For example, for most (not all) brands, one of the worst things you can do is build a large, expensive store selling SL versions of your RL goods.

Why do this? After all, the chances are, someone is already doing what you do, and doing it better by operating out of their living rooms.

No surprise then, that, to take the NWN link I referenced above, an Armani clone store is attracting over 30x as much as traffc as the real one.

To take Armani as an example, it would actually have been better for them to work with the owners of “Armidi.” Much cheaper, and it would have generated good will among residents.

And you’re right, the full page ad in Eugene would cost a nice penny, I’d imagine, particularly when newspapers are trending down.

Perhaps my post is better focused on the large-scale brands that do spend thousands on big SL presences.

Great points all around, though!

I think what I would say in response is as follows.

1) Yes, SL numbers are relatively small, but the latest Nielsen Netratings figures (http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2176765,00.html) show that out of all the social networks (if we count SL as such), it has the highest levels of stickiness and user loyalty.

I’ve also seen figures showing that those regular users you talk about, spend around 90 minutes a day there. To me as a marketeer, that implies time spent away from the TV watching ads, and we need to make eyeball contact with them in other ways.

2) There is the Gartner Report earlier this year predicting that in 2011, 80% of regular internet users will have a virtual world identity. Gartner does say that they will probably turn out to be members of virtual worlds not yet in existence, rather than Second Life.

The recent announcement by IBM and Linden Labs means that whatever ‘world’ they are a member of is neither here nor there, as they are working on a way to transport your virtual persona from one world to the next. So, it’s a bit like having a web 1.0 presence back in, say, 1996. The numbers weren’t huge, but the potential was.

3) You say, it’s like targeting the population of Eugene, Oregon. Actually the costs of setting up an SL presence don’t need to be huge. You can do something fairly decent, for less than taking out a full page newspaper ad….in somewhere like Eugene, Oregon!

4) Of course, companies are throwing money at it with a vague notion of “we must be doing something there.”

Going back to my 96/97 analogy, it’s a bit like when companies stuck something up without thinking about how you adapt your campaign for the medium. For example, see http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/10/ophelias-gaze-i.html