend.
So, what were we expecting? A glossy office? SL mobile phones allowing P2P telephony within SL? Collaborations in-world with their sponsorship partners? Well, all of these may well be coming – because it’s good to have a plan in Second Life, but for now….
Mechanical looking butterflies, a warped set of vintage gramaphone speakers and a water-cooler dispensing goodies. Obviously! Come on, what else were people expecting?
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7 point plan for companies entering Second Life:
Sure, you can build a flashy looking 300 story building with rocketpads and 100m rotating banners, but people will visit once, and once only.
Deploying a strategy to enter SL, means exactly that – have a strategy.
Here is the seven point plan for companies wishing to enter Second Life. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be going into detail, with case studies, about each of the points.
1. This is marketing, so have a plan
2. Keep the builders at bay
3. Integrate
4. Giving is better than receiving
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