Yet another fashion/lifestyle brand has discovered the promise of virtual worlds and virtual retail, in this case dressing virtual inhabitants: American Apparel (the sweat-shop free apparel phenomenon) will open its virtual doors tomorrow (Saturday, 17 June 2006).

The store, set on a private island within Second Life, was designed by Aimee Weber, a Second Life resident and designer, in conjunction with American Apparel's own architect. The store will sell 20 familiar American Apparel items for avatars, including the women's jersey polo dress. The company will charge a token sum of about USD 1 per item. It's (surprisingly!) the first 'real world' retailer to set up shop in Second Life.

Want more? Our sister site trendwatching.com will cover a myriad of new branding and ecommerce initiatives in virtual worlds in its upcoming 'YOUNIVERSAL BRANDING' briefing, but in the meantime, start exploring new opportunities for yourself: signing up for secondlife.com would be a logical first step. Oh, and you don't have to be in fashion for this one: avatars need banking, cars, homes, furniture and everything else you're already selling in meat-space. Have fun!

Website: http://secondlife.com/businesspartners
Contact: contact@lindenlab.com

Appealing to the IM-generation, Eccky (created by Media Republic) is a multi-player concept that allows two people to create a virtual baby, add it to their MSN buddy list, and guide it through its childhood and teens. (For information in English, check out Eccky's weblog.)

The look and characteristics of the child are based on the unique 'DNA' of its parents, which is derived from a quiz the couple takes before conception. The parents then have 6 days (each real world day is equal to 3 Eccky years) to raise their Eccky into a happy, well-functioning 18 year old. Which is where instant messenging comes in: as with real children, communication is the key. Parents chat with their Eccky via MSN Messenger like they would with anyone else. Because Eccky is – in essence – a very fancy chatbot, it can engage in a conversation, responding with over 45,000 different answers about 3,500 recognized topics.

The consumer price for creating an Eccky is EUR 1.50. In The Netherlands, supermarkets just started stocking several million bags of Doritos tortilla chips containing codes that are valid for the creation of one Eccky on the Doritos website, where users can find and flirt with potential co-parents (talk about a whole new level of dating and tryvertising ;-).

Of course, the virtual child also needs to be fed and clothed, all of which costs credits. Extra credits can be bought by dialling a pay-per-call number, or by buying extra bags of Doritos. An innovative approach to sponsored content and in-game advertising, further underlining Kevin Kelly's 'online culture is the culture' statement. Time to partner with the Ecckys of this world?

Japanese Manboo is where the Gaming & Manga Generation meets TRENDWATCHING.COM's being space trend: a sleek, branded chain of 'cafes' that offer a luxurious living room (well, multiple mini living rooms in the form of private, carpeted cubicles with separate personal computer and television monitors) setting for playing games, watching DVDs, reading comics and surfing the web. Reclining chairs and oceans of free coffee, teas and soft drinks included, 24/7. There's even a nail salon and shower facilities. All this for only a few bucks an hour. Manboo currently has 45 cafes; four of them within blocks of Tokyo's Ikebukuro train station alone!

Opportunities

With gaming, surfing and IM-ing taking up the majority of eyeball-time of virtually every 16-year-old kid from Sao Paulo to Seoul (forget TV!), who's going to set up the new Starbucks for the PS2/Xbox 360 generation outside Japan?

Most TV shows have their own website these days, but now, turning the tables, some websites are actually spawning their own TV shows.

Case in point: Classmates.com, a website where school friends, lovers, prospective lovers and even enemies look to reacquaint themselves, recently got its own reality TV show, in cooperation with News Corp's Twentieth Television. Each segment of the show will feature one person looking for a long lost acquaintance, old lover or kindergarten friend. The searchee won't know who is trying to contact them, and the show will profile the people separately, leading up to their reunion.

The business angle? Classmates.com's 35 million registered users, who not only provide the show's content (Classmates.com claims to generate about 300 to 500 possible story leads a day), but also represent a massive number of potential viewers and a source of 'buzz'. Which is what all networks are after, anyway.

Classmates is not the only one expanding from cyberspace to air waves:
- Celebrity crime Web site The Smoking Gun is creating two half-hour shows for broadcast on cable channel Court TV (due to air in August), joining a genre of popular gotcha shows like 'Cops'. The Smoking Gun was acquired by Court TV in 2000.
- Sony Pictures Television is behind eBayTV, airing live auctions. Due to complications in getting software out to stations, the show's launch has been postponed until fall 2004, but should be able to benefit from Ebay's 1 trillion or so worshippers.
- National Public Radio is working with Microsoft-owned online journal Slate on a one-hour weekday program called 'Day to Day, which will feature news topics of the day.
- iVillage, a popular women's website with an online community of almost 15 million visitors, is planning a TV series based on internet dating. Tentatively named iDate, the program will follow internet based relationships starting with the initial email exchanges and culminating with the face-to-face meeting. (Sources: AdAge, News.com, TrendCentral.)

Opportunities

Springwise's suggestion to everyone with a website boasting lots of visitors and good name recognition: start looking for the stories behind your content, visitors, members and customers, then turn it into a TV format and start pitching to the networks. Or, if you are in TV yourself, do some due diligence amongst your favorite websites. Perhaps you should buy one, like Court TV did with The Smoking Gun? May we suggest that Amazon.com set up some sort of book club hosted by one of the thousands of 'garage influentials' who send in their book reviews to the site? We also think that Gawker.com would make for fantastic TV; a daily show loaded with (in their own words) "city news including urban dating rituals, no-ropes social climbing, Conde Nastiness, and downwardly mobile i-bankers" ;-)

And that's just the US: what about UK-based Lastminute.com, one of Europe's largest online travel players, whose popular weekend trips must be the source of endless stories of romance, deceit and adventure? Last one: a Google.com show bringing us 'today's most interesting searches and the people behind it'. Oh well, you get the picture!

The gaming craze is showing no signs of cooling off. An advertising agency and a university get prepared for the long haul & the big profits.

Remember our March article about in-game brand and product placements? As the gaming craze -- offline and online -- is showing no signs of cooling off, more and more established parties are jumping on the bandwagon. For example: McDonald's and Intel are already spending more than USD 2 million on their virtual presence in the Sims community. And in a Disney game out this fall, players collect Nokia ringtones and deliver McDonald's burgers.

To put gaming into perspective: according to the Interactive Digital Software Association, 60% of all Americans play games. That's 145 million consumers. They bought 221 million computer and video games in 2002, almost two per household. And the gaming industry is larger than the motion picture box office in terms of revenue, plus it's growing at three times the pace.

Two new business ideas that are looking to cash in on the numbers above:

-- Starcom Media Vest, a unit of Paris-based marketer Publicis Groupe, recently launched Play, the first advertising/placements agency that will focus specifically on the USD 10.3 billion gaming market. In their own words: "we are excited to capitalize on video game contents and formats to convey our clients' branding messages to a massive and influential consumer audience." Play comprises a team of ten marketing professionals who will operate from offices in Chicago and Los Angeles.