Coke Moves Virtual House to There.com
The world’s best-known brand is opting for a new virtual world.
Coca-Cola today said it will migrate Coke Studios, the virtual world it has run within its MyCoke.com Web site for almost five years, to a new continent in the There.com virtual universe owned and operated by Makena Technologies.
Coke’s new 3-D world, to be called CC Metro, is expected to go live the week of Dec. 10. Registered members of Coke Studios can access it through links on the MyCoke site, while There.com’s more than 1 million members can also explore the CC Metro environment and join the Coke program if they wish.
“Coke Studios has been very successful, but it’s really a 2-D, old-style avatar world,” Coke spokeswoman Sue Stribling said. “We were one of the first consumer product companies to have a virtual world. We’ve updated it over the years, but technology in the virtual world space has just exploded. And we recognized that it was time for more than an evolution: We needed a revolution.”
The company decided that taking Coke Studios to the next level meant signing on a partner. Coca-Cola looked at the various virtual platforms available and opted for a long-term exclusive agreement with Makena’s There.com, a moderated PG-13 world that offers a richer 3-D experience than Coke could devise in-house.
Using There.com’s existing technology, CC Metro visitors will be able to spend time honing their hoverboard skills in a five-story-tall skate park, watching Coke-created videos in a virtual movie theater, mixing their own music and socializing with other members through chat and IP voice functions.
Stribling points out that from its start, Coke Studios had a heavy focus on generating and sharing music. While that music mashup capability will continue in CC Metro, “You’ll start to see other features that involve sports, gaming, fashion and other passion points that are important to teens and young adults,” Stribling said.
Coke will also incorporate some of its offline brand partnerships into its virtual experience, including associations with NASCAR, National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball, the “American Idol” competition and the 2008 Olympic Games.
Coca-Cola and Makena maintain that this is one of the largest brand partnerships yet within the universe of virtual worlds. Makena has already built and operated virtual communities for MTV, Capitol Records and automaker Scion, and received an Emmy nomination for their “Laguna Beach” MTV property.
Ben Richardson, the business development vice president at Makena, points out that this is not simply a virtual advertising deal in which companies put up signage or logoed appliances. Coke already runs several of those, including a contest to design a drink dispenser for Second Life.
“Coca-Cola’s virtual platform in There.com will be a core part of their marketing strategy,” he says. “This environment will constantly change and offer consumers new ways to engage with their brand.”
In time CC Metro will be integrated into the MyCokeRewards program so that members will be able to use their loyalty points to buy virtual apparel and gear for their online avatars.
Coke Studios’ 8 million registered users (not all of them active, Stribling concedes) have been notified of the change coming to their virtual home and invited to enter CC Metro once it opens next week.
Stribling also admits that moving house may not be much less stressful in the digital world than it is in carbon-based reality.
“A lot of the people who have been part of Coke Studios for a long time have amassed a lot of credits, clothing and furniture there,” she says. “They won’t be able to take the specific shirt they wore in Coke Studios into CC Metro, but they’ll get credit to buy something similar that’s even better and more realistic. All their points will move over.”
“We expect there will be some growing pains, but the new experience will be so much more multi-dimensional and offer so much more that what pains there are will quickly go away,” she added. “And a lot of the Coke Studios members who are not as active as they once were will re-engage, because the experience will be a real sea change.”
