Color Me Impressed

I recently blogged about giving Second Life a second chance. It seems that there's more to Second Life than I initially thought. Consider the following:

• IBM recently broke ground in Second Life for hosting corporate meetings;
• The Economist did a piece on living a Second Life;
• InfoWorld remarks on the uniqueness of this "fundamentally social" outlet;
• According to current statistics on the home page, there are currently 1,097,422 residents who have spent US$580,371 on the site in the last 24 hours

And, perhaps most significantly of all, Joseph Jaffe, C.C. Chapman, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz are the first to found a company completely within Second Life called crayon. Neville notes that crayon is "both a real and a virtual company," which will be housed on Crayonville Island in Second Life, but will operate in the real world as "a true mash-up that combines the best in traditional and new thinking about marketing, advertising and PR."

Shel also covers it well on his blog, noting that crayon is "a startup that features a killer team of communicators and a laser-like focus on New Marketing."

crayon is something of a mashup...not an agency or a consulting firm...We’ll approach our assignments with fresh eyes that see the new environment in which traditional marketing and advertising is failing so dismally...Engagement, conversation, co-creation, involvement—these are the approaches that we are anxious to bring to our assignments. Not as an afterthought or add-on, mind you, but as the cornerstone of our work.

If you've never listened to C.C.'s shows or read his blog, his enthusiasm is incredible - you can really sense how excited he is to be part of this entity. I'd be just as excited if I were in his shoes. This is groundbreaking stuff.

The official launch of crayon in Second Life is scheduled for Thursday. Stay tuned to see how this A-list team leads new marketing to new heights.