It is mentioned again and again; Linden Lab’s advertising / advertising graphics are terrible. In the comments to Serendipidy Haven’s post (reblogged below) it is mentioned more or less in passing several times.
I decided to take a look for myself. First I sent an email to the LL PR department, no reply after over a week – not really unexpected. Next I went trolling around the internet using Philip’s description of SL residents as a guide. I must have scanned a couple thousand blogs, not a single advertisement for Second Life! In fact the only place I find SL banner and side bar ads is at SL related blogs and LL’s own site!
I know that in today’s world of targeted advertising it can be difficult to know what advertising you will see. I did see a few ads for on line games (Thirst of Night and The Godfather), so someone is targeting me.
I have to conclude that if Linden Lab is advertising Second Life at all it is very minimally, and to some target other than who they believe will become SL residents.
They say there are a lot of people signing up every day, and not staying. Other than bots and alts I assume most of these people found Second Life by chance.
That leaves word of mouth, residents telling their RL friends about SL. There are several groups of residents working on various welcoming projects and LL seems to have come around and is being somewhat more helpful to them.
What Linden Lab could do to help us get the word out in RL is give us some tools to work with, nothing fancy, just the same licensed use of the Eye-In-Hand logo most companies do with their logos. Caps, Sweatshirts, Mugs, Stickers, even the jacket Philip wears in the picture below! With a little help, we, the residents could be an advertising powerhouse and the newbies would know what to expect and have a helping hand getting started.