The concept of avatar based marketing takes a minute to wrap your hands around and understand. But once you understand the relation between the real world consumer and the online shadow consumer, ideas of how to market in the online world become clear. When marketing online, “you want sustained engagement with the brand rather than just a click-through” to a purchase or product information, says Bonita Stewart, responsible for interactive marketing for DaimlerChrysler’s Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge brands. “Avatars create an opportunity for just this type of engagement.”
Now the fun part. Exactly to whom are we targeting? According to an article in the Business Review, “The first question is, whom do your marketing efforts target? The flesh-and-blood Second Life members who gave their credit card numbers to register for the game—or their Second Life avatars residing in the virtual world? Sure, the real-world human controls the real-world wallet. The avatar, though, arguably represents a distinctly different “shadow” consumer, one able to influence its creator’s purchase of real-world products and conceivably make its own real-world purchases in the virtual world. ”
Whether or not your organization advertises in the virtual world, the exercise of thinking through how it would work is a lot of fun. Feel free to post your thoughts.
Doug Burton
