C1

I don't know how this one passed me by. Perhaps because it is Italian, and I'm slow to pick up on Italian builds. Or perhaps it just was not well advertised - at least outside of Italy. In much the same way as I recently featured a Japanese sim advertising a Spanish product, tonight I have an Italian sim advertising a French product. The sim in question is 'C1' and the product being advertised is a car: the Citroen C1. But not just any C1, this is the C1 Deejay, a specially pimped and prettified version perhaps only produced for the Italian market. You can see a 'hilarious' ad for it here. I profess a degree of bafflement about the semiotics of the ad, as I can't see why a middle-aged bloke should suddenly become the embodiment of the vehicle - with far-from-sidesplitting results. Maybe you have to be Italian.

From information on the website, it seems the sim has been here for around a year, and has played host to a few events. However, the traffic stats are very low (61), so I am not too sure what to make of that. The centrepiece of the island is a giant C1 Deejay. which occupies most of the sim and seems to be largely constructed from megaprims and photo-textures.


The front looks a bit rough... as if it's driven into something - maybe that lighthouse, for example. Not surprisingly, inside the C1 is a well-equipped dance floor:


The vehicle itself straddles 2 tropical islands that spell out 'C1'. I was reminded, when I saw it, of Metaversatility's 'Club Scion' in there.com. However, aside from the enormous size of the vehicles, the 2 builds seem to have little else in common.

The 2 islands on the sim have relatively little to attract the attention. Some seating and a couple of beach houses, and that's about it. I can't say I was particularly thrilled... but I suppose, on reflection, it is the biggest car I've seen in Second Life, so that must count for something.

Mercedes Drives Off

The virtual worlds marketing consultancy, Kzero, reports that Mercedes-Benz is closing its multi-sim presence in Second Life today. It is almost exactly 1 year since I posted about the opening of the site.

According to Merc's virtual world blog:

A little over a year, Mercedes-Benz opened its dedicated presence in the virtual world of ‘Second Life’. Since the launch of the brand’s virtual island, we won several vital insights and received plenty of positive feedback, especially for our unique communications policy. Over the course of the year, our brand avatar ‘Mercedes Milestone’ led more than 10,000 inspired dialogues.

We truly enjoyed developing this new, innovative communications platform and would like to extend our thanks to all those who visited Mercedes-Benz Island and demonstrated interest in our virtual outpost.

Our ‘Second Life’ stint will draw to an end on March 18th 2008 – as of this day, you will no longer be able to access Mercedes-Benz Island. This brief and exciting foray into virtual communities brought us several essential realisations and the conviction that 3D worlds play a vital role as engaging communication channels. We will continue to monitor this theme and keep you updated on any new developments.

Nissan X-Trail

Japanese motor company Nissan have had a presence in Second Life for quite some time, but while exploring the area near Mitsukoshi (see previous post), I found a relatively new site: Nissan X-Trail. You have to be a member of their group (which I'm not) to access all the features of the site but at least I was able to grab a quick view:
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There is a corresponding website (in Japanese, naturally), but aside from news and a SLURL this does not have much content. From a bit of searching it seems that the site opened sometime in mid-August, 2007. It is styled as a snowboarding track, with the car itself featured on a plinth at the bottom of the downhill section. I'm not sure, but it is possible you may be able to rez a vehicle to negotiate a frozen track that goes around the sim. Clearly the aim is tie the brand to cool, sexy "extreme sports - an extension in Second Life of the X-Trail Jam and similar sponsored events held last year and this. Indeed, an ad from last year's event in the Tokyo Dome can be seen in the picture on the left.

Not much more to say about it really. I will leave the analysis to Nic, over at Kzero!