Here is an article I wrote that was published by Ithaca College’s Fuse Magazine, a student-written publication for prospective students and their families. Sharing real student photos and stories and to provide honest, accurate student perspectives on Ithaca’s academic programs, people, and campus life.

Virtual Learning

Video game junkies rejoice! Virtual worlds are not just for after school anymore—now they’re part of it. Second Life has made its way into the classroom at Ithaca, where students in the integrated marketing communications program have been exploring its impact on buyer behavior.

Last semester, I delved into this virtual culture owned by Linden Research as a member of professor Kim Gregson’s Audience Research class, researching and analyzing interactions between users—known as avatars—and the advertising of popular brands like Adidas, Coca-Cola, and many others. While immersed in a video game atmosphere I got the opportunity to interview Second Life users about their attitudes toward companies that sell and advertise products.

A typical day of research consisted of what many students do in their spare time—socializing online and playing games. I began my project by visiting virtual places like H&R Block (where I received some useful tax advice that I gladly used when filing my taxes this year). As a Second Life resident, you get to choose your appearance by customizing your avatar to look just like you . . . or maybe not. While exploring other islands in Second Life, I received many virtual promotional items to customize my avatar, including t-shirts, coffee, and even a Nissan car. It was fascinating to analyze my own consumer habits after interacting with various brands. After being given these items in-world I was much more aware of these brands in real life.

Second Life is also a popular place to hold events, classes, and business meetings. Holding lectures on Ithaca’s island in Second Life allowed us to accommodate special guest speakers such as Aaron Uhrmacher, senior account executive from the global public relations firm Text 100. Events like these enable students to network with professionals in New York, London, and even Japan without ever leaving campus. I attended two in-world lectures and received internship offers from Text 100. I also made virtual connections with a graphic design firm in Los Angeles. Much like my interactions with other students there, talking with professionals in Second Life allowed easier conversation for both parties involved, and the interaction was even more personal than it would have been on the phone or via email.

Interviewing Second Life residents opened my eyes to people’s entertainment, social, and purchasing habits. If I had to conduct these interviews in real life, I don’t think I would have been given the time to ask questions or gathered the same in-depth answers.

My immersive experience in Second Life was a lot of hard work but also very exciting and engaging. It focused me on where the future of marketing and technology are headed and challenged me to fully understand consumer behavior within a new social environment.

After researching other media habits (and perhaps my future media habits based on demographic research I have done), I have been able to identify and distinguish market segments based on a target market’s lifestyle traits and psychographical information. My media habits consist of:
-Internet (blogs, email, graphic design, news)
- Internet Radio
-My iPod
-College Newspaper
-Outdoor advertising
-Cable Television (TLC, Discovery, FX, CNN, Style, Bravo, Showtime) The very niche segmented cable channels with specialty reality television shows
-Art and Business Magazines
-Guerilla Advertising (for music, events, cafes, food, alcohol)
-Product Placement
-Virtual Worlds (Second Life, There.com, etc)

In the beginning of my semester, I reported trends on mainly advergaming, product placement, and ad concepts. Advergaming is a great, key tool to utilize and develop for brands, yet it’s not capturing my attention. Every advergame I stumbled upon, I played for a very short amount of time. Enough time though as I would spend perhaps looking at an ad in a magazine. The interactive gaming online should be very engaging for people in my demographic, along with strong visuals and appeal. Its difficult to really get a hold of us. Like the M&M’s interactive movie search quest game I found. It was very unique and high quality. An essential procrastination game.

Ok, so product placement. Yeah, I saw that logo. And yes, I did remember that Top Design mentioned that particular designer when I went to IKEA . Oddly enough, I cannot remember the name of the designer now. I believe it has to be strongly placed or truly enable much exposure and brand loyalty. Reality Television seems to be the best channel to get across product placement as well. It shows the consumer that people like them are using a certain brand and sometimes it doesn’t look as purposely placed.

I also went into rants in some of my topics about the creative world of advertising by critiquing some ad concepts I came across: most of which were good; otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed them to begin with. This also generated word of mouth for these brands. When promoting my blog on blog search engines and linking them through comment posts, I found that much research and exposure of a brand can be done through the blogosphere.

This is how I got into the buzz about Second Life. Even though Second Life has no advertising as of yet besides the freedom of press and word of mouth, it really generated traffic and membership. Without the blogosphere, perhaps memberships would have not exceeded 5 million? Blogging has added a unique dimention to the Internet. It has provided us with a new means of communication and finding what we need. Much of this is done by linking us to places we need to check out or topics that we are searching for. It also allows us to share our ideas, imagery and notions with a bit more clarity.

People and owners of brands are beginning to wonder if they really should place their brand in an online virtual world. Many others, even their competitors, have already done it. My own personal advice is not to place your brand right next to a bondage toy store. I mean, its like real life. Remember: Location, Location, Location. I wouldn’t imagine seeing a John Edwards headquarters in the “live entertainment” strip of Montreal. One of the first things I learned about business anyway.

Also, people placing brands in SL may want to control island privacy settings in order for residents not to “screw with” their brands. As WOM tells me, brands fear getting picked on or toyed with while in SL because of its open source scripting. Since it is open source, you can make plenty of settings so random virtual punks don’t mess with your “store front” lets call it.

In a survey of 200 participants conducted by the agency Komjuniti, Second Life users were questioned about their perceptions, their satisfaction with the products on offer and the brand content in the online community.

The first thing to stood out is that 72% of respondents expressed themselves as being disappointed with the activities of the companies in Second Life. Over a third of them were unaware of the branded presence and 42% said they thought it constituted nothing more than a short-term trend, lacking durable commitment from the companies. What commitment are people looking for? Stuff to do? They are right though, many are treating it as a short-term trend. Because trend ideas are not progressing forward. I think there exist SO MANY options in SL that scripter’s for the company are just overwhelmed perhaps?

SL can be your tool. Just like your website. Trust me, if I could actually sit down and utilize the more scripting in SL, I would have a Sprout island showing my work. This is what freelancer or already successful designers do. Making real dollars. Fo instance, I believe that MTV is doing a great job using a virtual medium to retain brand awareness. Check it out here: V MTV

The brand sites on Second Life look like an element of the advertising campaigns. They are placed with the hope of getting high visitor frequency and good PR scores. I think SL sites should be used as they would be in RL. Event marketing. This is how much of there.com’s success if unfolding. Even though, I don’t like there.com. They still have the idea. Brands using SL should remember this and use MTV’s example as a foundation for building in virtual worlds. Engagement. Engagement. Engagement.

Namiko Surf Co. partnered up with Weather Island (The Weather Channel) to create EPIC surf competition in Second Life. The next competition will take place tomorrow, April 14 1:00pm SLT on Moana’lina Beach, Weather Island.

Virtual surfers were registered for the competitions as of Thursday. The surfers will compete to will lindens and other various prizes. Sponsoring this event include Namiko Surf Co., GR Boards, Reaction, Sport.de along with others.

Namiko Surf Co. is a surf company based in SL. There mission statement is to provide supplies surf clothing and swimwear inspired by the traditional textiles of surf destinations worldwide. All items are carefully handcrafted from organic, natural and sustainable materials… cottons, silks, linens… and hand dyed with natural dyes such as indigo. “We strive to harness the healthy, positive energy and enthusiasm for surfing in Second Life and create a direct, tangible benefit in real life. A portion of all sales in Second Life is directed to Surfrider Foundation in real life, supporting the protection and enjoyment of oceans, waves and beaches worldwide.”

Namiko is an excellent SL based company. There mission and business objectives are clear and promising. There target market is focused on educating 3D design as well as taking social responsibility stance. They are very serious about their in-world brand and a very professional demeanor. Entrepreneurs alike should model themselves after Namiko. Large businesses in real life should also look at what Namiko has done and research the event marketing and brand promotion they do in world.

Namiko Blog

In SLNN news article, reported that one of the new things that will be featured at the competition are the epic waves created by Goodliiffe for The Weather Channel and Weather island. Goodliffe said the epic waves are an improvement over the pipeline waves used in the first competition because the epic waves will synchronize themselves, allowing multiple waves to be joined together, and she will be able to see the fruits of her labours as she helps judge the competition on Saturday. Goodliffe, who lives in San Diego CA, noticed that the oceans of SL were “dramatically dead,” and started creating waves as soon as she learned scripting.

They are dead. And there is so much open space for scripting off the islands. This is an awesome idea ad concept that will draw in more people to use second life entertainment.

A private beta program on a test-grid for 1,000 users will be launched early in March before a Grid-wide beta trial. This will give current Second Life Residents the opportunity to explore the benefits of voice-enabled communication. A formal launch is scheduled for Q2, 2007.

During the beta program Residents will be able to test the use of voice under three scenarios:

Scenario 1 – Residents can teleport to voice-enabled land and automatically start speaking. The volume of speech is then modified according to their spatial relationship with others. Up to 100 users can be present in the same audio channel at once.

Scenario 2 – Group conference calls for two or more Residents, enabling large groups to communicate across geographical boundaries (e.g. concert setting, or between pockets of land etc).

Scenario 3 – Two Residents can privately share a conversation, initiated by an Instant Message. Residents don’t have to be on voice-enabled land to do this.

The HUD allows many different functions to play with: a search and rating system for locations (ie, businesses that are hard to find or entertainment islands). It also includes a tracking feature which allows the residents to easily recently or frequently visited islands/locations. This will help land owners gain returning traffic along while receiving feedback from visitors.

The goal of the tool is to provide residents a better exploring experience and make the virtual world more intuitive and enjoyable. It will also keep not-so-saavy second life residents more in touch with virtual life entertainment and benefits to exploring the user-generated virtual world.

“We are selling as much a lifestyle of exploration as we are a product,” Obviate said in an interview at the Slicr Sim at Tipsico.

In an article writen by Diago Quaranta from SLNN, reports that
Slicr is not the only group working on rating tracker tools in virtual worlds “Ratepoint, launched on March 12, allows users to rate other avatars on a scale of 1-5 based on their behavior and currently has several thousand users and over a dozen employees, both in RL and SL, despite being less then a month old, according to Chris Bailey, Ratepoint’s CEO.”

Ratepoint is a good attention getter, considering the favorable rating systems that people utilize on social netowkring sites such as “The user-generated virtual world’s 2D platform,” Myspace.com. This isn’t so beneificial to businesses in Second Life presently, but it is still a work-in-progress for future tools for ROI ratings and statistics.

According to Diago Quaranta reporting, “Slicr uses a multi-layered system to search for locations based not only on sim owner’s descriptions and keywords, but also the comments and ratings of other Slicr users. For example, searching “news” in the Slicr system returns a list of locations with the highest ratings with “news” as part of the description or key words input by the other users.”

This systems allows for more in-world buzz marketing rather than relying on real life publicity of businesses in SL; people can now find out were to go once they get in-world. It is similar to youtube in a sense were people view and visit locations based on other member ratings.

When visiting a location, users can give their own ratings in three different ways: a three-star scale of how useful the area is
categorize the location (general/no category, shopping, roleplaying, clubs, themed areas)
enter up to three keywords about the area.

By creating categories and allowing users to enter their own keywords, Obviate says he hopes Slicr will be able to serve the wide range of people who log into SL – from entrepreneurs interested in the businesses of SL to dedicated role-players.

The HR Block island looks great. Nice layout and well branded. I had easy time getting around with the location teleport maps. Walking gave my avatar lower back pains, though. Honestly, I wish I had some questions for these guys. Tax consultants are available in-world to talk to in the meeting rooms on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6-7p.m. PST time.

READ MORE STUFF

They came back with full notebooks; each one loaded with statistics, cramed with businesses recent experiment and summariers off all the speakers and businesses concerning the long awaited ROI measurements. Still how do they measure? How do businesses measure and figure out there leads through SL dividing the amoiunt of time by the amount of $$$.

Many said its not there yet. In one of the latest press releases from SLNNetwork, Childs Writer reported that ROI in SL is just not a traditional channel that can have defined measures. The question still remains: What do your measure to find out the company’s are successfully promoting their brands and gaining revenues/donations? (yes, non-profits are in SL, too. And they seem to be really taking off and gaining vistiors).

Writer, in-world reporter for SLNN, spoke with Reuben Steiger, the CEO of Millions of US whom stated, “One of the problems we are facing in virtual worlds is that the economy is a non-transactional media. The money exchanged will not be listed on any commodities exchange. Value creation is still very unclear.”

Right now, it seems businesses and SL are still relying on publicity and blogging to see who are receving their messages. Many corporations, such as AOL are focusing in on marketing to the avatars first. Anotherwords, the people they are marketing towards are the alter egos of the people in real-life. This makes sense for many of reasons. For one thing, at least in my conversations in-world, people are there to actually “play” or “live” their second life. Some, do not even want to be bothered with real-world conversations. It was like the person behind the keyboard was gone and was now only in the eyes of their avatar.

Does this mean marketing to them is a real waste? No, of course not. Avatars cannot think for themselves (the majority of them). Messages are still being brough to the attention of real-life consumers. I believe Second Life, is like actual life when it comes to what you put into it. If your company, creates a great headquarters or displays an extrodinary island, and you keep drawing in avatars they will come and enjoy your brand. Have events. Impress your people!

Steiger also mentioned, “ Pontiac was able to get the residents involved. People lived and built on these sims, adding value and a real sense of community. They became brand evangelist.” He knows whats up.

In quick wrap up here, it still remains that ROI is unclear and hard to be measured. At any rate, second life advertising is afforable, experimental, innovative, and you get to talk to all the smarty pants early adaptors. Untill next time…

Constantine von Hoffman of Brandweek talks about the dissappointment of makreting that is going down in the virtual world. Businesses entering SL still have no clue what they should be doing. If I had a business, I wouldn’t have the attitude of “if we build it, they will come.” This notion is in no way possible for such a new media channel like SL.

While making yummy lunch today, I noticed the Web site address on the new garden hot sauce I purchased. Good for them. Now I can learn more about their other products and have their brand reinvented in my brain. If the .com was not on the label, I wouldn’t have thought twice to visit them online. The same concept applies to SL islands or office headquarters–a call to action from advertising.

I am sure many businesses would lose quite a lot of customers if they didn’t place the .org or .com at the bottom of ads or promotional pieces. The common body copy: “Visit us on the web! www.come-be-exposed-more.com” should be applied to Second Life “locations” as well.

Yes, not many people have Second Life packaged with their PC’s or Mac’s but the trend has to keep moving. Web surfers download new plug-ins or applications needed to run media all the time. I believe that is how many people aquired Acrobat Reader because of the .PDF exchange.

So, lets talk about URLs and SLURLs . Companies, big and small supply us with their URL destinations in almost every part of the consumer communication model. This is how consumers easily connect to not only the brand, but company info, news, online shopping, contact info, and financial data for investors. URL’s are used and abused for infomation on companies and where many consumers or B2B prospects receive their beginning information.

SLURL’s, on the other hand, provides direct teleport links to locations in Second Life. If you have Second Life installed, clicking on the map link will automatically teleport you to that location in-world. Now, this is just like clicking on a link in your email in the morning to read a news article or someone’s blog (like this) but instead the link will just take you to SL location, rather the Web site.

SLURL’s also provide surfers the opportunity to sign-up for Second LIfe and download the program. Aloowing the chance to give it a try, see what the hype is about.