I’ve always been a bit of a sceptic about Second Life (posts passim, and I mean in its utility as a marketing vehicle for brands), and I won’t pretend otherwise despite a day of inspiration and intelligence at the Virtual Worlds Forum. Yes, I now understand a bit more about why brands have been investing in the network and am prepared to say that this is probably not quite such a terrible thing as earlier posts might have suggested. Some of the other virtual worlds such as Stardoll, Habbo, Eve and Entropia seem very interesting indeed.
On with the doom and gloom, though, and one presentation that I really enjoyed came from Marco van Veen, a manager at the Innovation & Collaboration Center at Heineken on why they said ‘no’ to Second Life.
Heineken obviously does a lot of advertising and sponsorship and isn’t remotely afraid to try out new forms such as product placement in films like Casino Royale. They could very easily imagine a Heineken bar or vending machines in SL, as could all of us – heck, why not a Heineken lake? – and obviously developers and marketing agencies kept coming to them with metaverse ideas. Initially, they had a lot of enthusiasm for the possibilities.
As they started to think through the business value of the project, though, several adverse factors dawned on them…
- They wouldn’t be the first beer brand to enter the world. The press and publicity that was showered on companies like Toyota, IBM and Starwoods when they debuted in SL wouldn’t be likely to be repeated for the third or fourth beer brand to enter.
- They found research from Market Truths (March 07 – costs $100 or L$12,500) which said that if brands fail to position themselves correctly in SL, they can expect a backlash from residents. This led the company to conduct its own research among residents. It turned out that almost half thought that the Heineken brand would not be a good fit within Second Life. Only 19% said they thought it would. Don’t ask me why that was the case – as I understand it, there was something of a backlash against all commercial brands in the world earlier this year and it may just be part of that.
- It didn’t sit very easily with the company’s CSR policy. Heineken wants to be seen as promoting the socially responsible use of alcohol. Clearly, if they made Heineken bottles and kegs available in SL, it would be reasonably likely that residents would play-act drinking to excess. What else is there to do with a keg of virtual beer? (or errm… real beer).
- Hand-in-hand with this came worries about the age of SL residents. It’s company policy at Heineken not to sponsor events where the proportion of adults is lower than 70%. Linden Labs’ own figures suggest that this is comfortably so, but the company had an alternative report created by ComScore that suggested that only 68% of SL residents are 21 or over. This made them fear that Linden’s figures were unreliable. Again, this wouldn’t sit well with their responsible drinking policy.
- Joined with this was some anxiety about litigation. It seemed a reasonable supposition that there are ambulance-chasing US lawyers sitting in SL and waiting for a beer brand to give some of their product to a minor. Such a suit could well seem newsworthy to a technophobe press keen to sniff out any suggestion of child abuse online.
Yes, I am an SL naysayer, but that’s not the only reason I found this a refreshing presentation. There’s such wide-eyed bollocks talked about virtual worlds that Heineken seem like geniuses for sensibly and thoroughly assessing the opportunity and turning it down on this occasion. As van Veen said, however, this is a very new medium, and the company has far from closed the door on a virtual existence.
Update: I’ve written two posts so far on VWF at our NMK site. One on the basics you ought to know and one on business models and possibilities. Also, this post is being discussed by listeners to the FIR podcast here.
Terrific post, Ian, thanks.
Heineken beer is actually widely available in Second Life (I have a virtual crateful of those green bottles and cans in my inventory!).
While I can understand the company’s cautious stance on not entering SL themselves based on your reporting of their views, I wonder if by that action they are missing a major trick with regard to their own brand positioning.
Heineken aren’t part of the SL environment but their primary brand is anyway. That would worry me more than all the reasons for not participating.
That’s really interesting, Neville. But maybe there’s another aspect to their strategy, that wasn’t revealed in the presentation. That they were aware of the unofficial produce and therefore not entering themselves allows them to gain all (or a lot of) the awareness but with none of the risk or cost?
I take your point regarding your worries, but isn’t that a bit ‘controlling the message’ for an SL existence?
[...] Why You Can’t Buy a Heineken in Second Life I’ve always been a bit of a sceptic about Second Life (posts passim, and I mean in its utility as a marketing vehicle for brands), and I won’t pretend otherwise despite a day of inspiration and intelligence at the Virtual Worlds Forum. Yes, I now understand a bit more about why brands have been investing in the network and am prepared to say that this is probably not quite such a terrible thing as earlier posts might have suggested. Some of the other virtual worlds such as Stardoll, Habbo, Eve and Entropia seem very interesting indeed. [...]
Good points, Ian.
Talked about your post and our comments in today’s FIR podcast. Wonder what listeners will have to say.
http://tinyurl.com/37ajjf
Thoroughly recommend that readers follow Neville’s link and listen to the podcast. We come in at around #546. FIR is always good value and his
readerslisteners will be continuing the conversation over there.[...] for example their social responsibility concerns: It didn’t sit very easily with the company’s [Corporate Social Responsibility] policy. [...]
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