‘Virtual Worlds’ Marketing —Sherburne

Big Firms Lead the Way

Companies that are actively involved in Second Life include some very big names: Coca Cola, 20th Century Fox, Verizon, Toyota, Pontiac, NBC, IBM, Cisco and Fidelity, to name a few. And they invested about $1 billion in virtual worlds during 2006.

There seem to be two primary reasons companies are getting engaged. First, for advertisers and the major consumer brands, they see the writing on the wall in terms of a migration away from traditional means of advertising, as the so-called “digital natives” reach adulthood and increase their buying power. They realize that less and less time will be spent with television, radio, newspapers and magazines, and more time will be spent in online activities, whatever those morph into. And they want to be there in a way that matters.