Brand Entry Timeline for the Automotive Industry

Just yesterday I blogged about Kzero's brand entry timeline for the financial industry. Today, Kzero published an updated brand entry timeline for the automotive industry in Second Life. The latest additions were Renault and Mercedes-Benz.

Here are Kzero's comments on the brand entry timeline for the automotive industry: "[...] Just as consumers can be put into technology adoption categories such as innovators, early adopters etc, so can brands and companies.

On this theme, I’ve started to look at brand entry timelines for companies entering Second Life. It’s fair to say that category by category there are brands that are innovators in terms of new marketing platforms and of course brands that lag a little.

So, which category do I choose first? Clearly no surprises to select automobiles, a sweet-spot sector for metaverse applications. The graph below shows the timing of the car manufacturers who have set-up to date in Second Life.

Kudos to Toyota for launching the Scion initiative ‘back in the old days’. The heavy weighting of North American residents, awareness and brand momentum is the driving (ahem) force explaining why Nissan and then Pontiac followed Toyota into Second Life, coupled of course with the fact that all three are innovative marketers.

But, is there a ‘Me too’ strategy occurring here? After all, it didn’t take long for Mercedes Benz to follow BMW into SL. To a degree, possibly. However, it’s fair to say that the Second Life strategy implemented by Mercedes was superior (to date) to BMW, so even though they came in after BMW, they have created a far more interaction experience.

So, ‘Me too’ is good in this instance for metaverses. One reason why it is good is down to learning and application. Metaverses are new spaces with no rules. Companies can learn a great deal from studying the strategies (and tactics) of companies in their categories who have entered SL and then improve on or in some cases distance themselves from the initiatives deployed in-world. That’s the beauty of virtual worlds in there current state - it’s a state of flux and real-time learning."

Source: Kzero