Advertising Through Avatars

Immersive three-dimensional environments are on the cutting edge of digital marketing. These "virtual worlds" are complex, multilayered enterprises that combine many of the most popular online activities—such as instant messaging, interactive gaming, and social networking—into increasingly elaborate settings in which individuals create their own online identities through avatars. "Once the stuff of science fiction," explains the Web site for the new-media ad agency Millions of Us, "virtual worlds are becoming central to the future of marketing, technology, entertainment and brand-building."¹ Marketing through avatars is "one of the most effective kinds of advertising going," commented one advertising executive, explaining that the speed with which a "brand or marketing message can spread through a virtual world from avatar to avatar is breathtaking."² Among the food and beverage brands actively engaged in avatar-based strategies are Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kellogg, Nabisco, Kraft, Pizza Hut, P&G, and Subway.³

• Habbo Hotel—"a teen community where you can meet people, play games and create your own online space"—aggressively promotes itself as a marketing venue, providing "companies and brands with a completely new and exciting way of building their brand value among teenagers around the world." Marketers can "check in" to the hotel and can also "sponsor" various "elements" on the site, encouraging the virtual "Habbos" to "decorate their pages with cool objects, but free of charge." Habbo Hotel's "pre-programmed bots" have been designed "to reply to particular sentences that involve the current promotion taking place in the room." Among the "Quests & Activities" currently featured on the home page of Habbo Hotel is a promotional game for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts. "The Crazy Good Pop- Tarts Pastries are Hollywood Bound," the site announces. "Find out where they are now!" Hotel inhabitants are also offered virtual incentives to take part in a poll: "Are you fashionable like Strawberry, courageous and creative like Blueberry, divalicious like Brown Sugar Cinnamon, silly like S'mores or sophisticated and studious like Cherry? Let us know who is most like you! Just for voting, you'll have a chance to receive one of 20 free RARES! [Habbo furniture]"⁴
• MyCoke.com is a virtual, immersive environment in which users are "encouraged to associate personal identity with brand identity." The site offers a multitude of interactive activities to engage teens, including chat, music downloading and mixing, user-generated video, blogs, and its own currency. Coca-Cola worked with interactive marketing expert Studiocom (part of the WPP Group) to create Coke Studios, a "massive multiplayer online environment" where "teens hang out as their alter-identities, or 'v-egos.'" Teens who want to become part of the MyCoke community are greeted with encouraging step-by-step instructions on the site: "Ready to reinvent yourself?" "Be who you want with your V-ego." After completing the site's registration process: "You've just made millions of new friends! People are cool. We'll help you meet more of them."⁵

 

1 Millions of Us, http://www.millionsofus.com/about.php (viewed 31 Mar. 2007).

2 Jesse Shannon, "Marketing's New Manifestation: Why Avatars Best Represent Online User Engagement," Adotas, 17 July 2006, http://www.adotas.com/2006/07/marketings-new-manifestation-why-avatars-best-representonline-user-engagement (viewed 30 Mar. 2007).

3 Shannon, "Marketing's New Manifestation."

4 Saluke Corporation, "Habbo Takes Creativity and Self-expression to a New Level," press release, 1 Feb. 2007, http://www.sulake.com/pressroom_releases_01022007.html (viewed 31 Mar. 2007); "Youniversal Branding," part 1, Trendwatching.com, n.d., http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/youniversalbranding.htm (viewed 3 Mar. 2007). See also "Sprite Checks Into the Habbo Hotel," Media in Canada, 19 Apr. 2005, http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050419/habbo.html; "Interactive: The 2005 Media Innovation Awards," Marketing Magazine, 21 Nov. 2005, http://www.marketingmag.ca/magazine/current/media_innovation_awards/ article.jsp?content=20051121_72361_72361 (both viewed 31 Mar. 2007). "The Crazy Good™ Pop-Tarts® Toaster Pastries are Hollywood Bound!" Habbo, http://www.habbo.com/news/poptarts07.html; "Pop-Tarts® Toaster Pastries Go Hollywood!" Habbo, http://www.habbo.com/entertainment/poptarts07; Pop-Tarts, http://www.poptarts.com/ (all viewed 31 Mar. 2007).

5 Betsy Book, "Advertising & Branding Models in Social Virtual Worlds," presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 19 Feb. 2006, available as a PowerPoint download at http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/ (viewed 30 Mar. 2007). See description of Coca-Cola's Coke Studios at Studiocom, http://www.studiocom.com/public/site/home.html (viewed 2 Apr. 2007); "Youniversal Branding"; "Cokestudios," MyCoke.com, http://www.mycoke.com/home.html?tunnel=cokestudios§ion=16 (viewed 17 Apr. 2007). "Coke in the Community," Brand Strategy, 5 Feb. 2007. See also James Harkin, "Get a (Second) Life," FT.com, 17 Nov. 2006, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/cf9b81c2-753a-11db-aea1-0000779e2340.html; "Yes Logo," New World Notes, 6 Apr. 2006, http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/04/yes_logo.html; "Second Life: Coke Machine," Brands in Games, 15 Feb. 2006, http://www.vedrashko.com/advertising/2006/02/second-life-coke-machine.html (all viewed 31 Mar. 2007).