Looking like it’s 2006 all over again, Indian company Godrej, a huge conglomerate that runs the business gamut from real estate to appliances, has launched a virtual world called Gojiyo which it inteds to use as a marketing tool for its own products and services.

Clearly, this harkens back to the ‘golden age’ of Second Life corporate-branding efforts, and the company is not being shy about its expressed purpose.

“We want to reinforce our relevance to the youth,” said ED and President of Marketing Tanya Dubash. “So there’s a fair amount of branding and strategic messaging.”

Has this ever worked? Has “strategic messaging” in a virtual world ever been successful? Thankfully, Godrej chose to build their own site rather than direct users to Second Life.

“Godrej will place its products at many locations inside this virtual world so as to let consumers experience and become aware about its products,” said Ashutosh Tiwari, executive vice-president, strategic marketing, Godrej in an article at Afaqs!. These products include: “Sofit (soya milk); Cinthol Deo; Good Knight Naturals; Yummiez (ready to cook snack); Renew (hair colour); Interio (urban furniture); Eon I-Fresh refrigerators and Eon Mirror Star air conditioners” which are, according to Tiwari, “the vanguard of this youth centric movement from Godrej.”

The company sought input from 1,000 testers. “We wanted something that was totally co-created by consumers,” said Dubash. They have built six locations so far in-world.

Users will be given “Mio,” the currency used in the VW, once they sign up to the browser-based world. The article also suggests that Second Life has 8,000 users in India, a figure we could neither confirm nor dispute.