Corperate Advertising

Every once in awhile I see Cuervo and Jack Danials 'blooms' at dance establishments. I was wondering if these are backed by the brand or just player made. Reason is, I work in the beverage alcohol industry for a trade publication. Would make an interesting article for one of our publications.

AFAIK, these have all been player made. While its up to the trademark holder to defend their trademarks, its going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out... will Jack Daniels be flattered that it has a fan base (a la Star Trek fans making Star Trek costumes and such) or will they go after their fan base diligently in certain situations (a la Apple sueing a fan site for disclosing iPod release information)?

Regards,

-Flip

I also wonder why we dont see more sponsored advertising in SL for RL stuff.
But then again, why would they? We only have 60k members, when they can spam millions for much less via the internet.

RL Products that MIGHT sell well...
- Beer, you can never get too much.
- Pizza Delivery (it's all very Snowcrash and not to mention convenient)
- Music & Video (expecially if you can get it parcel-streamed)

Stuff to make that might sell, after we stamp out Copyright Offenders
- Authentic Branded Clothing (Tommy, DK, VW, whatever they're shilling these days)
- Licensed Vehicle Designs (Cars, Spaceships, Planes...)
- Licensed Fictional Character AVs

Do you mean - I could go somewhere in SL (or just IM) and have the person get me a pizza delivered to my door irl? That that would be interesting!

coco

For some reason Cartman and a certain "Get me some pie" comment came to mind.

It would be cool.
You could IM Dominos Pizza (SL NAME) and talk to an order taker.
Or it would send you an Order Widget to take your order and send you to a secured webpage for information.

I honestly don't think any liscensed brands would survive in SL. One reason .. Supply and Demand...

Lets say Gap comes in and decides to liscense their own clothing, and sells is for X amount. (Which is going to be higher than normal, because well hey, its Gap) Anyway, lets say I make a clothing line (I can't but lets pretend) and call it Gop. Its almost identical and sells for atleast half of X amount.

I can't see people spending twice the money to buy something, that had no real product anyway. So I think liscended brands would last about 3 months before close copies and knockoffs sucked their profits away.


Brendan

True. But it doesn't mean I cna't make lots of money in the meantime peddling the concept to Brand companies.

"While its up to the trademark holder to defend their trademarks"

According to LL , it's up to copyright holders to enforce copyrights (e.g. music, movies, images, etc). Trademarks are another matter and Linden Lab protects against trademark infringements within SL. Or that's the last I recall on the matter.

In the case of an emote with an image ripped from a Jack Daniels ad, there are possibly - likely - two separate issues: copyright and trademark. And yes, an article on this practice would be interesting to quite a few people I imagine (conversely I'd be interested in what the beverage industry thinks).

You might find some older threads on this topic interesting.

using that logic, RL stores like the gap would've gone out of business long ago. yes, people will buy cheaper versions of products. but people will always pay a bit more for better quality. and some people will always pay more for a brand name. there is a clientelle for both.

That would indeed be awesome.

In the meantime, there's always llPizza.

I would expect the Gap to not charge anything. Makes better business sense to me.

I agree. I myself have seen that these things are as true in SL as they are in RL. Supply and demand has little to do with it; it's all about building a brand name or being devoted to producing a quality product. Or, preferably, both.

I didn't want to get into that whole discussion again.

I was merely commenting on the fact in U.S. Law that if trademark holders don't protect their trademarks, they become diluted. This is quite a difference in trademarks.

Regards,

-Flip

No way would they do that; that would convey the image that their products aren't worth anything, IMHO, even if it's only a virtual representation of that product.

It is absolutely amazing how much status people place on brand names and also how much they pay for certain items. I know that in There.com, the Levi and Nike licensed virtual clothing sold for quite a bit more than most of the player- or company-made stuff. The quality also seemed somehow better on the name-brand things. I can't imagine a professional graphic artist could produce any better quality clothing and other items in SL than the most skilled crafters who are now making and selling things as independent agents. It's a pretty level playing field in SL, for the most part.

As SL grows, so will its appeal to professional marketing and branding folk. At this point, it's a matter of "when," not "if."

Yeah. What HE said.

There are undoubtedly plenty of companies out there who would regard a virtual item in today's SL more as advertisement than as a representative "product". So right or wrong, to them the idea of "worth" just doesn't translate from VR to RL. Hence giving away a virtual facsimile to promote their RL products makes perfect sense. However, I think as the level of realism improves this attitude will change. But right now I can understand how a company would think of SL more along the lines of a print ad. They'll want it to look good and pay for the creation and placement; but they won't charge people to read it.

I don't get this.. you can already do this on the internet with PapaJohns.com and probably the other major pizza companies. I bet a great majority - like 90% - of SL users run their internet browser in the background, and alt-tab between the two. If that's truely the case, then what's the advantage to bringing something like this into SL, aside from the GeekFactor?

I have had conversations with Linden Upper Management that they will and have (and did when I was involved with Brand X website) notifiy residents when violating Trademarks...Including on the web sites that sell SL content.

Flip do you know if LL has changed their policy recently?

Just the Geek Factor! That's enough!

Plus my alt-tab never works.

coco