1 Ravi Vatrapu Avatar Based Marketing Hemp, P. (2006). Avatar-based marketing. Harvard Business Review, 84(6), Course Portal: Facebook: Etherpad: Thursday, 14-Apr-2011 EB22: Online Marketing: Lecture 39 Auditorium 4, ITU, Copenhagen, Denmark

T ARGETING IN V IRTUAL W ORLDS “Whom do your marketing efforts target? The flesh-and-blood Second Life members who gave their credit card numbers to register for the game– or their Second Life avatars residing in the virtual world?” (p.48) 2

T ARGETING IN V IRTUAL W ORLDS 3

L IFE ON THE S CREEN 4

A VATAR  From the Sanskrit word about the incarnations of the Hindu God, Vishnu  “Popularized by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cult novel Snow Crash”  “Broadly defined, “avatar”encompasses not only complex beings created for use in a shared virtual reality but any visual representation of a user in an online community” 5

A VATAR  From the Sanskrit word about the incarnations of the Hindu God, Vishnu  “Popularized by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 cult novel Snow Crash”  “Broadly defined, “avatar” encompasses not only complex beings created for use in a shared virtual reality but any visual representation of a user in an online community” 6

M ARKETING IN V IRTUAL W ORLDS 7

8

9

M ARKETING TO A VATARS 10 “Advertising has always targeted a powerful consumer alter ego: that hip, attractive, incredibly popular person just waiting to emerge (with the help of the advertised product) from an all-too normal self.” (p. 52)

M ARKETING A PPROACHES IN THE V IRTUAL W ORLDS “Each virtual world has a different culture and people come to these worlds for a variety of reasons, so a single marketing approach won’t work.” (p. 56) 11

D ISCUSSION 12