The Energy Drink brand is famous for its original way to communicate, delivering a lot of content around massive original events (Air Race, Flugtag, etc...). I am not gonna enumerate all the advergames developped by the Austrian company, that would be too long, but you can find some on their site. Red bull also proves to be innovative by always being among the first to test new media plateforms, like Joost at the time.
This time, Red Bull is the first advertiser in the Playstation Home, the Sony metaverse on PS3, which has just been launched yesterday. They built their own tropical island, which features an aeroplane racing game, which is based on their real world Red Bull Air Race series.
Note that Diesel, with a campaign developed by my agency (Mindshare), Ligne Roset, and Paramount Pictures are also among the first brands to advertise in Home.
Home is a major stake for Sony, regarding its position on the console market, compared to Nintendo and XBox.
And there are already a lot of questions surrounding this new virtual universe.
Microsoft in an obvious unfair and insincere speech says it is already outdated.
In my opinion Home is to Second Life, what PS3 is to Megadrive.
The word is dropped : Second Life.
That's the major doubt on this new plateform. Will it be a new Second Life ? with all the disappointment it finally came to ...
I strongly believe Second Life has been victim of its media success.
What we could call "the employee of the month effect".
It quickly came under the spotlights, with a lot of PR. As usual what is trendy and skyrocketing is condemned to be burn, especially when it's about technology. Great hopes (impatience) can't face the practical experience of use adoption (long term). That is what Gartner and its brilliant Hype cycle of emerging technologies is about.
As an adult universe, Second Life has been a good client for journalists who experienced it. But at the time, few wrote on Tatu, Habbo, Neopets. And yet they were as big, often bigger than Second Life. But for Kids.
Have a look at the very insightful map of KZero
Now if you consider the popularity and total adoption of virtual universes by young generations, that wouldn't be an heresy to think that they could become standards in the future. And it won't be only about gaming, that will certainly affect ergonomy, navigation, interfaces.
Home is just part of the picture. A nice part in my opinion.
|
