The idea of selling products in virtual worlds is some ways off.
Buying a Reebok virtual shoe doesn’t really make me want to buy a real pair. Way back when, they had a store – this massive thing in chrome and white that sold, well, a pair of shoes. A whole STORE with one option – it was sad, really, although the shoes DID change color, but you needed to load them into some sort of color-changing machine and anytime you wanted to change them again, you had to go BACK to the store (and pay more).
Image: Boredom is Your Fault
I mean, give me a break – it’s no wonder they shuttered their in-world branding experiment. Shoes you can’t click? Shoes you had to PAY to change the color of the stripe?
Visit Akeyo if you want to see how Reebok SHOULD have handled it.
Image: Uma’s Style Diary
In any case, buying virtual shoes on the off chance that it might make me want to buy REAL shoes is, um…well…silly. See, while I’m buying my virtual shoes I’m also sitting at home eating Pringles and chugging Red Bull.
But sell me something that will help my repetitive stress disorder and you might grab my attention.
Well there’s hope – because now I can get ergonomic virtually and at home, thanks to Lounge-Tek which has an in-world store that lets you test out the various ways you can be lazy, er, I mean ergonomic.
Second Life was ideal, according to their Web site:
“When we started the lounge-book project we faced with the problem to permit to our potential customer to try the product. The SecondLife show-room is the answer, you can try the product in various scenery from everywhere, all around the world.”
Now…if only they could hire a lounging editor to help proof their site we’d be in business.
Oh, and in case you’re more Lively than Second Life, they offer a room there as well:
I wonder however whether people who visit the site get at all confused whether they’re buying a real or a virtual laptop lounger. I suppose pictures of happy couples surfing Second Life help – but I’m a bit of a stickler for the one player one avatar rule – wonder if they’ll release a couples version. Or is she happily watching as his female avatar gets hit on by the crew at Rouge?
I suppose it doesn’t matter, when you’re lazy you’re lazy, at least you’re not pretending to be a long distance runner.
How RBK should of handled it, this was back in 2006!
I did some work on the sim for the developer, back in the day…
This is like comparing oranges and apples. This was also pre-scultpie and a lot of other options we take for granted today.
Did you also know that you could click the avatar’s shoe configuration, it would then click out to the RBK website and you could order that actual shoe for real in that configuration?
The store wasn’t just a ’shoe store’ they also sold merchandise, the Scarlet Heart’s range of products and NBA shoes… (full disclosure I worked on the clothing range as a freelancer.)
My suggestion is, if you’re going to write an article about an SL historic project, do your research correctly.
You’re also repeating an old story, we’ve been here before and the experiment was just that, an experiment. Good luck to the new retailers of shoes in SL, we’re all on a journey here, learning from the previous projects to build more compelling experiences. As they say, we’re all standing on the shoulders of giants.
Hey David – and thanks for the correction. Sure it’s an old story….and really this is meant partly as a tongue-in-cheek reminder of whence we came.
Maybe my memory is fuzzy. What I do remember is spending a lot of time in that store because I was fascinated with how brands might take advantage of virtual worlds. I don’t remember other merchandise but then I do recall the store was this massive place with a few kiosks and then the shoe configuration booths and maybe the other merchandise was at the other side of the store, which seemed like a sim away at the time (I was a noob, so who knows).
Now, as a noob maybe I missed the button where I could order the “real shoe” – how many orders did you say you got again?
Look – all of this is experimental. You’re beautiful, wonderful, a giant David, congratulations. As you know, I don’t typically dwell on the ancient past, thinking back to the ‘good old days’ when there was more of a culture and people were more polite and the brands were piling on not wanting to miss out on the next best thing.
Funny how none of them were LAUNCHED as experiments – I don’t remember press releases saying “BMW is trying an EXPERIMENT in Second Life, something at which they expect to fail but learn from it”, interesting how it’s only an experiment after its done, similar to ESC and the CSI build “Oh, it was never MEANT to drive traffic or be a long-term thing” when all the quotes from the launch made them sound like they fully expected to change the media landscape or whatever. I suppose they said “NO” to the bridge to nowhere.
Anyways – again….all of those ‘experiments’ were useful in their way. The fact that every company piled on media hype contributed to a sense of promises not delivered.
I’m of the opinion that we’re headed down the same course today. When Philip claims that business collaboration in virtual worlds is EASY, that it’s significant – I mean, give me a break.
Those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.