Selling In a New World

In Consumed: Skoopf Ultra Roller Skates: One example of how a brand catches on in a nonexistent world.

Sometimes this life seems so cluttered with marketing and sales pitches that it’s enough to make you want to flee to another world. And you can. A second life awaits in one of the many increasingly popular online worlds, including one called Second Life. Inhabited by the alter egos of a few hundred thousand users, Second Life is not the most popular of these online habitats, but lately it has been attracting — yes — marketers. Toyota, Starwood Hotels and a variety of music and book companies have begun branding efforts in Second Life; the Virginia politician Mark Warner even gave an interview there recently. Longtime users like Gareth Lancaster have been expecting this. What’s not as clear is how well the new arrivals understand that there are already plenty of successful brands in this other world. Brands like Gareth Lancaster’s.

To use Second Life terminology, Skoopf is strictly an “in world” brand, not a carry-over from “RL” (real life). It was founded by Lancaster’s virtual-world avatar, Moopf Murray, a Second Life resident since January 2004. One of Lancaster-Murray’s products is the Skoopf Ultra Roller Skate, available in-world for about 50 Linden dollars. (That’s the Second Life currency; one U.S. dollar is worth about 250 Lindens.) Lancaster says he has sold about 50,000 pairs. …

Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site via this no-registration-required link.

Related links: Moopf; Second Life Herald account of Mark Warner’s Second Life appearance; about Starwood’s in-world project; about Toyota/Scion’s Second Life marketing.