Lessons Learned from Second Life

Virtual worlds give participants an opportunity to be whoever they want, wish or hope to be. With a custom designed "avatar," you can look, behave and speak any way you want. It's your "second life," after all.

Brands, however, don't have that luxury. They bring established reputations and perceptions into a realm where everything is new and anything goes.

The "Wild West" nature of virtual worlds frightens brand managers schooled in carefully crafted and controlled messages, and Second Life indeed chased many away.

But with technology -- and especially social media -- becoming more and more pervasive in consumers' lives, virtual worlds will get a second chance. Here's how to capitalize on it.

Second Life and other virtual worlds have enormous branding opportunities. In terms of social media, virtual worlds really are communities in the most literal sense, and it is the level of interaction and engagement that creates such a strong platform for branding. Some brands (like Vodaphone) have found ways to develop interactive spaces in world that intrigue and engage prospective customers. For these brands, virtual world marketing is much like participating in a sponsorship: the presence is valuable if there's a good fit between the space, the target market and the brand -- and if the brand can find a way to add value for those visiting the space.

For some brands, though, virtual worlds are not the most friendly of communities. They may find that other forms of social media marketing are better suited -- or at least simpler to manage (particularly if the virtual world in question is Second Life)! Here are a few factors that can help you understand "why" . . . or "why not."

Ease of Use
Second Life is complex and user-unfriendly. Time magazine called it a case of Fortune 500 companies trying too hard to be hip. A recent report from Forrester suggests that marketing in virtual worlds is still too complex for broad adoption as a business strategy, but that this is likely to change in the next five years. Complexity is an issue, not only from the marketer's perspective, but also from the consumer perspective. It is one of the primary characteristics that can slow the rate of adoption for innovators. Some virtual worlds are easier to learn than others; Second Life is likely the most difficult to learn.

Software Requirements
Second Life, and some other virtual worlds, requires users to install its software. Software installation could be a deterrent to growth beyond the innovators and early adopters already a part of the virtual world phenomenon.

Number of Active Members
Second Life, for example, does not have the reach that other online advertising venues garner. Despite the claim of millions of residents (with continual growth), under a million are active and engaged.

Opportunities for Negative Response
Residents of Second Life are known to dislike and distrust big brand promotion. "Griefing," vandalizing and harassing in world, is a common problem for brands. Linden Labs takes a hands-off approach to managing griefer attacks, relying instead on resident governance. How bad can griefing be? A helicopter crashed into a Nissan building, starting a fire that left a couple of dead bodies, and American Apparel customers were attacked by members of the Second Life Liberation Army armed with virtual guns.

Accuracy of Results Reporting
Second Life offers publicity and the value of free media impressions as social and other media cover new developments. However, no distinction is made between positive coverage and negative coverage. When the media attention is negative, such as reporting attacks on customers, the publicity does not build brand equity.

User Security
Aside from the security from griefers, Second Life has struggled to provide security to the real life people behind the avatars. In 2006, hackers obtained credit card information for some residents.

User Capacity
Second Life's infrastructure limits the capacity at some events. Your brand might do a phenomenal job of planning and executing a relevant brand experience with an outpouring of enthusiasm, only to find the system crashes when more than 70 avatars are present at a time.

Number of User Interactions
Of course, capacity concerns are only an issue if things go well. Spend some time walking or flying around Second Life. It is filled with exquisitely detailed representations of real and fantasy locations. Yet seeing other avatars is rare unless one is spending time earning free Linden $ (the currency of Second Life) at Money Island.

Tie-In to Real World Sales
Some brands have sold digital versions of their products. Toyota, Reebok, Adidas, and Dell are all examples. No brand has yet announced success at using the in world branding site as a direct response tool for real world sales. Bob Tedeschi, in his article entitled "Awaiting Real Sales from Virtual Shoppers," explains that brands experience little measurable influence on real world sales that can be tracked to virtual branding efforts.

Number of Media Outlets
There are still a limited number of Second Life media outlets and advertising opportunities (beyond supporting retail space, experiential facilities, and events). NPR and Reuters are there, along with the AvaStar newspaper, but for brands accustomed to buying ad space in hundreds of television networks, consumer and trade magazines, and national, regional, and local newspapers, this is not a rich media landscape. Ad inventory will develop over time. A "MetaAdverse" network has been established to provide in-world billboard advertising.

Scalable Branding Initiatives
It is difficult to gain economies of scale in branding initiatives. One cannot lower the average costs of products by making mass amounts of products, and there are no huge media buys to lower the costs of advertising.

Design Costs
There are expenses to brand building in Second Life. Linden Labs sells land and then requires ongoing maintenance fees. Those are minimal compared to the design expenses brands encounter. Alex Veiga points out that brand building requires artists, designers, writers, and marketers to develop all aspects of the brand's identity in Second Life. Scion City, a Toyota initiative, took about 10 weeks and probably cost in the range of $100,000. Importantly, brands that enter Second Life must be committed to operating there. It does no good (and in fact could harm a brand) to have a presence there that is not manned, managed, and leveraged towards accomplishing the brand's objectives.

In open worlds, economies are free markets. Brands are welcome to compete and the spoils go to the brands with the best strategy, the best targeting and the best engagement propositions for their target audiences (mindful, of course, to ensure the strategy is suitable for the virtual culture in question). The brands with the wherewithal to strategically plan a social media marketing campaign will also know to commit to the campaign and to provide ample time for the strategy to work prior to making judgments of success or failure and redirecting resources to other marketing executions.

In other words, they'll understand and capitalize on why . . . or why not.

(c)2008 Dr. Tracy L. Tuten

1. For the benefit of gapingvoid readers not yet familiar with your work [all 14 of them], let's get the main schpiel over and done with: From your perspective, what is "Tribes" about?

It explains why top-down, buzz-driven media is the past, not the future.

The world has always been organized into tribes, groups of people who want to (need to) connect with each other, with a leader and with a movement. The products, services and ideas that are gaining currency faster than ever are ones that are built on a tribe.

Barack Obama has one, John McCain tried to co-opt one. Arianna Huffington has built the most popular blog in the world around one. Harley Davidson and Apple are titanic brands for the very same reason. They sell a chance to join a group that matters.

The punchline is that the only way to lead a tribe is to lead it. And that means that marketing is now about leadership, about challenging the status quo and about connecting people who can actually make a difference. If you can't do that, don't launch your site, your product, your non-profit or your career.

I'd argue that you understand how to tap into this need, Hugh. Lots of people don't like your work--screw them, we don't like them anyway. The people who do like, who find that it resonates... it's likely that we'll like each other. You lead us to a place we want to go.

To read the rest of the inteview, head on over to gapingvoid.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Godin's ability to synthesize and combine topics helps account for his broad influence. "Some people want a deep dive; they want metrics. But if you want someone to take a complicated topic and boil it down to the core, that's Seth," says John Moore, a brand consultant and former Whole Foods Market (WFMI) marketing director. Godin finds patterns of behavior and general problems that exist in seemingly unrelated fields. He sees Mary Anne Davis, a potter at one of his seminars, grappling with the same problem as executives at Boeing (BA): How do you market effectively when your products aren't the kind people buy based on an ad? And this focus on the general rather than the specific explains part of Godin's wide appeal. "The big win is when I say something that's just vague enough that it's useful, but people think I wrote it just for them," he says.

Seth mentions the article on his blog, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/.

Cool Idea of the Day: The Bicycle as Bookstore Sideline
Monkey See, Monkey Read, Northfield, Minn., which opened two years ago (Shelf Awareness, February 22, 2007), is now selling the Kona Africabike 2.0 in the store and online. In his blog, owner Jerry Bilek explains why he's stocking the $299 bike that he calls a "utilitarian riding machine. . . Single speed, coaster brake, chain guard, fenders, basket on the front, rack on the back, thornproof tubes, rear wheel lock."

He wrote: "I know, why would a bookstore sell bikes? It goes like this. Books and bikes are two things I enjoy the most. Okay, add beer to the list, but I don't have a liquor license. And ice cream, but no freezer. So I settled on bikes. Not just any bikes, one bike. The Kona Africabike."

Bilek added that a T-shirt phrase he summed up his views on the matter. It read: "Gas sucks ride a bike."

For every two bikes that Monkey See, Monkey Read sells, manufacturer Kona will donate one to a home health worker in Africa as part of the BikeTown Africa program.

In the June 19 issue of BusinessWeek, writer Susan Berfield reviewed two books that "explore the question of whether brands control us, or vice versa": Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are by Rob Walker, and Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion by Lucas Conley. (Image source=BusinessWeek.com)

Here's a snippet from the article:

My girl's request [for a Go-Gurt in her lunch]--fleeting, trivial, and unrepeated--nonetheless says something profound about our high-impact, omni-consuming culture. But what? Is she--are we all--just easy marks? Or is there a more complex dynamic between the marketer and the mark? Rob Walker, the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, argues for the latter view. Walker, who writes the "Consumed" column in The New York Times Magazine, offers a sophisticated and sometimes lighthearted take on how consumers interact with brands, defining and controlling them as companies struggle to keep up. By contrast, Lucas Conley, a contributing writer for Fast Company, takes a grimmer view. His book, Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and The Business of Illusion, is a bleak assessment of how defenseless we are against ad creep, as he calls it.

Check out the BusinessWeek article to see which perspective Berfield tends to agree with more.

This is a book we'll be keeping our eye on when it pubs in September. Here's a snippet from the working introduction:

An epidemic of irrelevance has brought once-powerful brands to their knees. The virus is an inordinate fixation on demographics-driven strategies, fashion-forward images, and media-focused communications.

The autopsy points to a lack of organic growth.

The cure is a reaffirmation of the essence of marketing, which is simply to help people solve problems and live happier lives. Interestingly, at least a few brands have managed to make comebacks after years in the wilderness.

• Levi's reasserted relevance when it created wardrobe solutions for men.
• Hasbro reasserted relevance when it reinvented board games for today's time-pressed consumers.
• Staples reasserted relevance when it stopped wasting its shoppers' time with extraneous products.

Manners goes on to describe a number of precepts that have shaped marketing practices for the past half century, and then offers a solution: six principles relevant brands understand and embrace.

Side note: Did you know that you can sign up for RSS updates on the books you're interested in? You can receive notices when we post an excerpt, blog post, interview with the author, or other news about a particular book. Relevance comes out September 18, but you can pre-order it from us or sign up for notifications from our blogs.

Anyway, this post is really about the first chance I have had in months to spend the morning looking through books. I promise more posts in the coming weeks, but here is what has caught my eye this morning.

• The Word of Mouth Manual Volume II - Dave's new book is worth a look. You can download it for free or buy it printed on paper.
• I am reading The Breakthrough Imperative. This is a book from Bain & Company. I have read enough of their partners' work to finally say that I like their message. I am just getting started, but I think this is a culmination work for the company combining the ideas of Fred Reichheld, Chris Zook, and others. More on that soon.
• There is a new second edition to The Age of Heretics by Art Kleiner. Too many people have told me that I have to check this out. I am going to read the book and then have Art on for a podcast.
• I am a huge fan of the Memo To the CEO series, which we post the Jack Covert Selects for on Friday. Check them out.

Enough for now. And I promise again to get back to writing more here.

PR Fairy Tales: Pitches Disguised as Children's Books

Entrepreneurs have a habit of describing their companies in David-and-Goliath terms. Now, some are taking cues from Eloise and James and the Giant Peach. A mini trend in the world of public relations has companies replacing their run-of-the-mill press releases with promotional materials that look and feel like children's books.

We occasionally see corporations buying large quantities of children's books for their employees, and recently Roy wrote about the Conservation International and Random House re-release of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax for Earth Day.

In which children's books do you find inspiration? Would you consider pitching your employees or clients with this format?

"When it unveiled the Windows Home Server, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) released Mommy, Why Is There a Server in the House?"

Where's Your Wow? is presented in three parts: What Makes You Special?; Outstanding, Outrageous, and Out of the Box; and Wire Yourself for Success. Each chapter details one of the 16 laws of wowing customers; you'll learn how to develop your brand into a Wow, get it out there, and keep the momentum going by analyzing your results and sharpening your brand's edge. Spizman and Frishman share personal experiences and illustrative stories to support their theory that "Wow is within all of us...it's a matter of finding the qualities inside you that match a need in the marketplace and developing that match by following the elements of a sound business plan."

Where's Your Wow? is one of those inspirational books you can pick up and use to recharge your brainstorming or creativity engine. More story-driven than how-to, it will get you thinking about your own branding or marketing campaign and the state of its Wow factor.

His book Then We Came To The End is a novel about a Chicago ad agency and the tumultuous 1990's. Our resident writer Todd Lazarski wrote this short piece about the book for an upcoming 800-CEO-READ project:

The next generation of the business novel, Ferris' hilarious critique of modern office life and the world of marketing acts almost as the written word companion to "Office Space" or "The Office." Addictively funny, it also belongs in the same vein of rumbling satire employed by [John Kennedy] Toole. Ferris sheds light on all of our oft-overlooked, inter-office mannerisms, inanities, and silly drama. Throughout the prose paints a portrait that, while obviously entertaining, is also sharply revealing about that 40-hour-a-week, alternative universe known as "work."

We mention it here, because some times it helps to see the business world through a different lens with someone else describing the scene we see every day.

A note about the author: Ryan Allis is CEO of iContact Corp., a venture-backed marketing and online communications firm that has grown from nothing to over $10 million in annual sales and 80 employees. He is also the Chairman of the web marketing firm Virante, Inc. For more info, visit www.zeromillion.com.

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5 Steps to Optimizing Your Website

The majority of Web site owners have fewer than 10 incoming links to their sites. The search engines view incoming links as verification that your site has quality content. The more related links your site has from other sites (with the underlined clickable text that includes your targeted keywords), the higher your ranking in the search engines will be. Here is a step-by-step overview of this entire SEO process:

1. Select your keywords. Use tools such as the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, Google's Search Term Suggestion Tool, and Word tracker to determine which related keywords or key phrases it would be best to optimize your site for. Once you have a list of potential keywords, go to Google and type in those keywords. Then see how many incoming links the top few sites have. You can determine this number by typing in "link:http://www.competitordomain.com." Take a look at whether the first few sites have the targeted keyword in the domain name or in the title, or whether they appear often on their page. Use this information to estimate what it would take to get your site above the current sites in the rankings.
2. Ensure that your site has those keywords on it. Make sure that the keywords you are targeting are on your home page at least five times. Having a 5 percent to 15 percent keyword density for your targeted search term on your home page is optimal. Also ensure that your title tag and image alt tags contain your targeted keyword. Add your targeted term to an H1 header tag for added prominence.
3. Build good-quality content on your site. I call this phase the "content campaign." Either write articles yourself for the site or go through the search engines to find related content. If you find an article on another site that you'd like to publish on your site, send an e-mail to the author, site owner, and/or publisher to request permission to syndicate the article on your site. Present it as a win/win quid pro quo in which you receive good-quality content and the author/publisher receives free exposure and a link to his or her Web site in the byline of the article. I'd suggest having at least 25 quality articles on your site before going forward. Optimize your home page for the two or three most competitive target terms. Optimize your in-site pages for the more unique and less competitive terms. You can also outsource the creation of this content to copywriters, using a service such as elance.com, for about $30 per 400-word article.
4. Build links to your Web site. Without incoming links to your site, it will never have a chance at being at the top of the search engines for competitive terms. Use the research you did earlier on the number of links the sites at the top of the listings have or your targeted keywords to set a goal for how many related incoming links you want to build to your own site. To obtain links, go through the search engines and find related Web sites, then contact the owners of those sites and offer to exchange links. Add their links to your Web site and e-mail them to let them know that you've linked to their sites and would appreciate a reciprocal link. I'd suggest contacting them first via e-mail and then via phone if necessary. In your initial e-mail to site owners, include the URL and description of your site, as well as the location of where their links are and which sites of theirs you are referring to. I'd suggest creating a resources section on your site and placing your link partners in the appropriate category within. You can also build links naturally through press releases or by having great content, a useful tool, a viral video, or an interesting blog. If you have more money than time, you can also purchase relevant links from quality Web sites through a service called LinkExperts or purchase reviews with links from sites such as PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and Blogvertise. Ensure that whatever links you build to your Web site have your target key phrase in the anchor text, the words that are clickable and underlined. Finally, text links are much more valuable than image links, as the search engines can follow text links and associate the link text with your Web site, but they cannot do this for image links.
5. Continue building your site's reputation. Once you have built a few related incoming links, the search engines will find and index your site. If your site is new, it can take up to nine months for Google to allow it to show up for competitive search terms. During this time, continue building good-quality related content and work to build as many incoming links from related Web sites as you can.

The idea of social relationships in publishing has been a major theme at this year's conference. This morning I heard Gavin Bell from Nature Publishing Group talk about how your online services deserve the same degree of customer service your bricks and mortar business boasts. He talked about "Moderation" -- talking to people and finding out what's working and what's not, whether you're an online retailer or a blogger trying to join a broader conversation. One of the hardest parts of moderation is, Gavin explained, listening to what people say and accepting that they know what they want.

People Like Me In contrast to the pre-internet world, a "person like me" no longer has to live in the same neighborhood, belong to the same book club, have kids at the same school or work at the same firm. In fact, a "person like me" doesn't have to be anything like "me" -- at least, not demographically. That person just has to share a similar interest or experience, which I discover while surfing, searching or checking out my favorite social networking site. That "person like me" becomes an ally and advisor by virtue of having a seemingly independent, informed opinion about a subject that is relevant to me.

Forrester Research reports that over 52 percent of adult consumers typing queries into search engines are doing so to make or influence routine purchase decisions. All consumers are 50 percent more likely to be influenced by word-of-mouth recommendations from their peers than by radio or TV ads, according to a Nielsen BuzzMetrics 2005 report. Why? Because trust is now in the network -- in groups of interconnected "people like me."

Here's a direct link to the post: http://800ceoread.com/excerpts/archives/007616.html

Kelly Mooney is the author of The Ten Demandments, which was a Jack Covert Selects in June 2002.

• Jack Covert Selects - "Meatball Sundae is a wake-up call for companies to get rid of old ideas. I was captivated by the examples Godin uses to explain how the trends work, why the new marketing tactics don't work for many companies and how they can use this knowledge to grow and change along with the trends. This is a must-read for anyone who thinks that, by default, they have to use new media to sell their products."
• Church of the Customer - Jackie actually eats a Meatball Sundae (no, not the book). Watch the video.
• Gaping Void - Hugh asks Seth ten questions including "The fact that blogging changed your book writing style over time is well documented. Has anything come down the pike recently that's affected your blogging style?"
• Bruce Clay - "What is a meatball sundae? A meatball is a worthwhile commodity. They are things we need and sold to everyone. The sundae is the hot fudge and the peanuts, the tactics of social media and the MySpace profiles."
• Copyblogger - "Seth explains that you’ve got to reinvent your business to fit the realities of the new marketing (rather than the other way around), because ideas that spread through groups of people are far more powerful than ideas delivered at an individual. Those are Seth’s words, and that’s the best definition of social media marketing I’ve heard."
• WebInkNow - "Godin says fourteen trends are completely remaking what it means to be a marketer. And while these trends are transforming organizations that have the right approaches, they are crippling the organizations that are stuck with nothing but meatballs. Once again, marketing is transforming what we make and how we make it."
• MSNBC - Contributor Peter Hartlaub says "Chances we’ll be using [Meatball Sundae] in 2017: A new marketing book comes along every few minutes, but this cool new coinage has some staying power."