We'll Watch From the Sidelines

Amidst the hype surrounding brands taking up residence in Second Life, a recent story detailed actress Mia Farrow's photo exhibit exposing the horrors in Darfur and surrounding areas - within Second Life. Celebrities attract attention in the news, and for Ms. Farrow to use her clout to draw attention to human injustice is admirable, regardless of your political views.

Within this admirable act, though, is a minor tragedy. Recent SL participant numbers come in just over 1MM. While Ms. Farrow is indeed garnering press attention about this exhibit, the ability to expose the material is ultimately very limited. Even if SL membership has doubled since the last statistics I saw, 2MM viewers is significantly less than could be affected on Flickr or Photobucket, each of which have dozens of millions of subscribers.

Herein lies the marketing dilemma. If there was a Google Trends for agency/client discussions, I believe "ROI" would top the charts as the most discussed terms. However, the opportunity to on the cutting edge of marketing tactics causes situational amnesia toward this most important topic and metric.

There is no way the brands in Second Life are seeing a positive ROI on their efforts. "But it only costs a car brand a couple grand per month for their spot in Second Life. Certainly they are selling a few cars off of it?!" What about agency fees, programming, client meetings, and PR fees for distributing the releases? A recent statistic puts the total cost of setting up an SL marketing effort between $1MM and $5MM. They're not selling that many cars, and it's unlikely the awareness, consideration or intent created justifies the expense either.

We've only had a few clients ask us about SL and Whyville, but our response has been that we're watching from the sidelines. What's going on out there is definitely cool, it's just not yet profitable.