Exploring and explaining Virtual MTV

Back in September 2006 (such a long time ago in virtual terms), MTV took the bold step of transferring their brand into a virtual world.

MTV chose Laguna Beach as the product to place first into the metaverse and did so in a unique way. Rather than append the brand into an existing virtual environment, instead they partnered with There, using the There platform to create a standalone world.

This meant that even if you had an avatar in the main There world, you still needed to register a dedicated account to enter virtual MTV.

A smart move?

Very – because of the content and brand. By having complete content control over their own world, MTV effectively holds all the keys in terms of the overall avatar experience. Also, from a brand management perspective, MTV chooses which brands can and obviously can not be present. This approach would not work for every type of brand or company though. MTV is in the strong position of having a high level of brand equity and also ‘content in demand’, meaning that having their own world and having to sign-up for it is much less of a problem/task than for other companies.

More than a year later, MTV has aggressive extended their reach into the virtual world space and now has six (with more in the pipeline) different ‘show-themed’ worlds available, accessible via their dedicated website. Here’s a screen-shot from the site.

Once registered, you’re good to go and the next image shows the home page ‘virtual-side’, embedded in the application window. From this screen you can select which world you want to teleport into.

This series of K Zero posts will take each MTV virtual world in turn and explain what’s going on and more importantly why.

First up, Laguna Beach.