American Virtual World Marketing Review: Youth virtual Web site colorful

In the past year, virtual world marketing undulating, companies have jumped into the virtual advertising and brand of the world's popular floats. In the beginning of the 2007, the virtual world "Second Life" to the user and advertisers interest in the peak, but over time, many marketers and agents began to their virtual project investment return to doubt.

"2007, especially in the first half of 2007, can be said to be the ' Second Life ' year," said Greg Verdino, chief strategist at Crayon, a market-consulting firm. Into 2007, everyone thinks they should go into ' Second Life ', but they don't know why. ”

by March, "Second Life" already has more than 13 million users, from Microsoft to the Starwood Hotel (Starwood Hotels) to the commercial companies of Reuters, have appeared in the world. Verdino said that because advertisers have difficulty in providing a model for measuring the effectiveness of advertising, or simply cannot reach the environment in the right way to promote a brand, the success of their branding activities is questionable.

Many of the problems that arise in virtual world marketing are the result of branding and their agents ' belief that you can conquer a virtual world by parading it. However, in 2007 a surprising thing happened, some of the early entry into the virtual world of large brands left. People have done a lot of stupid things in the virtual world that they shouldn't have done. “

"Second Life" continues to grow and attracts the attention of major media companies and advertisers such as CBS and its affiliates, CSI. Greater competition is also shifting from the online world to specific groups, especially children and adolescents. Coca-Cola invests in the PG-13 level (special coaching level in the film grading, with children under the age of 13 especially those who are accompanied by parents, such as Harry Potter) virtual field site there.com and Cosmogirl (urban girls). At the same time, Disney bought a child-oriented virtual world, the "Penguin Club" (a social networking site for 6-14-year-old children, which, in a way, was a children's version of MySpace) and turned its Toontown (Disneyland) into a subscription model. The world-famous children's channel Nickelodeon is associated with the three-dimensional child virtual community Web site Nicktropolis.

Virtual world media and Technology Agency, E-sheep (Tepco Sheep Company), has recently been newly organized to turn to 2008 mode. Its CEO Sibley Verbeck said: "The children's space is exploding." And the space for teens and adults has made a significant progress. We see a lot of long-term projects and few short-term market projects. ”

When the virtual world also moved to 2008, Verbeck and others predicted that the lessons learned from 2007 meant small and impulsive advertising campaigns would be scarce, and advertisers would seek to create opportunities for large projects bundled with high-quality content.

"People jump in without any strategy or plan," said Christopher Sherman, executive manager of a virtual world media company. If there is no high quality content bundled with the brand, the user will come in and move on. Now you're going to see a bundle of content and branding, and high quality content from Disney and Warner Bros. and CSI employees. Just like any advertising media that you have to bundle high quality content with your brand. The risks are much lower for advertisers and brands because people who create content as their main experience are embracing the space. ”

Like 2007 years, Money will shape 2008 of virtual world advertising, Verbeck said. "You will see more and more extensive business ventures making money from the virtual world." Too much has been done last year, but only half of it is related to money. And that's one of the reasons for the slide. ”

Appendix: The Ten most popular child-care sites in the United States 1, Name: Penguin Club Type: Children's social networking site: www.clubpenguin.com August 2, Disney bought a "Penguin club" for 700 million dollars, more than "Murdoch" 's price for MySpace. The Penguin Club is a social networking site for 6-14-year-olds, and in a way it's a children's MySpace, except that every child is a cute little penguin with a small dome of its own. There are a lot of things you can do: dancing, throwing snowballs, fishing, playing chess, skiing, surfing, holding a big costume party on a blizzard night, a beautiful glass of snow world. Penguin Club adheres to a strict privacy policy and prohibits children from disclosing any personal information in the game. The website designer has designed the text filter, the dialogue monitoring system, the report system and so on, the child chats the record to be monitored at any time, cannot enter the telephone number, the geographical position as well as any has the obvious intention or the suggestion vocabulary, otherwise will be kicked out the system.

In order to completely lock the small players in the game's security range, "Penguin Club" simply to eliminate all advertising. "Advertising is the adult world of things, not available to children, or two or three clicks, you can send him to the Internet casino to go, or fall in the eyes of internet pornography." "Their only source of income now is membership fees, 12 million registered users have 700,000 paid users, parents must pay 5.95 dollars per month or pay 58 dollars a year membership fee, children can buy new clothes for new styling, buy new furniture to transform the small stone house, this and our Tencent QQ membership system somewhat similar. You don't have to spend a lot of time setting up a spending trap, or encouraging players to report to the game every day, or stay in the game for too long. Even new games and props, are every two weeks late, not like some games, anxious to update once a day. Because such a free and easy posture, is to get the trust of parents.

Before the adult world found the Penguin Club, it was just a small flash game, in Miniclip (a small game integration site) put on a year, give people free play, completely rely on the word of mouth between children, developed into today such a huge network community. In only two years, the number of registered users increased to 12 million, compared to "Second Life" took 3 years to achieve 1 million players.

2, Name: Stardoll Type: Girls Virtual community Web site: www.stardoll.com/en/The establishment of the community is quite legendary: the 58-year-old Swiss woman Lisa, who was a poor man, lived in her old age and was kept at home by a dustman. Only because of childhood love dolls, free time to draw some dolls and small clothes for fun, but also the manuscript uploaded to the internet, unexpectedly very popular, in 2004, she has her own home page "Doll Paradise", has now developed into a monthly more than 6 million small girls patronize a large virtual community.

3, Name: Webkinz type: Children's social networking site: www.webkinz.com The website is a social networking site for children, launched by Ganz in 2005, which can be kept abreast of "Penguin Club" from popularity to fame. What's special about it is that children must first buy a Webkinz plush dolls (frogs, rabbits, raccoons, elephants, ponies, koalas, unicorns, polar bears, etc., a total of more than 80 species), each plush toys have a secret code, with this code can be landed Webkinz website, Adopt and take care of a virtual doll that is exactly the same as reality. Each Webkinz toy price at about 7-18 dollars, with the child nature of collection addiction, naturally refused to buy only one. What's more, without buying a new toy, there are 2000 gold coins in the game, giving pets a more respectable life in the virtual world. Because of this shrewd business strategy, the Webkinz website has sold 2 million dolls in less than two years since its launch in April 2005, with sales of more than 40 million dollars in 2006 years. Until today, Webkinz Dolls were still out of stock, and some of the broken-stock dolls were sold on ebay for 100 dollars.

4. Name: Zwsky Online Educational Type: Preschool education Web site: www.zwsky.com/edu 06 The website launched an online education program for all preschool children around the world, using the world famous education system and creating a mobile interactive learning system. The online education uses the full flash manifestation, the content covers the Chinese, English, the intelligence game, the potential development and so on each kind of child quality education teaching material, has the ultra strong interactive and the interest, can let the child take the initiative to study, accepts more beneficial life the knowledge.

5, Name: Online cartoon City type: Multiplayer Network game Web site: play.toontown.com 2003, Disney launched the large number of people playing online games, become the first to enter the children and family virtual world one of the companies.

6. Name: Cartoon D E Type: Virtual Doll community Web site: www.cartoondollemporium.com A virtual doll dress community for 6-16 year olds with 3 million independent visitors per month; Pirates of the Caribbean, car story The prototype virtual theme park will also be launched.

7, Name: Neopets Type: Neo Pet station URL: www.neopets.com Two years ago, the site was bought by Viacom $150 million, a virtual pet website that now boasts 143 million pet owners worldwide.

8, Name: Nicktropolis type: three-dimensional child virtual community Web site: Www.nick.com/nicktropolis Viacom's Nick Channel this January launched a three-dimensional children's virtual community, six months later, the monthly independent access to the user has reached 4 million.

9, Name: T-works type: Children's Virtual Community Web site: www.t-works.com Warner Brothers are preparing a large children's virtual community, open their own most red cartoon star, children can take the Bonnie Rabbit Snoopy, Tracy, Batman to do their own virtual.

10, Name: Logo Universe Type: Child virtual community Lego Company building a child-oriented virtual community.

Source: http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627979

Shi Ying (compiled)