Panel on Marketing to Virtual Avatars, Part 1

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Today, Harvard’s Berkman Center hosted a panel discussion titled "Avatar-Based Marketing: What’s the Future of Real-Life Companies Marketing to Second Life Avatars". The two-hour event took place on Berkman Island in Second Life. Panelists included the following avatars (pictured above, left to right, real names in brackets, info taken from the event’s notecard):

Razor Rinkitink (Raz Schionning), director of web services at American Apparel that just launched a store in Second Life.

Fizik Baskerville (Justin Bovington), a virtual marketer. His company, Rivers Run Red, serves such clients as Adidas, Disney, Vodafone, EMI, BBC and Carat. Recent projects have seen the virtual marketing developments for: 20th Century Fox, Buena Visa International, Warner/Chappel, Universal, BBC, Mtv, Fender Stratocaster.

SNOOPYbrown Zamboni (Jeff Paffendorf), Electric Sheep Company’s futurist in residence. He is currently leading Electric Sheep's founding involvement in ASF's Metaverse Roadmap Project and helps curate the Second Life Community Convention, State of Play, and Accelerating Change conferences.

Cristiano Midnight (Cristiano Diaz), a member of Second Life since December of 2002, created one of SL's first and longest running third party sites, SLuniverse.com in 2003. In 2004, he launched an in-world business called ANOmations, and in early 2005, he developed the Snapzilla web site.

Zero Grace (Tony Walsh), speaker, writer, and cultural critic behind SecretLair.com and ClickableCulture.com.

Hempman Richard (Paul Hemp), a senior editor at Harvard Business Review. He is the author of the HBR’s recent article "Avatar-Based Marketing?"

Hamlet Au (Wagner James Au), covers Second Life society journalistically at the new New World Notes. Works as an SL consultant for both for-profit and non-profit companies, including Rivers Run Red and Creative Commons.

The event was moderated by Ansible Berkman (Rodica Buzescu), a recent graduate of Harvard College and the manager of Berkman Center's presence in Second Life.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity. Changes to the raw log may include punctuation, capitalization, order of replies, spelling. Some off-topic conversations have been omitted. Please leave a comment if you find a mistake. All hyperlinks and emphasis added by me.

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