Socially|Mundane

American Apparel is the poster child when referring to the great "commercial entity failure in Second Life" - and because of that, Second Life is the big failure.

Yeah, right.

This is the same thing as pointing to the lamp that won't turn-on when the outlet is so old it can't hold the plug in the wall: focusing on the symptom instead of the source cause. The problem with American Apparel and all the other so-called 'commercial failures' in second Life is: even though they knew their market, they didn't know the medium.

This is clearly described in a great article in Money Marketing, and I apologize that I could not easily locate the by-line, so I do not know the author's name:

Treasure island - 2 October 2008: "Using technology as an integral part of the financial advice process is still startlingly limited compared with many other industries. At a time when motor mechanics and gas fitters usually start by firing up their diagnostic software before starting maintenance, it frankly scares me that most advisers think the right tools for their job are a printed report, pad of paper and a pen."

The problem here is that like the big record labels and now the big movie studios, the advertisers are turning a bit like the Titanic, albeit not as sluggishly as those seriously greedy media companies.

Advertisers have been embracing the worldwide web for a number of years and are comfortable enough with it that they are increasing WWW advertising and actually decreasing so-called traditional advertising and here's why (with regard to traditional media - emphasis is mine):

"This may be acceptable to the baby boomers who make up much of the current client base of the typical adviser[sic] but is hardly an approach which is likely to go down well with the next generation of financial consumers. These young adults have grown up with the internet at their fingertips and have different attitudes to researching and buying goods and services."

In the case of Second Life, this description also describes baby-bbomers, actually. A more adept, intellectual breed of baby-boomer, perhaps.

The problem advertisers face is that the worldwide web is not the Internet. It actually is only a fraction of the Internet. What about USENET? IRC? IBBS? Okay, they are catching-on with Internet Bulletin Board System, a.k.a 'forums'. However, the only advertising I see in USENET newsgroups is spam and I don't recall seeing anything in Internet Relay Chat.

But that's all well and good as USENET and IRC are not really suited for advertising. Those areas are simply way too fluid. However, virtual worlds such as Second Life are now making a massive splash in the minds of most adept internet-users. The commercial sector needs to sit-up and take notice. And once they take notice, they need to lurk a bit and pay attention.

"The at-retirement market may provide an adequate income stream for individual advisers but this does not bode well for the future of the businesses they work for."

Banner and SWF (a.k.a. 'flash format') advertising does well on the worldwide web and has translated and transferred well to other mediums such as instant messenger chat applications and forums.

However, areas like virtual worlds are an entirely different monster altogether. It's not a question of how to advertise in these virtual spaces, but rather how to advertise effectively, obtaining a decent return on investment (ROI).

They had better learn fast:

"Elsewhere in the world, it would appear that at least one [real] life office is taking an innovative approach to the challenge of working with the next generation. Encouragingly, it is an offshoot of a UK company that seems to be leading the way. Aviva USA has recently created an island within the Second Life virtual world (see secondlife.com) with the objective of recruiting the next generation of life insurance salespeople."

I already have written about Aviva here and what they are doing when it was first announced. I suspect they will be highly successful at it for the very reasons and wants I describe below,

The main difference is that these companies who wish to grab the attention of virtual world residents will have to take an entirely different approach. "Build it and they will come" simply does not work. They must invest the time, research and resources to engage those who can be found inside these virtual worlds.

It is the grand frontier space where static advertising and brick-and-morter (B&M) physical space mash-up, in our minds at least. In addition to pretty pictures and text copy urging people to investigate your wares, you also really need to have a human presence as well. You wouldn't open your B&M store and leave it void of any employees would you? The place would be looted clean within an hour or two.

Though looting is virtually impossible in a virtual world, no matter how 'stocked-up' the virtual shelves are, no one will waste a single second even blinking in your direction unless there is an interactive reason to do so. And you absolutely must get the word out. Use spiral marketing to do this. Virtual worlds are so gigantic and spread-out with information overload, no one will even know you exist. And you are not only competing against your usual competitors for mind-share, but also competing against a huge percentage of the very population you are trying to attract with regard to simply announcing your presence.

Give people a reason to talk about you and your presence - a reason to actually visit your virtual location.

Oh, and whatever you do, don't charge a single Linden Dollar (or single penny in whatever the virtual currency is) for anything with your logo on it.

You are not a celebrity.

You are a business looking to make money off the very people you are trying to attract. Why the hell would they pay you to advertise your logo? Other companies in second Life have tried this. Fail.

Why not try something different: create virtual clothing with your logo on it and pay people to wear it? Let's say you have a dispenser (vendor) that charges L$10 to get your good-looking t-shirt with your logo on it. I pay the 10L$, and get L$15 refunded. You are paying me L$5 to grab your logo. If it's good-looking quality - I'll wear it.

And by setting it up this way, you won't have 'scrapers' who keep buying copy-after-copy just to make 5L$ each pop. Have it scripted so each person (avatar) can only buy one-copy.

Give things away. A lot of things. Then, include massive amounts of information about you. Yes, you. Then provide massive amounts of information about your product. Then, find a way to allow the virtual visitor to your virtual store to actually purchase the virtual version of your virtual product and have the real life version delivered to the real life person at their real life address.

Provided your real life product is actually interesting and someone wants to buy it - you will be successful. Provided those interested in your product actually know you even exist and they can actually do this (see above).

That will be what I consider a successful virtual presence in Second Life, or any other virtual world.

As for all you virtual world residents, particularly Second Life, here's what to look for: the tax man is coming and so are the advertisers. Hopefully the commercial advertisers will be able to provide more than just annoying visual spam. Something like... interesting interactivity and the ability to actually shop for real world products and pay in Linden Dollars - and have that product delivered to your real world home. But most important of all - a human on hand to answer questions and actually sell you, rather than relying of some picture and text copy to do the job for them.

(Via Money Marketing (UK))