Stardoll – Fame, fashion and friends………and Mothers?

In Feb of this year Stardoll (a KZero client) carried out some in-depth research into their membership base, with some interesting findings.

The targeted age range that Stardoll positions into is the seven – 17 segment so you’d assume (naturally) that this young female audience is the primary market. It is, but what the research discovered was the high levels of engagement from the mothers (or guardian) of the girls – marketers pay attention.

The graph displayed right shows the findings from the question ‘How often do you visit and play Stardoll?’. From a base of 868 younger Members, a massive 80% visit Stardoll daily. Looking over to the Mothers (n=158), over half (54%) are also frequent visitors logging into Stardoll daily.

So, from a marketers perspective looking at potential activity, this gives a new angle – there’s an incumbent secondary market (the Mothers).

This element of the research also shows the 75% of Mothers visit Stardoll several times a week with their children.

Delving further into the usage profile of these Mothers, research was also conducted into account creation and the nature of the visit to Stardoll. The graphs on the left show these findings.

Again the findings highlight the high engagement levels from Mothers with 60% actually having their own Stardoll account. In terms of specific usage, another intriguing and valuable point data shows that many Mothers (64%) visit Stardoll without their child – and who said it’s only childs’ play?

Seemingly they enjoy dressing up their avatars (paperdolls) as much their children do.

And it’s also a shared experience. Two-thirds of Members visit Stardoll with friends, brothers/sisters or their Mothers. When Members were asked the question ‘How often to you play Stardoll with the following?’, the graph below lays out the response.

On an overall basis, two-thirds of Members play with others- primarily friends and to a lesser degree their Mothers, the majority of which play independently of their children.

So, another twist in the emerging aspect of media planning when considering brand/marketing activities in virtual worlds.