From a pure play communications perspective then, it's difficult to justify companies like Renault, which has little or no market in the US and South America, being active in SecondLife at all, and even where synergy between company and target market does exist, audience potential seems disappointingly low key. Recent Yankee Group Research found that less than 2 percent of the people it surveyed had ever even been in a virtual world. Compare that with 32 percent who'd visited online video-sharing sites like YouTube.

With large corporates like NBC or Coca-Cola looking at expenditures of between $15-25K to set up and properly maintain their presence in SecondLife, it's not difficult to envisage easier and cheaper ways to communicate with the 150,000 odd US based virtual citizens that Second life can provide.

It's not that big corporates are questioning the validity of virtual worlds as an effective and potentially explosive marketing opportunity. It's just that once the initial media frenzy dies away, for many, the promise just doesn't seem to match the hype. Virtual stores or branded locations are often deserted, and, if they are not, the SecondLife citizens that visit them can be badly off target. "We didn't really see a tremendous ongoing value." said American Apparel's web director Raz Schionning after tiring of the sight of outrageous seven foot tall winged creatures flying around his online outlet will little or no need for the store's classic cotton T-shirts.

As marketing people wake up to the reality of the virtual world, a new trend is emerging. MTV and Coca-Cola are two early evangelists for what you might call "proprietary" or "private" virtual worlds: 3D environments created exclusively for the target community that strongly identifies with the brand. vmtv.com offers MTV's existing loyal fan base the opportunity "not just to watch it, but to live it". Members can meet like-minded music fans, party with celebs and shop for MTV merchandise. Similar activities are repurposed and rebranded for Coke's audience at mycoke.com.

The effect of this proprietary approach to virtual worlds is to extend 3D interactive opportunities out to the natural fan base directly with a degree of control and clarity that's traditionally been impossible for marketers to achieve in SecondLife. Designed with a clear demographic in mind, these online locations can deliver all the utility that brand managers demand from the virtual world without the unpredictability that inevitably comes with a presence on a more generic platform. The tactic has natural appeal.

Target customers that already empathise with the brand are more likely to extend that connection into the virtual world via a gateway controlled, administered and promoted by a business they already trust. Once inside, the experiences they are offered are far more likely to meet expectations simply because the user community can be much more accurately predicted from the offset.

Trouble is that with the concept of the proprietary virtual world comes the concept of the walled garden: an issue that's hindered the development of almost every new marketing platform to grow out of the internet since it began. While members of MTV's virtual world will undoubtedly have something in common with the community evolving at mycoke.com, so far, it's impossible for them to jump from one world to another without reregistering. But as the popularity of the closed virtual world grows, so will demands to smooth out the kinks in the system. It's early days, but the emerging picture is one that offers virtual world citizens multiple access opportunities into one joined up seamless community.

For the moment then, the big question for marketers is not so much about whether virtual world tactics can play a role in the communications strategy - it's more about where, and how to get started.

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