August 27, 2006

Brands Led Blindly Into Second Life Forest

by Piers Fawkes in Telecom, Global Community, Advertising & Branding

If a brand appears in Second Life and no-one is around, does it really exist?

As more brands enter Second Life, their arrival has prompted PSFK to wonder what the heck is going on. Linden Lab seems to be doing very nicely by selling ‘islands’ to brands where they build stores and what not.

We can’t help being reminded of the late 90s when brands rushed to create websites which no-one ever went back to. Today brands have learned from heir mistakes and are more likely to spend more money at the huge (traffic) portals than on their own site. They want to be where the internet users are.

Now, brands are creating experiences in remote locations in SL, away from Second Life residents. There are huge congregations gathering in clubs and fairs in Second life and these places remain unsponsored. Meanwhile everyone and their dog is setting up a translation of their real world bricks and mortar experience in places where there is no footfall.

Maybe the brands need to employ some of their retail planning staff in their decisions rather than their ad teams. To be fair, new arrival, Candian store TELUS isn’t on an island - they’re near a casino and the club THE MATRIX. Well done on that - but low marks for the execution of the store: they still have created a store based on the real world. Why are brands making such stores? Second Life is not a dolls house. In the Telus store, the mobile phones they sell are tucked away in a cabinet at the back of the store. Hard to find, hard to see. Why didn’t they make huge replicas of the items - like any real SecondLife retailer would have done? We were told to use Mouse View instead.

Residents operate in a completely new way in Second Life - they move in 3D, they teleport, the animate, they congregate - a store with a door and clothes rail doesn’t seem to really meet the opportunities available. Why are we applying real world experiences to Second Life when new experiences based on the physics of the environment should be conceived? Like we’re seeing on the web today, innovation won’t come from the brands, nor media - it will come from networked bodies of people exploring their new space.

Our final thought is on customer service and security - when we went to the Telus store to look at the place we got mugged by someone in the store wielding a gun - they blew us about a mile away. When I got back the sales assistant ‘Sparkle Dale’ told us that we were being rude for standing so close. I’m sure they have it on CCTV - if only they had a police force in Second Life to complain to…

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Technorati Tags: second life, secondlife

10 Responses to “Brands Led Blindly Into Second Life Forest”

FC/Aki
Posted from: 137.186.249.11
August 27th, 2006 at 4:59 pm

I find it amusing that the author of this article finds it so important that a store in SL *not* have doors on it, when the whole concept of SL is to create constructs that may or may not *simulate* constructs in real life. Is it so wrong for someone to want a door on their premises - to simulate the experience of a dwelling? Or should we all go back to living as cave men and grunt and grown when someone puts something as simple as a door in an entranceway?

A quick glance at the author’s avatar indicates he is not a newcomer to SL, and it should be safe to assume that the concept of griefers is not alien him, whether it be on SL or any other online game.

That the author chose to vent his frustrations over *one* griefer on the company itself is wholely irresponsible and completely irrelevant to the initial topic of in game branding.

Furthermore, being a customer who was in the store at the time, I have to say that the author was treated with the utmost respect by the company’s representative, despite incredibly rude behaviour from said author. The Telus representative also requested that the griefer leave (which he did).

I would suggest that the author reassess his methods of evaluating in-game locations. He professes to be ‘fair’ with Telus, yet from the start he walked in with a biased attitude against the company, despite factors that were not completely in the control of the representative who was there.
Prokofy Neva
Posted from: 162.84.213.95
August 27th, 2006 at 10:31 pm

I totally agree about the ‘physics’ of the world. Malls without doors, that enable the avian creatures of SL who can FLY to fly up to a vendor or billboard or item — will just do better. People also like RL versimilitude, but then it has to have excellent camera angles, i.e. head room, and lots of visibility. Yes, people do stuff like put giant high-heeled shoes on a store so people will fly up — it can create a tacky landscape of course.

People also TP a lot so it’s true that networking and being in groups and talking in chat is more important than a static visit to a store, pulling a body to a store and trapping it. The era of avatar-trapping with telehubs passed because a determined minority wouldn’t allow that method to be used in retailing, even though vendors and shoppers themselves tolerated the experience.

On griefing the solution is not to ask for an “SL Police Force” created by residents — these groups are often worse than the griefers themselves. I think the Lindens have to be challenged to do a better job of policing and publicizing of justice — their Police Blotter is woefully inadequate.

You don’t get anywhere by pretending that this experience of being blown away in a store is somehow isolated. It’s rampant. Deprecate push and teleport home. The weapons lobby and the tiny minority of people using elevators who requuire push shouldn’t be allowed to destroy the SL experience for the majority of the public.
Max Case
Posted from: 71.105.70.85
August 27th, 2006 at 11:13 pm

Good points. I agree that stores and brands need to do things a bit different in SL. Unfortunately, who ever manages that store didn’t think to turn on Push Restrictions, so you wouldn’t hae had that exprience of being blasted. I think you are right - they should not be copying the same model of the 90’s where you make a site no one comes back to. They need to figure out how to integrate their brand into the SL experience, and fill a need. ie: Telus would be better served by making a licensing deal with Nexcom, one of the bigger phone companies in SL.
csven
Posted from: 69.0.122.158
August 27th, 2006 at 11:16 pm

Welcome to the bandwagon, Piers. There’s ample room on board since most marketing and advertising types still seem to think of SL as a typical videogame where they just need to stick their brand as if it was a 30sec slot or a grafted addition to a standard FPS level.

Reading all the truly worthless posts on this topic the last couple of weeks has been a refreshing reminder of why I left corporate life: new ideas are not welcome, especially if they require a new way of thinking or doing business. This most recent rush into SL is like giving canned goods to someone who has never heard of a can opener… and then rants about how hard it was to get at the food inside. Imagine what they’ll do when the interface to the web is 3D and it isn’t hosted by a company that does actually keep the peace. I can hardly wait.
Boliver Oddfellow
Posted from: 24.128.167.239
August 28th, 2006 at 8:09 am

This is why I have been saying all along that brands, be they for or non profit need to abandon the if you build it they will come attitude. The only way for a brand to succeed- to truly convey an experience - in a positive way is to adopt a dont sell me, play worth me manta. You can’t impart a fun positive brand forward experience without first creating one

Boliver Oddfellow
Chief Experience Officer
Infinite Vision Media
csven
Posted from: 69.0.122.158
August 28th, 2006 at 8:26 am

@Boliver

btw, I defended you on one blog entry that ripped on your SLCC panel comments and claimed that the 4P’s still applied. I don’t think most people realize just what can actually be done in a virtual space. It’s too far from the real world. They continue to import limitations that simply no longer apply (e.g. Distribution).

Thing is, when Rapid Manufacturing starts to become a reality, those virtual possibilities start to leak into the Real World. We can forget factories altogether.

There’s so much more to this than people realize.
Net
Posted from: 204.9.178.8
August 29th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

Brands

If a brand appears in Second Life and no-one is around, does it really exist? Good question. PSFK, is wondering what the heck is going on at Second Life. Real people are spending real money to enjoy a second life
PSFK
Posted from: 204.9.178.8
August 29th, 2006 at 1:16 pm

Second Life Forest: Electric Sheep Responds

Giff Constable from leading SL ‘agency’ dropped us a line with his thoughts about what we said about Second Life in our article, Brands Led Blindly Into Second Life Forest.
Prokofy Neva
Posted from: 162.84.213.95
August 29th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

Forseti/Giff is just trying to help the Lindens sell islands here by trying to hype up the idea that the mainland is a grief-ridden dystopia. It’s also more business for his company if he can persuade all these SL neophytes coming in that they need to have their hand held and need giant islands landscaped and developed for $18,000 to get their feet wet. They don’t. I’m glad Telus chose the mainland and they’ll be better for it in the long run.

And PSFK unwittingly played into that “blighted mainland” stereotype by recounting the adventure with being blasted as if it’s the constant norm in SL — it isn’t. BTW, putting on push restrictions doesn’t fully prevent the experience of still being caged, smoked, and harassed in other ways.

The mainland has many well-kept areas where stores thrive — I know because I own sims and keep them up and mytenants do well there. The mainland offers fly-bys and spontaneous connections and an open market, not the wall garden and gated community feel of the islands which are often empty stagesets devoid of traffic once the big media hit happens and the initial campaign is over.

BTW, “don’t sell me, play with me” is REALLY getting annoying to the point of nausea. Um, I don’t want a clothing or cell phone company to play with me, thank you very much. No, do NOT play with me, dammit. Either go away, or produce something that fits with, and harmonizes with, the virtual world and my experience in it such that I would care to buy it, in the normal way, without fake “play experiences” like fake mass ecstasy at concerts or be-ins. Make something interest and witty and it will sell. Tie it to RL in some compelling and intriguing way, and it will sell. Learn about the world and how to do that and don’t let all the sherpas filter your experience.

It will sell not in the old fashioned way of grabbing eyeballs, becaue they can’t be grabbed in a world so atomized, and connected more by groups and networks than by proximity.

Don’t sell, be. If you get the being part right, the selling will flow naturally.
Max Case
Posted from: 70.53.193.184
September 1st, 2006 at 3:35 pm

I think this post may be informative to the discussion. check the comments.
http://www.twistimage.com/blog/archives/000686.html
-max