Tag Archives: #IP

Much Ado About Ads

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Well, a portion of the Second Life virtual community is up in arms over an article over on the GameDaily website. The article is about the move of real life advertising into games and virtual worlds. Here are some excerpts from it, including bits of an interview with Linden Lab Marketing VP, David Fleck:

“There is a place for anybody to participate,” said Fleck, “including big corporations.”

Currently, Second Life has a program developed by Wells Fargo called Stagecoach Island, which features Wells Fargo ATM machines that give out “Linden Dollars” that can be used to buy products in “Second Life.”

Fleck said he is currently in discussions with other brands about advertising in Second Life and is hopeful that additional deals could be reached by year’s end. He mentioned he would even be open to the idea of using avatars as advertisements.

Of course this has some people screaming bloody murder. Apparently everything changes when the virtual Nike stuff residents covet for their avatars goes from being the product of illegal trademark violations to legitimate content blessed by the brand owner.

…and BW on Pro Gaming

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Let the (video)game sponsorship frenzy begin! From BW’s article “Pro Gaming Attracting Big Corporate Sponsors“:

PC hardware companies have been sponsoring Counter-Strike teams and individual pro gamers for over seven years, but more general youth-oriented brands and corporations have been slow to catch on to the phenomenon. In fact, last week’s announcement that Johnson & Johnson subsidiary McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals (makers of Tylenol) was sponsoring pro CS team Ouch is believed to be the first of its kind.

I can’t help but think someone inside Johnson & Johnson has been working feverishly for years trying to convince a bunch of out-of-touch upper management types to do this. This news kinda makes my earlier post on CPL a little more interesting. Wonder if I can create something branded with a fake pain-reliever and let it go head-to-head with Tylenol. Or should that be headache-to-headache? It’s about time corporate America realized the importance of videogames in reaching a portion of their market, I just wonder if they also realize they’re now on a different playing field. Literally and figuratively. This could get interesting.

Second Life + Wells Fargo

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Wells Fargo Island

I’d read about this previously on the Second Life forums – Wells Fargo has set up a virtual training ground to teach young adults about money and finance and such. From an announcement made by Second Life CEO/Founder Philip Rosedale (aka Philip Linden):

Today (Wednesday, September 14), Wells Fargo is announcing the launch of Stagecoach Island – an immersive experience set in Second Life that teaches young adults how to handle their finances in an entertaining way.
…
The islands are private islands and new users log directly into those islands – a feature that other island owners in SL have been using as well.

Through the grapevine I’ve also heard of some companies looking to make the move onto the “main grid”. I’ll admit I was hoping to give some smallish manufacturer a chance to get some invaluable PR, but I’m guessing some big player is going to now take the spotlight. A shame.

{Image source: Eggy Lippmann}

Future Blog

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I’ve been asked to give some indication of what’s in store for this blog and whether it will be continued. The short answer is “Yes”. However, the next incarnation will be at a different URL… though still within the rebang.com domain.

Further, because blogspam is such a bandwidth ripper and because I’d rather leave this ad-free, comments and trackbacks will likely not be permitted. I’m instead looking at other options for discussion and hope to have some way to facilitate it. Trackbacks will likely not be opened as it’s simply too ripe for abuse. Perhaps if I wanted to dedicate more time to deleting the spam and/or keeping up with extensions to control it, but I don’t; it might be of interest to those of you who visit this site that after all this time I still have zombie PC’s pinging to try to post their worthless messages on outdated entries. That’s the net.

Also, while I’d like to have my new website up and running by 1 Oct, the truth is that what I’m doing goes well beyond just a blog. This incarnation of the weblog was really an overly-successful test… never intended to be permanent. If you recall my focus, then you might get some hint of where I’ll be taking this website. Unfortunately that means stretching out into a lot of seemingly unrelated areas. I hope that when I’m done you’ll appreciate what can only be a modest effort.

Inside the Fortress… and Outside

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magickingdomSL

Wired is carrying an update of sorts on the problem of orphaned copyrighted work. If companies like IBM are tearing down the walls to let some light in to spur overall growth and opportunity, I have to wonder what’s going on inside the barricades at places like Disney (both the buildings and the mental erections). Speaking of which, I happened across an interesting place in the Second Life simulation: a vendor selling Disney items on the island of Erotica (no kidding). Now that puts an interesting spin on the label “Magic kingdom”.