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BizReport : Social Marketing : April 18, 2007
Coke is Second Life's newest corporate customer
Coke has expanded its brand-awareness activities in to the realm of virtual worlds with the next phase of its “Virtual Thirst” contest being promoted in Second Life.
The contest invites people to submit designs for a new “Coca-Cola experience” vending machine to be in with a chance to win a prize of constructing and launching the ultimate vending machine at a Second Life party. The contest ties in nicely with Coke.com’s relaunch with the brand repositioning itself around creativity and self-expression.
Michael Donnelly, Coke’s director of global interactive marketing, said their involvement in Second Life was a learning experience. "It isn't any kind of reach play, it's about learning about how to better market,” he said.
Coke is integrating the Second Life contest with their pages on social networks such as YouTube and MySpace. Entrants can also visit in-world drop boxes, visit the Virtual Thirst web and email.
Coke’s approach to virtual world involvement has been a much smaller affair than other entrants, and this may work to their advantage. They are starting by building a conversation around an event, increasing brand-awareness and virtual world credibility over time, rather than building a big island and filling it full of “Coke content”.
Tags: Coke, Second Life, social marketing, virtual world
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Comments
Thanks for taking the time to write about the Virtual Thirst initiative. As one of the project leads at crayon working on this, it's been great to read all the different reactions to it and I'm most happy when I see people embracing the fact that Coke wanted to start small and strategic rather then just dropping another whole Sim in world just for the sake of doing it. I hope some of your readers are inspired enough to submit ideas. Even if they have never been in Second Life before this is more about imagination then anything else.
Posted by: C.C. Chapman on April 25, 2007 20:03