Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Toyota Motor Co. (TM) not only has launched their latest offline Scion model, the Scion XB, they've also launched another model called the XD in Second Life - the virtual online world that currently has around 1.2 million "residents."

In an interesting side to it all, they not only held a real-world press conference, they also held a virtual world one in Second Life.

If you don't know, Second Life is an online world where people are represented by characters called avatars which can move around in almost any way like flying, walking or teleporting. They can also exchange goods and chat with other residents.

Toyota offers Second Life users the opportunity to log in and buy a virtual Scion online for 300 Linden dollars which are the equivalent of $1 U.S. After that they can do all sorts of customization work, adding all sorts of accessories.

This is important to us because it reinforces what we've been talking about lately that there is going to be an increasing use of online dollars for branding, not just making sales.

Steve Haag, Scion corporate manager said, "What he said is true. We want to capture customers who would not have considered the Toyota brand. We don't want to necessarily sell them Scions. We want them to get to know our brand, and hopefully consider something in the Toyota family because they like who we are."