AVATAR-BASED MARKETING: THE AVATAR-BASED PANEL (PART THREE OF FIVE)

Virtual tea and cigars during an avatar panel

Continued from yesterday.  In today's installment:  debating the place of billboards and virtual world Spam, and using Second Life as a tool for business, industrial, and marketing design.

Ansible Berkman: Goh, you had a comment about spamming which may be appropriate now

Goh Mfume (from the audience): Ah yes. There are concerns about commercial spam and adverts entering virtual worlds, but it's a bit ironic that spam and adverts are already here... just look at what players have done in Second Life.  Billboards everywhere.

Fizik Baskerville: May I comment on the Spam and adverts? In real life, the real media companies are finding it hard to sustain results via "billboard advertising".

Hempman Richard: Ansible, could we get Ariel's thoughts on this; he's seen a lot of branding stuff in a variety of virtual worlds?

Ansible Berkman: Sure, Ariel?  And then Cristiano.

Ariel Spoonhammer (from the audience): Spam is inevitable in any kind of open environment. [Grimaces] It sucks, but as long as there's an economic incentive, it is going to be there.  [Editor's note:  Ariel Spoonhammer is writing an MIT Master's thesis on advertising in games - WJA]

GM: It's already here, and companies will have to compete with all the individual entrepreneurs to be heard.

SNOOPYbrown Zamboni: Or employ them, Goh.

Cristiano Midnight: To address Jeff's question, as well as the issue of Spam...again, I think that any real life company that comes into the environment and does not understand it is doomed to fail. Second Life Residents especially have been very sensitive to the encroachment of the big bad real life business... not in the forms we see, but in the dreaded form of Coke billboards spread all across SL and plastered on buildings.  Companies that really get SL and understand how to take a more lifestyle approach to their marketing will have far more success than those who just treat Second Life as another ad buy opportunity.

Boliver Oddfellow (from the audience): The real world company that comes in here and strictly [starts] a billboard campaign will learn very quickly why you don't alianate the consumer base. It's suicide.

Razor Rinkitink: Look at early Web pages with blink tags and crawling marquees. It takes time to learn subtle techniques.

In Kenzo (from the audience):  We're creative people, we can do better than that anyway!  Even real life companies use blimps and planes, cars and people to advertise.

FB:  Actually, just one thing. In real life billboards rely on 'footfall' and 'eyeballs' to work. In SL we have no major routes or areas that fit that real life convention. Therefore it really shouldnt be a problem here, especially since point to point teleportation. [Editor's note:  Last December, Linden Lab teleportation from one X, Y, Z location to another, eliminating the need to pass through public thoroughfares, as previously required. - WJA]*

SZ: Most companies (to generalize) coming in from the outside should have their own private space, an island, and invite people to come to them.  Zaps the Spam/intrusion problem instantly. I should point out that Coke World has more users than Second Life.

FB: Anyone know the numbers off hand?

HR: They claim 8 million users (Coke Studios).

CM: Wow someone should tell World of Warcraft they have failed miserably compared to Coke World.

AB: Thanks for the question, Jeff.

Jeff Wakawaka (from the audience): Thank you, guys. I'm now sitting in a puddle of my own urine.

Susi Spicoli (from the audience): [D]o you think that we will go beyond traditional marketing [and have] participation in product-development, open source-like, which makes traditional marketing obsolete to some extent because consumers are designing their own products? 

For example, a bank might design (with users) [and] test their future offering, including branch lay-out, which then already will have a strong in-world following, which will spill into the real life.

Finally, you might get some great international ideas fertilization (easy in SL).  What if Italian customers would give comments and ideas on American Apparel? 

SZ:  Great question, Susi. I'm interested in SL as a test bed for real life products/creations. Fizik's done some of that. Csven in the audience is an expert on that.

Csven Concord (from the audience): I think we'll see some of that happen. There's a recent entry on the Mass Customization blog that gets to some things being tried in Europe. But I think that most people aren't aware of how much tedious stuff goes into products...  [Editor's note:  Csven is an industrial designer who prototypes in SL. - WJA]

Susi Spicoli: I am in London, perhaps more interest in Europe in that.

CC: ... and so there will always be some "professional" stuff that isn't really done in a collaborative way. But mostly because no one wants to do it!

SS: That's what peple said before Linux and the success of open source.

CC: The difference between Linux and designing the boring, legally necessary font on an iron are a ways apart, in my opinion.

SZ: Coming up on the xbox 360, as I understand it, you'll be able to design your Nike sneakers in a basketball game using the identification system, then have a real pair shipped to you.

CC: I have a source at Nike. And when they first introduced their shoes in [the game] NBA 2006, the word was that it would be linked-- eventually-- to the website.  Not seen it yet, but I expect it'll soon happen.

SZ: Stylehive has some of that, virtual-real coupling of merchandise.

Fizik Baskerville hugs Snoopy.

HR: Ansible, could I add one thing?  That goes back to my hobby horse. Does the fact that we're avatars allow US to try stuff out that we might not try in real life? And get used to it and then buy the product in real life?

SZ: Totally, Hempman. I love your idea that avatars double the consumer but... you can also have multiple avatars. [Grins] All trying out different avenues of self-expression.

Razor Rinkitink: Ansible, if I may... We have certainly talked about trying things in SL that would be difficult to test in real life. Store layouts and even clothing concepts would be interesting to test. But it would be important to remember that the SL audience is rather different from the real life [audience] at-large. So how much of that could feed back into real life is not clear.

SZ: No doubt, Razor. But when you're using SL to model, it doesn't matter who's here now, right?  You just use it to sketch and design and then show it to people, in SL or out.

FB: We're working with a lot of our clients in SL doing exactly that, Raz.

Hamlet Au: The challenge with testing real life designs is presenting it in a way that's fun, a kind of game. Otherwise, people will get bored and fly (literally!) off in search of something that is fun.

SZ: Yes and no, Hamlet.  It depends on if they're shopping for their real life selves. In which case, they're going to want things that would, erm, "fly" in the real world. And a realistic avatar to boot.  Oone thing I'm very interested in is the recreation of real life in virtual worlds. An avatar that reflects your appearance, when you want that for dating, trying things on, doing business, etc.

HA: I dunno, Snoop, I think even then the constraints (or freedoms) of the world will impose themselves. For example, has anyone here ever tried walking, just walking, through a Second Life building? It gets frustrating. You get stuck in doorways. You eventually just want to fly or teleport to wherever you were headed, most times.

SZ: [laughs] That's because SL is limited at the moment.  Have you driven down the streets of Grand Theft Auto?  Runs like a breeze. Oh, and of course [you can] point-to-point , but it'll get easier to run around.

AB: You're OK running in SL too, as long as the building space is large enough.

HA: Yeah, but why run when you can fly?

AB:  Maybe it's a matter of better designing the space.

SZ: We'll lose this dream molasses feeling so you're on the same level with people when that makes sense. It's not either/or at all.  But the realistic stuff is short-changed here. Can't even choose your name in Second Life at the moment.  A lot of people want that.

HA: For that matter, why have a meeting where we're sitting around in chairs when we could be dancing on top an active volcano? Bandwidth is the main issue, but really, that's where I think we should be heading with these spaces.  Turn business, education, and marketing into fun. 

AB: [winking] I'll let you organize that, Hamlet.

HA: It's a deal!

SZ: We'll have it all, mon.  But reality has a gravity, too.  And I think it's underrepresented currently. Personal feeling.

Continued tomorrow.

*Update, 7:15PM:  To expand on this further: before point-to-point teleportation was re-introduced in December, when you wanted to teleport from Point A to Point B, you'd actually get teleported to the "telehub" closest to B, and have to walk or fly the rest of the way.  (They looked like train station kiosks.)  This was Linden Lab's "smart growth" means to encourage people to stop and see the sights around the telehub-- which worked to a certain extent, but also meant the telehubs would often be surrounded by billboards and other advertising. Point-to-point teleporting greatly diminished the value of this kind of advertising.

Comments

[rikomatic]

Maybe its just me, but I find this level of detailed coverage of this one event kind of overkill. Perhaps it's because I'm not in marketing. But there are potentially lots of other important events in SL that I would prefer to see detailed transcripts from.

Where is Philip Linden's speech for example? Or did that just not happen because of all the tech issues and the protesting?

Couldn't this whole transcript just be made available somewhere as a seperate download for those who are interested?

Anyway, it's your blog, Hamlet, and I certainly don't help pay your bills, so feel free to disregard.