The last two posts around brand extensions in virtual worlds focused on both the early and not very compelling and the more recent and in some cases very successful brand experiences in virtual worlds.
Successful brands in immersive environments are not limited to consumer brands, though. Academia and b2b brands are seriously and successfully extend their real world brands into the virtual space. To some extent, because these tend to not be mass audience brands, with fewer and higher intensity interactions with often clear short comings in today's communication experience in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, there sometimes seems to be an easier business case.
As an example, the New Media Consortium [NMC] conducts conferences and seminars with high profile speakers like Howard Rheingold of Stanford University. Some of these paid events are extremely effective and can save significant travel time and cost.
Language schools, interestingly start-ups and not established brands like Berlitz, are offering effective language lessons in virtual worlds.
A b2b brand like the international management consultancy PA Consulting, meets clients in their virtual office and conducts recruiting events. This helps to project the brand as an innovative brand. They conduct large scale conferences with global audiences, and build interactive and entertaining explanations of consulting case studies and ventures like a counterfeit drug detection system. These are good examples of putting virtual to use in the b2b communication space and certainly much more entertaining than a pdf brochure or a fatigue-inducing Powerpoint bullet point presentation.
Cisco is another example among the b2b brands, that is using the virtual space for communication and training with their consumer but mainly enterprise customers. This is similar to Sun Microsystems or Amazon that connect with their developer community through the virtual space.
These b2b brands and academia have realized that a virtual space is a great medium to have intense interactions and dialogues with your customers, often much more cost effective (and of course reducing energy consumption and travel) than real life meeting, while being perhaps 70-80% as effective.
Perhaps the next space to watch is whether, when and how social and participatory media will exploit the real time, intense, immersive and expressive character of virtual worlds as an extension of their current engaging, but asynchronous and in comparison "flat" and less engaging environment.
