What's Next In Marketing

"Second Life"...Pay Attention

So I've been playing around a bit with Second Life (www.secondlife.com). Business Week ran an article about the virtual world that is Second Life and I wanted to see what all the talk was about.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_18/b3982001.htm

If you are close to my age you recall what it was like when MTV launched. You sat yourself down in front of the TV and the next thing you knew it was three hours later. Second Life is like that. Very engaging. Very cool. A goldmine for marketers.

American Apparel has already set up a virtual store inside Second Life. AdAge ran an article about it.

http://adage.com/digital/article.php?article_id=110404

If you are a marketer targeting 18-34 year olds, you have to be paying attention to this. I'm not sure if this is big, giant game, but I know that the marketing possibilities are endless.

Like MySpace, this is something advertisers, and their agencies, need to be paying attention to.

What's Next In Mobile Marketing

The Mobile Marketing Association has a bunch of case studies posted on their site that highlight some of the best and most recent mobile programs.

http://www.mmaglobal.com/modules/wfsection/index.php?category=1&submenu=case

I remember back in 1999 we were all talking about how Mobile was the next big thing. Now it really is.

Cool School and Mobile Social Software

My friend Marc Schiller runs a company call Electric Artists http://www.electricartists.com/. Every few months they hold what they call "Cool School", which is a gathering of clients and peers designed to hear about and discuss What's Next in marketing and technology.

Recently I attended a great session in which we heard presentations from companies playing in the Mobile Social Networking arena. Companies like Dodgeball, Socialight, Yellow Arrow, and others. Very cool stuff. Marc and his guys do a great job.

And what do you ya know? Here's the NY Times with an article about these companies and the revolutionary way they are leveraging mobile technologies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/technology/techspecial2/25geo.html?_r=1