Marketing to Avatars

I downloaded SecondLife a couple of weeks ago. There is now, currently, an avatar in that world named (creatively enough) "Gary Stein". I haven't done much with it. Actually, I haven't done anything with it. But the concept is very intriguing to me. In fact, I'm in the skunkworks with a concept to do some events in SecondLife for Marketers.

There's a good article in AdAge today about this whole concept. A senior editor at HBR has written an article exploring the idea of marketing to avatars; not to the people controlling the avatars, but to the avatars themselves. It all gets a little weird and philosophical, but the idea is compelling.

Word of Mouth is in there as well. The idea of going into a space and representing a product is very WOM, so the same rules apply. Worthwhile read.