Second Life continues to get a great deal of online buzz — and a lot of attention from corporate marketing departments afraid of missing the boat – but a German marketing agency found that most Second Life Users weren’t impressed.
From the odd-but-informative folks at Collateral Damage:
The German marketing research agency Komjuniti surveyed 200 Second Life users and found:
- 72% of respondents expressed themselves as being disappointed with the activities of the companies in Second Life.
- Over a third of them were unaware of the branded presence.
- 42% said they thought it constituted nothing more than a short-term trend, lacking durable commitment from the companies.
- 7% consider that it has a positive influence on brand image and their future buying behaviour.
Corporations are flocking to Second Life (and making a big show of it) because they believe they can do business in much the same way they do in the “real” life.
It has the added benefit of making them appear hip, cool, and so “Daddy-O” around Social Media, but I’d suggest if they were really committed to their customers, they’d maybe create… a blog?
Perhaps engage in authentic dialog with them?
New Day. Same Old Marketing.
Marketing the old way — and interrupt marketing in a virtual online world is still interrupt marketing — is comprehensible to the majority of marketing folks.
And in truth — aside from a select few markets – most corporate marketing in Second Life doesn’t look much different than a corporate “MySpace” page.
There’s a lot of gold-chain jangling going on, but damned little real marketing.
Engaging with customers via interactive media is still a bit out of the box for most marketers, and it carries with it new dangers.
For example, Sony tried to manipulate customers via a fake blog (a flog), and were immediately found out.
Are companies simply afraid to be real with customers? Is fear going to separate those who engage with loyal customer communities and those who can’t?
Technorati Tags: marketing, engagement, marketing for engagement, blogging, second life
While very interesting, one should not be surprised about the fact that second life is not doing too well in
Germany. To understand why, I invite you to the read some of the articles on: http://weblog.buzzcentric.com
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