World of WhoreCraft?

*Whoring is to journalists what PR people who push products do. You Whore when you say "such and such product does this and this and this, and is the best reason for you to spend money."

I know there's been a lot of talk about Second Life as the next big PR platform. Many PR agencies, including my own, are gaping with jaws wide open about the "possibilites."

• Virtual Press Conferences.
• Virtual Product Launches with Virtual 3D models of the latest products.
• Limitless interaction with a media footprint that crosses geographies.
• Interactive gaames and contests.

More than 5 million "residents" and about 1.6 million of which logged-in within the last 60 days (taken off http://www.secondlife.com), this is some audience. Besides, you can almost be certain that whoever is spending time on Second Life is in some measures a geek. And if you're selling geek products, that's quite a big audience that you can safely say is "targeted."

Heck, even my agency has a virtual office in Second Life-land, and Reuters has a reporter covering stuff in Second Life full time.

But... this whole shebang is dwarfed by an even bigger phenomenon. One that has gamers aged over 50 playing and logging on and pretending to be tight women in skimpy leather outfits. With a last reported number of over 7 million subscribers, I'm wondering if any PR agency or corporate client has ever thought about targeted product placements or press events in World of Warcraft.

Think about it.. that's 7 million people with the cash to shell out USD 15 a month to play pretend (vs 5 million of people not shelling anything out). WoW players would be more likely to be logging in than Second Life onlookers.

Next, the demographics are kinda there, in any case, Blizzard will have the info. So you'd know exactly which people you're targeting. So, if you're a brand that's totally not targeted or related to the WoW-playing demographic, don't bother.

Sure, there'd be problems given that you'd have to have the same presence across the different "shards" or "servers", but we could just mirror the activities, content and events.

Then there'd be problems in, say, throwing a press conference on WoW. What about journalists who don't have passes? Well, we COULD give away passes to journos to get online just for that event. Maybe a special media pass Blizzard could design. Of course, the 3.5 GB download is going to be killing, but maybe over time, with WoW as a platform, WoW would come pre-installed on every journalist's PC. (I have a dream...)

And most Malaysian Tech Journos I know are on WoW in some form or another...so that would pretty much be a moot point.

So, that's my case. Blizzard, you're sitting on a marketeer's dream. Figure a way to let the brands in, and the money would start rolling. Would your average, paying subscriber be open to marketing in WoW World? Yeah, why not? If done tastefully and in character, we love these kind of things. So, what're you waiting for?