Cautionary tale from WIRED: How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life. Commissioned by editor Chris Anderson after WIRED spent time and effort on a Second Life presence with meager results, the article comes to the conclusion that Second Life appeals to mainstream advertisers because it is easy for them to grasp. Seems counter-intuitive, but compared to all the utterly different, new and technical vehicles in the online marketing space, a vehicle where they can build a store or put a vending machine on every corner is concrete enough for your average marketer to get behind:
Second Life appeals to ... the ones who are afraid of missing out, who don't consider half a million dollars to be a lot of money, and who haven't figured out (or don't want to admit) that Second Life is less than the bold new frontier it appears to be. ... the kind of digital marketing that actually works requires a conceptual leap. Successful online marketing is targeted and specific, like direct mail — but it's direct mail in a fun house, where the recipients can easily seize control of what the mail says, where it goes next, and how it gets there. You need to know how to buy up keywords to maximize search returns, how to make the most of recommendation engines, how to use the viral potential of Web video, how to monitor what's being said in blogs and message boards, how not to blow it by trying to be deceptive. Building a corporate pavilion in Second Life doesn't require any of these things. It's simple and it's obvious.
All this despite the niggling issue that Second Life is basically a ghost town, at least in marketer venues. For instance, a little reported fact: no more than a handful of avatars can gather in one virtual location within Second Life.
Moral: it's all too easy to get seduced by shiny web 2.0 objects. Surprising that the goal is often to spend the cash, get a cool looking screenshot or two and then tick off the Web 2.0 box, irrespective of results.
SEMs, let me propose, have an advantage in helping clients explore Web 2.0 because our DNA is in driving hard results: trackable sales, convertible leads. We're not going to waste our time or our clients' on anything that's not at least driving pre-qualified clicks based on actual consumer needs as expressed in search queries. But this orientation is a double-edged sword: we're best equipped to help with the stuff that still requires a conceptual leap for the advertisers with the biggest budgets!
