Passionland

I bet all of you know The Sims and I suppose you’ve seen the brands embedded in the game. The Sims is just another “virtual world” that boomed in the last couple of years, especially in terms of product placement practice. Second Life players have seen Reebok and HMV stores online, The Sims provides H&M products and Ford cars, even Aeropostale, a clothing retailer, developed their own virtual world to engage with their customers.

BUT… how engaging could it be? do you actually go “real-world” shopping for the things you already owned “virtually”? does the placement actually generate sales?

 

Some brands have gone bust in the virtual world coz they claimed it didn’t generate any sales, nor brand loyalty. But others tried different rules of engagement. For example, H&M tries going a bit further from just placing their product, onto an online competition in designing a shirt and the winning shirt will be available in stores in “real-world”. Quoting Madison+Vine regarding the campaign - “It really is the ultimate in brand engagement,” said Steve Seabolt, VP-global brand development for “The Sims,” an Electronic Arts label game. “It really is a way to bring a product or a service into your virtual life, become familiar with it, play with it and, hopefully, incorporate it into your real life.”

I suppose we’ll have to wait for the impact.. I’d be really curious to see the sales figure for that one particular shirt in due time…