Generating Avatar Buzz: Nestlé Promoter Distributes 17,000 Virtual Items in One Week (Updated)

Update, 12/12: In Comments, Joni says my rough ROI estimates mentioned below are inaccurate, and instead, offers her own case for her campaign's ROI-- read it all here.

Are "Buzz Agents" Second Life marketing's killer app?  Maybe so, because based on a couple campaigns, they seem to be generating highly competitive results-- at least compared to that old school form of Internet advertising, web ads.  The invention of SL metaverse developer Joni Rich of This Second Marketing*, these are avatars who travel the world for her clients, meeting Residents and distributing branded items.  In August, these were 3D glasses and other tchockes given away to promote the IMAX screening of the latest Harry Potter movie.  That time, as I reported, Joni's three Buzz Agents distributed these to 15,099 unique SL users in a week; speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, an IMAX manager directly attributed the movie's success in their theaters to her Second Life campaign.  More recently, Joni just wrote to me, her Agents had even more success promoting Nestlé's Coffee-mate products on behalf of the food multinational's ad agency.  To do that, she created a branded location called SwirL.

"We sent out Buzz Agents to let Residents know and in a week, we gave away over 17,000 freebie packages directly to unique individual Residents," she says.

Impressive numbers, especially in relation to total number of Residents who visit the world.  Today, the Lindens report 332,904 in-world during the previous seven days-- 17,000 is about 5% of that number.  It's even more impressive when you compare it to web advertising.  (Even if that admittedly involves some apples-to-oranges finesse.) In the web medium, marketers most value clickthroughs from the advertised site to the client's site.  Trouble is, clickthrough rates are typically 1% or less, and are fairly costly. 

Take Valleywag, for example, the scabrously entertaining tech-gossip blog which frequently enjoys (not entirely without cause) ridiculing failed marketing attempts in Second Life.  How much does it cost to buy advertising on the site, and is it more cost effective than Joni Rich's Buzz Agents? 

Here's some rough, speculative back-of-the-envelope calculations.

Valleywag's parent company charges $10.00 per 1000 page impressions (or CPM), so if you want 850,000 impressions, that'll cost you $8,500.  At a relatively successful clickthrough rate of 2%, that means $8500 will buy you 17,000 direct engagements with potential customers.  (The site currently has 764,575 monthly unique visitors, a bit less than Second Life's 874,839 users who logged in over the last 30 days as of today.)

Joni hasn't told me how many Buzz Agents she employed for the Nestlé campaign, but let's assume it was three, as with the Harry Potter campaign, and she paid them $20/hour in a forty hour week, or $800 per Agent per week.  That comes to $2,400 for 17,000 virtual item giveaway engagements.  So let's line up the estimated comparisons:

- Valleywag advertising: $8,500 for 17,000 direct engagements via web clickthroughs
- SL Buzz Agent advertising: $2,400 for 17,000 direct engagements via virtual item giveaways

This is meant as a fun conjectural, because it comes with a lot of caveats. [See Joni's Comment below. - HA, 12/12] Which is why I didn't emblazon this post with something silly like, "Second Life Advertising More Cost Effective than Valleywag Advertising!"  Among them: while just a tiny percentage of website readers will clickthrough an ad, almost all of them will at least see it, and that's not irrelevant.  The same can't be said of the 95% or so SL Residents who didn't engage Joni's Agents.  What's more, clicking on an ad often takes you to a retail site where you can begin immediately shopping; so far, the same can't be said of an SL marketing effort.  (Often, a retail-directed SL ad requires you to click on an embedded URL that launches a web browser-- an extra step that many instantly reject.)  Still, those points aside, the numbers behind the Buzz Agents aren't easily dismissed, certainly not compared with visits to branded locations.

"I am personally torn when I see brand sims built by the more well-known and much more expensive developers who do not much beyond the build and deliver very little in measurable results to their brand client," Joni tells me. "So I hope to spread the word that not only is it possible to build branded venues and activities in SL that residents want to participate in, it is happening!"  Maybe so, though what's interesting is how comparatively little coverage her efforts garner, in relation to more costly marketing campaigns-- or for that matter, cost effectiveness.
 

*Full disclosure: In September, TSM briefly advertised on this blog on behalf of an unrelated client.

Comments

[Caterin Semyorka]

One hopes SL residents are aware of the Nestle boycott:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

"It was prompted by concern about the company's marketing of breast milk substitutes (infant formula), particularly in less economically developed countries"

[run2fly]

Hi:
Very good job:) thank you for this article !
Btw, I am a Chinese SLer, can I translate this article and post it on one of the largest website major in translation in China——www.yeeyan.com？
And thanks again!

[Viajero Pugilist]

Is Nestlé a corporation worth buying from? A journalist investigates:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,2079757,00.html

[csven]

Interesting comparison. Thanks for that.

[Joni West]

Thank you for covering the Coffee-mate sponsorship of SwirL cafe and the new SwirL Annex. There calculations that you guestimated are off on all levels but let me point out what the most important difference between an ad on Valleywag and an interaction with one of our Buzz Agents. We are all exposed to bajillions of ads on the web every day. We are surrounded in the real world with branding messages in a wide variety of media as well. When we say that our Buzz Agent "had an interaction" with a resident of Second Life, it means that there was a conversation with our real life brand advocate and that the person with whom the Buzz Agent "interacted" actually had to take an action and accept an inventory of promotional items that the Buzz Agent offered them. If they don't accept the inventory offer, we do not count that conversation as an interaction. In light of that, there is no way to compare the value of an ad on a site with a one-on-one in-world conversation and interaction. We are always very clear that we are "out promoting" whatever it may be. We find that most people are happy to be directed to a place where there is a lot of fun and activity. I believe a lot of brands that came into SL very early, and to this day, are taking a "Build it and They Will Come" approach to their brand venues in SL. We look at each client and create ways for them to get residents in Second Life to WANT to be involved with their brands. SwirL is being visited by an average of 2,500 unique residents per week and that average is growing as the word gets out. There are almost 300 "SwirL" group members who wear their "SwirL Lover" group tag over their names above their heads. These are people who appreciate the fabulous venue and activities that Coffee-mate has brought to their Second Lives. I would like to see more brands approach Second Life from a resident's point of view rather than be sold on a whiz-bang oh-so-cool brand sim that sits empty because the entire budget went into building the sim and the promotion of that space is not even considered.

We are still in the very early stages of virtual worlds and Second Life marketing. If you recall, when companies started creating their first corporate websites, they did a lot of silly things too. We are constantly asked how we generate so many visitors to our brand venues and how we get people to stay so long (an average of 35 minutes right now for SwirL) and one of the biggest parts of that is our team. We work with people who spend 10-12 hours per day in-world and know what is going on and how to appeal to residents. SL is a social network and a place to build community. It is not a place for passive marketing.
Joni West
President, This Second Marketing LLC
Avatar: Joni Rich

[Caterin Semyorka]

oh wow, marketing comes to SL, I am soooooo happy

[Caterin Semyorka]

oh wow, marketing comes to SL, I am soooooo happy