Bloomsberry in Second Life

Bloomsberry, a chocolate company out of New Zealand would be the perfect candidate to enter into second life. Their candy bars are wrapped in fun and creative packages, many of them just a little risque. They definetly went outside the box to market their otherwise generic chocolate bars. They show all of their fun chocolate boxes on their website bloomsberry.com

The possibilities are endless in second life which is why I think Bloomsberry would have fun in this virtual world. Many other companies have already picked up on this new marketing trend like IBM, Mercedes and the movie makers of 300. I recently visted some islands on Second Life for a class assigment, including Leo Burnett, Kawaii Ku, and Paper Couture. Although all very different, they are all neat to walk around in and it truly is possible to create islands to meet any product or consumer need.

The Leo Burnett Island was very futuristic and you could walk from tree to tree. I somehow along the way aquired a giant pencil and apple that I could ride. Although I didnt necessarily understand the island, it was fun to fly around and see all the architecture that went into the island. It was truly a creative way to design the ad agencys island and a neat space to meet in. The Paper Couture Island was what I would have expected from the name, it was just like a cute little city boutique. However, I didnt enjoy the stairs, might be a little easier in real life, but a little unrealistic for second life. One problem with it is it kind of upset me cause I would have liked to actually purchase some of the stuff but didnt know how, or if you even could. Which is something they might want to consider. Lastly was the Kwaii Ku island which was a little too futuristic and anime for my taste, but I did like all the happy colors. Its really hard to dislike any of the islands because their all just so different.

Kwaii Ku


Leo Burnett


Bloomsberry would in my opinion be successful in second life. For example my avatar aquired a martini and walks around holding it, what if the avatars could walk around holding the creatively boxed chocolates? I think it would create quite a buzz in second life. If there was perhaps a bloomsberry island where they had all their chocolate bars on a display of some sort and avatars could pick out and buy chocolate.

Something more to ignore

Sure the whole cell phone marketing idea seems like a good idea. A resent article "Mobile Marketing Hits its Terrible Twos" covered the issuse and ideas surrounding the effort. But what consumer would ask to see more advertisments?

With text messages being the most popular mobile activity, a very low number actually browse the mobile web or watch videos. Under 15% that is, and with this being the main way to allow marketers to buy banner ads or commercials, the idea doesnt seem like it will take off. On top of that, this strategy is at the stage where consumers have the power to say "no i dont want advertising on my phone." And who would? As if were not flooded with enough white noise advertisments to avoid without being bumbarded with ads through one of our main forms of communication.



Consumers arent going to warm up to the idea, but marketers face other issues too. Its not cheap to do and the tiny screen doesnt allow for very much creativity. I personally dont see how consumers would catch on to this. Its going to be viewed as intrusive and annoying no matter what fresh idea/ tactic they come up with. I think the only success so far is the landing deck, or what comes up on the screen when you access the mobile web.

But it should be interesting to see what happens in the future. ESPN already tried and we saw how that turned out...

Who's on top

Along with my previous post on search marketing, I reviewed the AdAge FactPack for 2006 on Interactive and Marketing Media. It was broken down into different market categories (ie. search, mobile, email, classifieds, online display advertisements, etc.). And I wasn't surprise to find that it's contents were packed full of big company names. To see who was on top of each of the market segments was not of much surprise, names like Yahoo, eBay, Expedia, and ESPN.

This packet would be of great use when needing specific information because it breaks down the numbers in market shares, as well future sales projections. It also shares the media most spent time on when on the internet, and surprisingly to me the winner was portals, email came in second and entertainment and games were 6 and 7th.

The information was interesting because it kinda of broke my expectations of what people were doing on the internet. And it also provided good insight into different marketing efforts, and who was on top of the competition.

Search Engine Marketing

With the internet world getting bigger and bigger, for those trying to get involved the opportunities seem to be getting smaller and smaller. With a visit to Domain.com it is easy to see that the choices for domain names are limited if not nonexistent to have .com as your site. Along with this, site owners are fighting to be at the top of search lists like goodle and yahoo. With this came the possibility of paid searches, where companies pay to be at the top with key word searches. In a recent article Why a Strong Brand is a Search Marketer's Best Asset it goes over this topic and just like the title says, describes why its easier for searches to have a branded term over a nonbranded term relevant to conversion rates.

However, those in facor of the portfolio search share that by adding value to nonbranded search terms will make for just as much of a success. And that if marketers do pay more for the nonbranded search terms than it may in the end be worth more. This is beacuse it creates as they said sort of a "funnel effect" where the nonbranded search terms may eventually contribute to clicks and conversions on a brand search term.

But a Jeffrey Glueck the CMO at travelocity isnt sold on this portfolio approach saying that brands are still of importance on the internet. Althrough they discuss the research he has done in favor of his buying your brand approach im going to tend to disagree. Through organic searches I still think there is hope for the beginners in the internet world.

For example, a friend of mine has a small fishing charter on Lake George, NY. He creatively titled his website as New York Fishing. So any one who types that into google it comes up first. I think there is still hope for the portfolio approach. And I would like to hope to considering the internet has only been out generally speaking for a short period of time. To believe that it will be dominated only by larger high money making companies is in my opinion... SAD.

Living a Second Life

I recently started to explore the new virtual world of second life under the name "Lantern Benelli." I must say I was excited after watching a video on YouTube to hop in and join in the excitement. At first glance, Second Life seems to be a fun little video game that you can walk around and talk to people on, but after watching the video they brought the technology to a whole new level. Colleagues from around the world can actually have meetings and companies can promote brands and talk to the consumers. Which leads me to believe that one day this will be a huge addition into the advertising/marketing world.



However, after I did make my virtual name and enter into the world, it is much harder to use then I had expected. I assume it gets easier after you wonder around for a while. But I think that if professionals expect to get as much as they shared in the video, Second Life has to be a little more user friendly. When entering into second life it says how many people are signed up for it and how many are actually active users. Which is much less then half. I will continue to go on and figure things out since this eventually will be a big part of marketing. As for others I think they will go on, get confused, and simply leave it to others.

Geico Steps out of the Cave

The newly famous Geico representative the "caveman" is entering into the big leagues. Talk about good marketing on Geicos Part. He is now more of a real person/ caveman then a character. They've gone so far as to create a virtual online world of where he lives. Now, as talked about in the adage daily article, the caveman who prefers to be called Joe Dyton, is on his way to being an ABC Sitcom Star.

Apparently the character had some impact on TV viewers, its a very rare and few occassion that a tv commercial story and character was turned into a full show. I personally love the commercials and have visited the website, and I for one would definetly tune into the new show. I think Geico did an outstanding job marketing this character. Everyone I have talked to actually enjoys watching his commercials and following his "life" situations that are played out from commercial to commercial.

The Martin Agency, who wants to turn the commercials into a show has also created a fake YouTube movie trailer for a movie sitcom with the caveman. I think the character already has enough of a fan base as a commercial character that moving foward could only get better, especially with the already sucessful marketing they have going on.

However, in the article after playing along with the joke of the caveman saying that "he prefers to be called...." they try to make his character into a role model icon. By quoting a professor who shares "It's a way we can deal with those issues that have come with raised consciouseness and have merged into political correctness, and you can do it in a way that is safe because you're making fun of cavemen and not some other group." Im not so sure about what his idea of the show will bring, but if anything I think it will at least be sucessful and entertaining, but I wouldnt go so far as to agree with this guy.

Boston gets it again

I just discovered another funny article about Boston, similar to the aqua teen hunger force insident called "Boston Hates Marketing Stunts". This time Cadbury Schwepps Dr. Pepper was the culprite. And once again Boston might get another sweet million dollar check out of the deal.



To promote Dr. Pepper, Cadbury hosted a scavenger-hunt that led participators the a Boston Cemetery. For some reason Boston officials found this offensive again and felt the need to lock the cemetery grounds. I think they have their panties in a bunch. What do they expect, marketing to stop all together in the city of Boston? Its like asking for unconventional marketing to stop in New York City of Los Angelas. In fact the same Aqua teen hunger force promotion was supposed to happen in LA too, officials their seemed to have no problem with the idea.

Apparently Boston officials thought the cemetery would be ruined by contestants out to win the contests top prize or $1 million dollars. Seems to me like they wanted to stop the contest iin order to win the prize themselves with a nice compensation check. So like other marketers Cadburry packed it up and moved its business southward.