Multicultural Marketing in Second Life - Yeah Right…
Wednesday, July 25th, 2007I just read an interesting, and refreshingly critical Wired piece on how much money major brands are wasting on Second Life initiatives.
How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life
It is interesting because it follows Coca-Cola’s decision to invest in a Second Life “island” called the Virtual Thirst Pavillion, and shows how little return on investment it is generating. This is refreshng because all that anyone in our business talks about these days is how Second Life is the next big thing - how Virtual Worlds will revolutionize the advertising world much like mySpace and YouTube have over the last few years (I would actually question this assertion as well). In fact, the article shows how little activity and “traffic”, in Web analytics terms, Second Life gets. Yet major brands are pouring millions into Second Life programs.
The article got me thinking about how crazy this is in relation to most marketers hesitancy to invest appropriately in multicultural marketing, whether traditional or online, targeting Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians-Americans, and/or GLBT.
To put it in perspective, the article mentioned that some brands are spending upwards of $500,000 a year on building and managing Second Life programs that are reaching maybe 100,000 people in the U.S. In stark contrast, the most recent 2007 AdAge Hispanic Fact Pack shows that the #8 Hispanic Web site in terms of revenue, Terra Networks, only generated $852,000 in ad revenue in 2006, even though it had 1.3 million unique visitors per month and 38% reach among the 14-16 million online U.S. Hispanics.
If I was Coke, I might consider building a virtual “Mundo Coca-Cola” on Terra.com…