From the Harvard Business Review:

“Brands are perhaps the most intuitive example of cheap interaction’s atomizing hand. Yesterday, they were a potent source of advantage. Today, the game has changed: investing in traditional brands is yielding fast diminishing returns, and leading more and more players directly into value destruction. That’s why it’s not just revolutionaries like Google, but also mass-market giants like Nike and P&G, who are rethinking orthodox branding.

“In fact, when interaction is cheap, the very economic rationale for orthodox brands actually begins to implode: information about expected costs and benefits doesn’t have to be compressed into logos, slogans, ad-spots or column-inches – instead, consumers can debate and discuss expected costs and benefits in incredibly rich detail.”

Are there hints in here as to why brands failed when they came to Second Life, where “consumer engagement” in their own conversations resulted in brand efforts being tuned out?

And on that note: BMW is leaving Second Life. However, they remain bullish on virtual worlds:

“Although it will be a shame to see them go, the message was generally very positive about the future for virtual worlds, which BMW are still investigating to use internally, hosted on their own servers.”