Marketing Genius?

Returning from my summer vacation (did you miss me? huh?? didya???) and playing catch-up with the SL fashion blogosphere, I was surprised to learn that I've been made an example of ...but in a good way!:)

Linden Lifestyles ran an insightful piece on promoting your wares in the metaverse, which was subsequently picked up by Celebrity Trollop over at Secondstyle. Both blogs comment on the reviewer packages that I send out to assorted parties when I have new gear to pimp... and while it was great to get a bit of recognition (I'm such a media whore!), I was *really* surprised to find out that freebies-to-reviewers isn't a common practice amongst other SL creatives.

I've always been fascinated by figuring out what makes people tick in online environments (to the extent that I managed to scrape myself an honours degree from writing on the subject). Prior to coming to SL, I worked as lead event manager on a popular indie MMORPG. A huge part of that role involved figuring out what kind of content to deliver to your playing audience, and what level to pitch it at - getting the pulse of the players. You might be surprised by how well those skills transfer to running a business in SL... OK, here I might _happen_ to run a chain of sleazy lingerie stores in SL... but think about it - what are the two biggest pasttimes in SL? Virtual sex, and virtual shopping? You can't miss the fact that LapGirl sits very nicely on the intersection of those two activities...

One of my more lucrative (non-clothing) SL creations has been the "Lucky Chair" promotion system. If you haven't seen the Lucky Chair in LapGirl, then you might have spotted one of them elsewhere on your travels - they're the chairs that give out prizes if your name matches a certain letter of the alphabet. The mechanics/psychology behind the chairs is perhaps a bit too lengthy to go into here (check out the notecard dispenser in the "virtual light" shop next door to LapGirl, if you're interested), but essentially, it's a traditional "refer a friend" promotion, re-imagined for a world in which teleportation is possible. It's a really effective marketing tool - I've had a lot of good feedback from people who have used it - but, more interestingly, it's a marketing tool that couldn't possibly exist in the real world.

Consider other things like camping chairs... money balls... and those strange dwell-linked incentive schemes that are running in the top SL casinos. Whether you love or hate them, you have to give credit to the people who first came up with the ideas; those are the people who really grok the culture of SL, and know how to exploit it. That's the kind of thinking you need to build a killer SL brand; the ability to look beyond the limitations of real-world advertising techniques.

I think this is an area I'm going to be dabbling with more in the immediate future.  That doesn't mean I'm hanging up my lingerie drawing board yet - far from it - but it's more a case that LapGirl has reached the kind of critical mass where I can use it to trial some new marketing ideas - where I *need* to try out some new ideas in order to grow the business. Maybe I'll be able to sell the results/expertise on at some future point ... and ultimately make something bigger out of that "lucky chair" sideline.

Watch this space :)

Comments

[Celebrity Trollop]

I'd insert the word "evil" in between marketing and genius.

:D

Welcome back!

[Funaria Moose]

Oh, I *love* those Lucky Chairs!

[panasianbiz]

What a fascinating post on a subject I haven't seen discussed very often. I love reading about how promotional and marketing strategies online differ so markedly and function so differently from those in the "real world." Great post!