Online Music Marketing with Jay Moonah

My take on this is slightly more cynical and pragmatic…

Virtual worlds, communities and nations are here to stay. Whilst emerging media is exploring new ways for companies to interact with their target audience, businesses must be careful not see this as another outlet where they aggressively sell.

Users go to these sites often as a form of escapism and would probably take a negative reaction where vendors try and conflict with this. However, this can be done well - take Toyota selling their cars on Second Life as a great example of complementing a virtual world rather than fighting it.

Even though Gartner suggest this is a “long haul”, there is a lot to be said for being early entrants into a market. My advice would be to start now but passively.

Also - don’t get hung up on the main avenues. Technology is changing fast - who knows what new scenario will be the best place to virtually hang-out in a few years time. Have a plan that is flexible and go for it.

Nevertheless, Gartner have made some sound suggestions that would be foolish for any would-be vendor in the virtual world not to follow… but perhaps they should use mine too.

My post backs this up
 

Hey Jonny, I think you're right on the money. I thought this was the key piece of advice from Gartner included in the press release, which fits well with your points:

"Gartner recommends that enterprises should experiment with virtual worlds, but not plan massive projects, and look for community benefits rather than commerce."

The hard sell is not going to work well in virtual worlds, at least not at this stage. The good news from my perspective is that bands don't need the hard sell -- music events, done correctly, lend themselves perfectly to the community-driven nature of Second Life and other emerging virtual worlds IMHO.