Although they were not the first to invent virtual worlds - imho that awards goes still to Linden Labs - it’s always interesting to look at the Azia continent for the latest gadgets, initiatives and ideas where it comes to virtual worlds and virtual communities. And there is an interesting Coca-Cola story going on there.

Whilst Coca-Cola experimented with Second Life - and still does so now and then? - under their ‘Virtual Thirst’ slogan, they now took their Coke Side of Life story to the mobile community ‘Mobage Town’. Mobage Town is a fusion of “Mobile Game Town” and the site is a mobile-only community game site. Photograph the bar code on the label with your mobile phone - if it’s enabled to process the 2d barcodes - and get directed to the Coke world, a free Coca Cola branded mobile phone game.

So, you get a free game, yeey! That’s it, boring!? Nope, they ‘ll add free avatar items with that. Buy a coke drink in Japan and get all sorts of different goods for your avatar’s pleasure - not sure if they have SexGen beds, though. ;) That surely out beats the free ringtones and - expensively charged - calls you make to find out what a certain song is named in Belgium.

Actually it’s not the first time this happens. MobageTown previously cooperated with Nike: buy a real world Nike item from one of their mobile auction sites or shops and you would get free Nike merchandise for your avatar. For the people that want to match their avatar to their RL appearance, this must be a major ‘yes, I’ll buy it’ reason.

As for MobileTown itself, it’s not just free games that made them big: they reached their 2 million member in 9 months through a smart combination of games, auction and shops for mobile users and, Q&A boards like Yahoo’s, roleplaying bars and advertisements through product placement. If you’re interested in this, DeNA.jp has an intersting overview on this in their 2006 Q3 Operating results.

So do you think this is something they should do so on the euro and american continents too? Buy something in Real Life and get a free bonus product in-world? Be it related - a real life skirt and a free virtual version of that skirt - or unrelated - free prim hair with a coke - avatar goods? And could this be done in combination with Second Life? I’m interested to hear your opinions on this!

PS. This is a bit older news, mbga.cocacola.jp was online May 1, 2007 - June 20, 2007. But it’s still very interesting and worth a few thoughts.

Tags: ads, coke, japan, mobagetown, mobile communities, nike, virtual goods

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