Virtual World Business Brands

Excellent paper by Besty Book: "Virtual World Business Brands: Entrepreneurship and Identity in Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming Environments."

Second Life is one of the environments discussed.


http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=736823

Templar Botworks

BEST BRAND EVAR

Torley is far too generous with praise. I don't think anyone else has been so impressed with my marketing.

The paper is interesting and I'm glad they mention Cubey -- he struck me immediately as one of the best-branded one man companies in SL. As a newbie, Cubey's polish and attention to detail and simple effectiveness at presenting his products left me with one overriding opinion of the aviation market in SL: Either you bought your plane at Abbots or you bought a piece of crap.

I've owned a few Terra-branded goodies and the quality is there, too. Definitely has an amazing, balanced equation going on.

edit: It should also be mentioned that when I kicked off my image and marketing, I asked myself several times, "Is this how Cubey would do it?"

Agreed. While Cubey has made a couple of missteps in the forums, I have to say his inworld marketing is sheer genius.

Honestly, I can not imagine anyone who has done a better job than him. A part of it, no doubt, is the product offering lends itself very well to marketing.

Welcome to the Fetaverse! I love how it works! The most brilliant marketing technique known to Humankind!

1. Get an insider, cool, connected expert to write a land-mark, ground-breaking paper on branding (help her with leads if she had the idea on her own or pitch her the idea)
2. Have her mention 2-3 FIC brands in the paper
3. Obtain recognition all over the gaming blogosphere, SL, and everything in between for those 2-3 companies!
4. Have a Linden endorse the paper, and by extension, the 3 FIC brands within the paper. Savvy!

I still think Cubey's blimp hovering over Waterhead WA with the notecarded advertisement that newbies can click on beats any egghead paper on the Internet or ingame advertising billboard by a landslide! WTC Cube!

Also another technique that works well is to remove my ad out of the telehub at Waterhead but leave in everybody else's ads and make sure Cubey's is showing on top LOL.

You're doing a good job of promoting the "Feted" brand yourself Prokofy..... We can't thank you enough for giving us a kick start.. really!

Yeah, I'd sure love to get some background on this betsy book character.

I find it fascinating that she provides so little reference to who she is. Naturally, it makes her (and her thesis) pretty suspect.

OOH. I didn't even notice this one. Thanks for posting Pathfinder! <3

You're just jealous. Nya nya!

Marketing and branding in SL is a game within a game in SL. Very fun stuff. I've been really impressed by the proffesional job people like Cubey Terra and Fizik Baskerville (Avalon) have done especially, in addition to alot of the clothing designers in SL.

Say no more.

Prokofy,
With all do respect, put a sock in it. You are jealous and it has never been as transparent as it is in this thread. Just because you offer no actual talents other than to rent land out, does not mean others are being favored. You have no right.

As someone who works hard to establish a recognizable brand, I have no jealousy over the exposure Cubey gets, I think of these things as people just setting the bar.

I'll take 2.

Hmm?? I dropped an ad into the telehub ad panels weeks ago the same way everyone else does. Are you suggesting that I can control whose ad shows up in it? That would be a neat trick, but seriously, I can't do that, Prokofy. If there's anything weird about the advertiser, it might be because most of the advertisers have been broken for months.

Betsy's done a great job on this paper -- well-written and insightful. WTG Betsy.

ROFL. No, I'm not jealous. How could I be jealous of someone branding an airplane in a game? Or making and branding dresses in a game when I have no desire to make dresses? Huh?

People who keep characterizing me as "jealous" are just letting me know of their own world view, which puts a premium on doing some Big Cool Thing in SL and being Mentioned in the Media. Why would I need to do that? It's just really not of interest to me. Trust me, my dream is not to have um the Economist do an article on me and my rentals business. Honestly, I do have a life.

I'm not really a gamer and I don't make airplanes? I'm just commenting on how the Metaverse gets made. It's important to do. You need critics. Especially critics of the status quo.



well, it's the Internet, and we can't really mind it that much, but hey, google her, and maybe you'll find something "on" her. There isn't much on her, and it seems more about being famous for being famous in the claustrophic world of game reviews and scholarship.

Try this:

http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/papers/BBook_SoP2.pdf

but nothing world-burning there -- footnotes to Hamlet Linden, Ed Castranova, Richard Bartle -- like certain other new and specialized areas of scholarship I guess they all just refer to each other LOL.

See, this is what I mean about how they all refer to and praise each other.

Cubey, honestly, what was insightful about this paper? Could you tell us?

mkay.

Trolling: The Prokofy Technique

Step 1: Identify one or more SL residents who have contributed significantly to Second Life. Businesses are good targets, but non-profit organizations or efforts are even better.

Step 2: Attack them with a smear campaign in the forums by calling their motives and/or talents into question with vague allegations, supplemented by outright lies.

Step 3: After the inevitable rebuttals and "oh, fer crying out loud" replies, play the victim card: You're only stating the truth and anyone who criticizes you is colluding with someone to keep you and the common man down.

Step 4: Repeat steps 1 to 3 ad nauseum.

The above quote is step 3.

I'm really stunned and disappointed that this thread has already been derailed.

Here's my brand, Public relations keep telling me it's not good but they can bite me.

I hadn't gotten around to reading it but I probably should, since it is interesting how many of these big SL brand names are becoming dominant factors in more than SL life.

And one thing about the "FIC" brandnames used in this paper, if you were writing a story about brand names in Real life, you write about Nike or Microsoft not Crazy bob's discount shoes.

ARMORD... with 50% more Shiny than Templar Botworks!

And THAT everyone, was how the war began between Templar Botworks and ARMORD. A feud that lasted for years, more vicious and competitive than Pepsi and Coke.