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The challenge of advertising in virtual worlds involves taking advantage of their unique features. Here's how some film companies showcased their movies in one of these worlds.
In the past decade, the advertising industry has undergone a radical shift towards online advertising. Without going into the specifics, the shift has largely been from two-dimensional formats in traditional media such as newspapers and magazines to two-dimensional media such as web banners and text links. On the three-dimensional side, video advertisements have moved from television to web-based video in the past few years. Little has been done in three-dimensional, non-video advertising on the internet.
Virtual worlds are a relatively new medium, combining the three-dimensional advantages of video, with interactive features built on top of leading video game technology, and adding social networking tools such as groups, messaging and user-generated content. Bringing all of these components together provides new opportunities for marketing, branding and advertising, all embedded in a truly engaging and immersive community-oriented platform.
In the most recent quarters, virtual worlds have gotten more and more rooted in the Internet, with players such as IBM investing significant resources into exploring virtual world platforms. At the same time, the virtual world communities have begun to diversify and find niches. Some virtual worlds focus on serving children, with characters modeled on plush toys, indeed often with toys for sale as their revenue model. Advertising in those contexts can be difficult. In the adult-oriented virtual worlds, a definite divide between fantasy and reality is emerging. Second Life is a leading fantasy-oriented virtual world for adults, while Twinity ties in heavily with reality, including models of real cities and human avatars.
The challenge of advertising in virtual worlds is largely around taking best advantage of the interactive features of a virtual world, the social elements, and defining key metrics. Since most virtual worlds do not yet have mainstream adoption or registered or active user bases that would make metrics like CPM relevant, virtual worlds can be tremendously effective in driving other metrics, like engagement, time spent, and word-of-mouth advertising.
The movie industry, while growing in DVD sales, is challenged by online piracy and continuous decline in the past several years. In the past, movie performance has been measured largely by opening box office revenues. More and more, filmmakers are recognizing long-term potential in CRM and keeping viewers engaged. This means keeping a database, and supplying them with some benefit to keep them engaged.
A small case study for virtual world advertising is film promotion within Twinity. Two major film companies have recently undertaken movie advertising in Twinity, leveraging virtual worlds' ability to address most of these issues.
For instance, James Bond, Quantum of Solace, was launched in Twinity with an experience-based marketing campaign. This let viewers dress up a 3D avatar in a classic movie-inspired tuxedo, view integrated behind-the-scenes video features, and an exclusive interview with Daniel Craig.
For Batman: The Dark Knight, customized virtual items were available in Twinity. Viewers could buy a Batman or Joker mask and wear it on their avatar, or take screen shots of their avatars sitting on the Batcycle. Those avatars then created word-of-mouth and viral buzz, as those screen shots showed up on other websites, and those players walked around inadvertently representing the Batman franchise.
The Spirit, a recent release based on the Frank Miller graphic novel, went one step deeper. An interactive game element was available that let players put a mask from the movie onto their avatars, and then dramatically altered their game view. The look and feel of Twinity switched instantly for these players from being the normal full-color Twinity to a black, white and red theme copied directly from the movie. The additional social features let the members share screen shots and machinima (video made within the virtual world) and enter them into a contest.
Finally, for Angels and Demons, an in-world location modeled after the Illuminati was created, complete with a quest mirroring that of Robert Langdon, with ambigrams, clues and puzzles to solve. For all of these movies, weekly events were held to bring together fans to discuss the movies. All of these campaigns were done at a fraction of the real-world cost, and can remain online for any period of time.
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