Wendy Maslow in virtual worlds, part one

[Note: This is the first of several dispatches that Adweek senior writer Wendy Melillo will be filing from virtual worlds including Second Life, where she is the avatar Wendy Maslow.] Launching marketing schemes in virtual worlds now seems passé. Just six months ago, brands garnered instant publicity for such efforts through a press release. No more. But Starwood Hotels & Resorts may have found a new way to stand out: not by joining Second Life but by leaving it. You may recall that in September, Starwood, with its digital New York agency Electric Artists, opened a virtual version of a new hotel brand Aloft in SL. (The lobby is shown here.) It did so by buying an island there. Right now, virtual Aloft is temporarily closed while design changes are made based on feedback from visitors. The hotel will then reopen in March for 60 days to get more responses from consumers before closing forever. (Starwood never intended the hotel to be a permanent functioning facility because avatars don’t really need to sleep.) “We are talking about removing the hotel, packing it up and donating the land to charity,” says Electric Artists CEO and founder Marc Schiller. “We want to give the island back to the community and to someone who can build something amazing.” Schiller thinks brands need to develop exit plans as part of their overall marketing strategy before they even jump into a virtual world. “Budgets don’t last forever,” Schiller said. “Will brands leave their islands or stores as ghost towns to collect virtual dust?” Avatar Wendy Maslow will miss Aloft. It’s the brand that launched her adventures in SL. She will remember it fondly.

—Posted by Wendy Melillo

February 15, 2007 | Permalink