I received an intriguing email from a colleague here at Temel this morning. The email, a forwarded news story with the subject line “technosexuals”, dealt with a few topics that I would like to expand on.

The gist of the article was that designer Calvin Klein would be launching a new “virtual fragrance” within the Second Life platform. I found this interesting and decided to look a bit deeper into their strategic goal for this move, as I have been a “marketing on Second Life” skeptic for some time now.

What I didn’t know, was that the designer has been planning the launch of a fragrance targeting what they call the  “technosexual” generation, referring to consumers born between 1982 and 1995. The campaign is loaded with internet and tech-savvy references and tactics right down to the product name, in2u (”Into You”, for those that don’t spend the day logged on to AIM or other instant messaging platforms).

I found that Calvin Klein seemed to be using the sites and communities that these so-called “technosexuals” flock to, such as Myspace and as I mentioned, Second Life, to actually recruit consumers over to their own social network, which is currently “coming soon”, but enables users to pre-register.

My thoughts on all of this:

Their use of Second Life is great. I personally cringe at any company using Second Life to buy a virtual plot of land and hope the people with time for a second life find them. To date, it seems that the somewhat over-hyped PR surrounding Second Life is the best benefit to companies in terms of branding and exposure. As I brought up in a recent brainstorming session here at Temel, I feel that if you are a brand looking to inject yourself into any social media platform for marketing purposes, it should be done at the platform level, which CK is doing well by creating this  “virtual fragrance” that anyone can put in their inventory and use throughout their interactions with others. Another good example of a marketing campaign injecting into a social network at the platform level is the film “300“, which has given all Myspace users the ability to add a highly coveted 300 images to their personal gallery (formerly 12-24) and creating quite an organic buzz as a result.

So back to this techno-sex fragrance business…

Honestly, as interesting as it is to see a major designer targeting a group of people with marketing lines like “She likes how he blogs, her texts turn him on. It’s intense. For right now.” I really think that this product will be a flop, simply because the nature of this group is one that is tech savvy, communicates openly and most of all, sees through a bunch of older execs in board room targeting them from a million pixels away.