American Apparel in Second Life: Driving Gamers to the Web Site

I just spoke with Wes Keltner of The Ad Option, the firm that brokered American Apparrel’s much blogged integration with Second Life. An interesting tidbit he shared, which I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere, is that AA will eventually run two promos offering savings on real world orders from its Web site.

Here’s how it’ll work: virtual American Apparel clothing — the shirts, lingerie, etc. bought in game space — will come with note cards that have Web promo codes written on them. One will give in-game customers 15 percent off a shirt in real life. Another will give them free shipping from the company’s Web site. Each of the campaigns will run for roughly one month inside Second Life to drive traffic to the site.

One interesting aspect to the promos is they’ll let American Apparel track some of the bottom line impact of its new brand presence in the virtual world.