Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Virtual World Marketing: Hublot Watches Establishes Itself

In what seems a strange marketing decision, Hublot Watches with its new French captain, has sailed in to the waters of Second Life and purchased a virtual island there. For those of you now keen on all that is virtual, Second Life is a well established virtual world. Not quite a game, not quite a second existence, Second Life (run by Linden Lab based out of San Francisco) got its claim to fame by making some of its inhabitants rich by selling virtual real estate. Millionaires from selling what some people claim is vapor. Other see virtual worlds as the next big thing in real estate.

A couple of years ago, Second Life was the haute place to go for the marketing elite to set up shop. They were not interested so much in buying and selling, but more branding and getting themselves out there in a new way. Companies like Coca-Cola and Toyota saw this as the next big tech land grab. Not since the days of sweeping up .com names, did companies flock to establish themselves on Second Life. Things fizzled out a bit as the Second Life population did not bubble as expected, but Second Life held strong, showing the world that there is a lot of innovation in virtual, user created content. As such, you have to applaud Second Life for being the locus of so much user created innovation.

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