Business Communicators of Second Life®

Marketing Safaris

Weekend news out of the UK advetising agency KZero: they are offering marketing safaris in Second Life.  Aimed at introducing UK marketers to the benefits of the virtual social world, the safaris are guided tours of five to ten key areas of Second Life - i.e. company presences there.  Their safari website sold me - looks fun and easy.

Registration for the safaris starts  February 23rd.

KZero entered Second Life a few months ago, with offices located on KOne in SL.

February 12, 2007

Agencies Centric and AKQA Begin Unique Second Life Initiatives

In October Centric, an integrated marketing company based in Los Angeles, quietly announced its Second Life presence.   In a departure from its predecessors Centric is located on the Second Life southern continent rather than on a private island.  According to Jason Stoddard, Centric’s Managing Partner, Interactive, "We want to be part of the world, not apart from the world. Our location is naturally beautiful, and we want to integrate seamlessly and non-invasively into the world."   

To support their strategy, which may seem counter-intuitive for a marketing agency, Centric is removing display advertising from the in-world environment by actively seeking and purchasing small parcels of land that are used for display advertising and then turning them into public parks.  If you visit their offices, Centric has a convenient display for easy two-click teleporting to each of their three existing parks.  According to Centric they have at least six more in development.

On a visit to their offices I ran into Jason in the form of his avatar, Fallon Winnefield.  He cited three things they are currently doing in Second Life: learning from the mainland and preserving it, developing business collaboration tools, and working with a number of companies to develop Second Life presences.  Centric is working with entertainment companies to bring experiences to the Second Life mainland and with tech companies who are using SL for collaboration.   

Fallon said he is surprised by the capability of Second Life "by at least an order of magnitude of what he expected."  And to support their clients, their initiatives and what he sees as the future of interactivity, Centric currently has 4 people in the agency dedicated to Second Life.

On another agency note, AKQA, San Francisco based digital marketing agency, will open its Second Life offices/clubhouse this month with a very different goal in mind.  They see Second Life as a way to collaborate with Second Life residents on AKQA's digital projects and they plan to include clients in the creative brainstorming with residents.

Going a step further, AKQA also plans to use the environment to recruit talent - given that Second Life (and other virtual worlds) tend to attract early adopters and trendsetters – apparently the very type of talent AKQA wants to hire.

This is fairly brilliant on AKQA’s part.  Those of us that spend time in-world and engage in even casual conversation with its active residents can attest to the stunning creativity and thoughtful insights found there on everything from interacting with information to the future of society. In my own experience I have yet to engage in a first world discussion that can rival the depth of understanding I’ve found in Second Life as to the nature of information in the 21st century. To foster the discussion, AKQA plans to hold their “AKQA Insight” seminars in-world as forums to “share thoughts on brand building in our second lives.”

Read Centric’s press release here and visit their offices on Maui/208/36//.

AKQA’s press release about their upcoming presence can be found here.

November 24, 2006

Edelman’s Second Life Presence is Missing Edelman

During a week in which there have been some truly interesting Second Life business happenings, I’ve been holed up finishing an article for an industry publication about business happenings in Second Life.  It’s really difficult to write for a long-lead print pub when things are happening in the hyper-lifetime of SLT (Second Life Time).  I’ve therefore been a bit delayed in my typically more timely commentary.  There are many good sources for the breaking SL news so I’m sure you have missed nothing.  I prefer to spend time looking beyond the headline, anyway.

Which brings me to the announcement this past Monday that independent uber-PR firm, Edelman has officially entered Second Life.  In case you are not in the PR industry know, Edelman Public Relations’ Me2Revolution division and their partner in this venture, The Electric Sheep Company, announced the opening of Edelman Island around a business plan competition for Second Life entrepreneurs.  The grand prize is $350,000 in Linden dollars, 6 months' use of an SL island and both PR and technical assistance from the partners Edelman and Electric Sheep Company – totaling about $3500 in U.S. dollar value.  They will also be debuting a machinima news blog sometime soon called The Grid Review to promote resident journalism.  Mark Wallace over at 3pointD is acting as a key advisor on the projects.

I attended yesterday's in-world event at Edelman Island to hear the panel of venture capitalists, who were there to discuss business plan best practices and designing business models for those interested in joining in on the competition. Susan Wu and Jon Goldstein of Charles River Ventures and Catamount Ventures respectively, were the VC panelists.  Rick Murray, President of Edelman’s Me2Revolution, and Sibley Verbeck CEO and founder of The Electric Sheep were also on the panel.  I’ve been since searching for the promised podcast of the audio conference call that was piped into the virtual event, and as soon as I find it I’ll link to it here.

Sibley of ESC added the few real insights about Second Life or SL business to yesterday’s panel discussion, either through the audio conference call or through the always more-interesting in-world chat back channel.  The VCs on the panel were seemingly talking more among themselves  than engaging the real audience represented by all those attentive avatars.

The business plan competition is an experiment according to The Electric Sheep Company.  And although there are some potential logistical issues surrounding intellectual property protection for the entrepreneurs who enter, I think the idea has merit and I applaud Electric Sheep for bringing it to the table behind Edelman.  It did strike me during the panel discussions, however, that the VC judges don’t really understand the social network and virtual world “environment” except on the "analyst level" (to be expected), but if this project can help an entrepreneur get his or her idea into the virtual or real marketplace, there is value in it and to the VC attention.

But most surprisingly, even during this live event, Me2Revolution's Rick Murray offered almost nothing about Edelman’s Second Life presence or the project.  And its absence - from a communications company/new media division that is supposedly doing this to connect with the SL residents, explore SL as a medium, and add value to the community - was deafening.

It is obvious that the virtual world developers, The Electric Sheep Company, is the true investor in this venture, even if it is funded by Edelman.  The ESC stamp is all over it – and I don’t mean just the inviting virtual space of Edelman Island.  Other than a blog post by Edelman’s Steve Rubel,  I’ve been hard-pressed to find any official statement or press release by Edelman PR (please point me to it if you know of it).   

The Electric Sheep appears to be doing all the PR heavy lifting and communicating about the venture via their blogs, including joining in on the conversation and commentary in the rest of blogosphere.  And, ESC is doing an admirable job in spite of the absence of PR support from their partner.

For Edelman, they would have better served themselves as communicators by framing their involvement as “sponsors”  because right now from them this just feels a lot more like “Me2” than “Revolution.”

See Edelman Island at: secondlife/Edelman/198/114/26/.

Get more information on the business plan competition here.

November 18, 2006

Leo Burnett Second Life Creative Department to Launch

The land grab for agencies moving into Second Life is officially on.  Leo Burnett London announced today that they are opening The Idea Hub for its 1,600 global creative personnel to collaborate in Second Life.  This follows the announcement earlier this week that advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty is setting up shop.

While the two are using their virtual spaces for very different things, the one thing they have in common is both have the attitude of "we don't quite know what we're doing, but let's see what happens."  IMHO I think this is a splendid attitude and exactly what is needed!  I'm especially pleased to see Burnett using the space for creative endeavors.

Quoting from Brand Republic:

"The hub is then free to grow and develop into whatever. I don't know what it's going to become. We will judge commercial opportunities on their merit when they appear." --Jim Thornton, the executive creative director at Burnett

Apparently Burnett's "Music Artists in Residence" program will also be brought into the in-world space where staffers who are members of bands will have a virtual audience, as well.

Ad agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty's early plans are to open virtual agency offices for client meetings and seminars. Read more about BBH at 3pointD.

Photo Credit:  kylerroth

Text 100 and PR in Second Life: A Long Way to Go

The thing that finally pushed me over the edge was the last line – “you'll find us on Text 100 Island.” 

That’s the last line of the recently released Text 100 “Machinima News Release” (Gary Goldhammer and I landed on the phrase over the weekend), about their presence in Second Life.

I respect this PR agency hugely for making the leap into Second Life.  They have taken the risk, put it out there for comment and discussion, and are the ones with the arrows in their backs (from people like me).

The “problem” I have with the Text 100 piece is point of view – narrow. Sadly, Text 100’s machinima simply encourages clients to do the same things differently instead of opening minds to the expanded expectations “our publics’ have in virtual spaces.   It echoes the hollow spaces of the web left by brands that (still) fail to connect with their publics in that “old” 2D virtual space.

So, our publics have gathered elsewhere and played with our brands without us – on their own websites, chat spaces, blogs, mashups, video cameras, social networks – and on into SL.

Second Life is an immersive environment – content is 360 degrees with height and width and depth and texture and emotions that are capable of reaching the very depths of our hearts and brains in ways no 2D “media” can. It is “simulation” not “duplication.”

Our brands cannot be an “island” where we create an “immersive environment.”  We need to BE the immersive environment.  To further the geologic analogy - the coral reef – where life teams in the nooks and crannies and the creatures that live there become the infrastructure.   From Wikipedia:  “where there is mild wave action, not so strong it tears the reef apart yet strong enough to stir the water and deliver sufficient food and oxygen.”

Web-3D challenges us to define PR – indeed our organizations - within this context.  Not within the context of doing the same things in a different way.

We must think of Second Life and other virtual spaces far more deeply.

Photo credit:  Phinn Boffin