twopointouch

Blizzard, the company behind the most successful and profitable entertainment franchise in the world*, World of Warcraft, held a mini-conference in Paris last week to announce that a second sequel to its Diablo series – Diablo III – was in development. Unlike a lot of press conferences, they invited along lots of fans, active forum members and bloggers about the game. So far, so cool, but it gets better…

As is customary at top-end press-conferences, there was a schwag-bag for all attendees containing various branded giveaways. Mouse mats, mugs and stuff – it saves having to buy Xmas presents for a lot of journos. *cough*

(As an aside – Yay! that more bloggers and vocal fans are getting their hands on this stuff.)

But the cleverest bit (for me) was that this also included an online keycode for WoW that would allow players of that game to gain a new companion for their online avatars – the characters they play in the game. Remember, they invited guild leaders and fanatical WoW bloggers along**.

The pet itself will be a miniature version of the Archangel Tyrael of Diablo 2 fame who will travel with you on all your grand adventures in Azeroth! Pictures of this amazing new pet will be available on the official website soon for everybody to check out.

Get it? The WoW pet is a viral promo-item for Diablo III! It’s limited edition, so it’s sought-after; it’s a sign of prestige in the community; and it’s constantly in the face of relevant audiences.

Pure genius. Or evil.

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*World of Warcraft – or WoW to its friends – an online roleplaying game which charges a monthly subscription – to around 10mn people.

**WoW players organise themselves into ‘guilds’ to assemble teams for online combat and for social reasons – their leaders are the most visible, longstanding and respected players.

Via. Kotaku

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.

Richard Maven of e-consultancy interviews Catherine Smith, marketing director of Linden Lab, the creators of the popular virtual community Second Life. The digital world has hit the headlines recently because of the number of businesses that have bought a presence in the world, including Sun, Adidas, Volvo, Wells Fargo, Text100 PR, and most recently, social media consultancy Crayon.

So how do you do it and why would you do such a thing?

What are the main things companies should consider before getting involved?

If you are not authentic and do not offer anything to the community, you are likely to be ignored, at best. But those firms who commit to a long-term presence in Second Life have an opportunity to interact with their community in new and innovative ways.

We recommend that people join, learn and really feel things out before jumping in.

Is advergaming all about brand? How can advertisers measure response?

It is all about the brand at this point. Second Life provides a way for brands to reach out and connect with their audience in new and different ways.

Regardless of how you choose to measure this interaction, it would ultimately be qualitative over quantitative.

Is there a danger that users could be put off if Second Life becomes too commercial?

We equate more residents and companies coming in-world with a richer experience for everyone. Of course, this will require balancing the concerns of early adopters and other niche demographics, with that of the population as a whole.

Ultimately, the more people that choose to come in-world, the more opportunities it will create for all residents. We think residents recognise this and will accommodate an increasing variety of presences in-world. At present there is such a wealth of activity that participation in any commercial aspect is completely voluntary.

Personally, I’m not entirely sold on Second Life, though I am fascinated by the discussion. If I want to play computer games, then I’ll play a computer game. With 1.2mn members, a massive 35% of whom signed up in the last month, it’s nowhere near the size of World of Warcraft (8mn) or even Guild Wars (2mn). However, the lack of elves, dwarven warhammers and the like means that it’s more socially acceptable for grown-up marketing professionals to express an interest. I’d argue that this makes the level of coverage a little artificial compared to its real-life impact.

As with most social media engagement, as Catherine says, the metrics of ROI are pretty messy. It “provides a way for brands to reach out and connect with their audience in new and different ways” that can only be measured qualitatively. The trouble is that most businesses can’t do everything. How will they be able to measure the advantages of a SL presence against other forms of activity? Also, having a building or an island in SL kind of requires one or more people to be there. Empty shops don’t, to me, suggest a company that’s “engaged”. So that’s three FTEs if you want a full-time presence… for results that you won’t be able to quantify for ages. Good luck getting that past the grumpy FD.

* I know the headline has nothing to do with the story. Sorry. But I wanted to use it anyway.

The first PR company to start a virtual office in Second Life starts to introduce its services. “What would happen if your company built a space where customers could interact with your brand and products whenever they wanted to”. Companies will be able to “market their products with much more efficiency” as a result. Apparently.

Update: There’s a good introduction to the business side of Second Life in The Economist today. The writer profiles the work of Reuben Steiger, boss of Millions of Us, whose online clients include Sun Microsystems and Toyota: “A good campaign in Second Life costs about $200,000 dollars, he reckons, of which only a tiny part is property leases and most goes to paying the talented designers to create great virtual stuff.”

Children’s safety may not always be at peril when they go online. In fact, the latest developments are hopefully a move in the opposite direction. I received news yesterday about a new attempt to tackle bullying through roleplay in a virtual world. The scheme is being developed by a consortium of nine European universities.

Professor Ruth Aylett, Professor of Computing Science at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University believes that with young people increasingly familiar with computer games and story-telling through virtual reality worlds, the opportunity to interact with characters who are ‘virtually’ facing the same sort of problems that the pupils might be suffering in their everyday lives could be immensely beneficial.

“If you’re a young person facing some sort of bullying on a regular basis the problem can seem too big, too overwhelming, to tackle. What we will be developing is a virtual world where the user can interface directly with a synthetic character who is also a bullying victim. That bullying scenario is played out on the screen then the user can interface with the synthetic character, discuss what has happened and make choices about how the character might like to react in future. They can then watch the next scenario and see what sort of impact that advice has in how things turn out. That way, instead of what feels like a huge problem in their own lives the decisions are broken down into bite-sized chunks affecting a virtual character.”

Any attempt to tackle bullying is clearly a good thing, and the initial results have been promising: “children like the interaction with the virtual characters and find the content highly interesting and believable”. The main usability issue has apparently been the quality of the graphics. It’s an interesting approach, though bullies themselves appear to be keeping abreast of the latest technology. On March 31, a four-year study was presented to the British Psychological Society, which revealed that nearly 15% of 11,227 children had been victims of cyber-bullying.

Duran Duran are setting up their own island on Second Life. All together, to the tune of Rio: “I’ve seen you on the beach and I’ve seen you on the web”.

As I guess we all know now, the online world Second Life has a very real-world co-existence. Hundreds of people have been able to give up their day job to start shops and services in virtual stores, trading self-made artefacts and properties for real world cash, though the medium of Linden Dollars. More than 3100 residents were earning a net profit of US$20,000pa by May 2006. PR man Steve Rubel has the scoop on one of the latest and most interesting business projects to emerge in the alter-universe:

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