A little long winded entry – but hopefully some one gets something out of this…. Banana  – also has been posted on Meta Magic Studio blog

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Cisco Live Pavilion

In light of the recent news posted in The Avastar of the closing of the Geek Squad sim, and the subsequent lazy media fall out that will happen, and Gartner’s new report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008, which states the Virtual Worlds are in the “Trough of Disillusionment,” one wonders about the health of corporate prescence in worlds like Second Life, Google’s Lively and all of the other virtual worlds.

Corporations leaving Second Life is nothing new and should be expected. The vast majority of companies that arrived in Second Life in 2007 came in soley for the marketing hype value. Sure many of them gave lip service to community development and the other key phrases such as immersive and interactive worlds. Yet their actions indicated that they had no clue what they were doing and where they could go. And far to many of them did not take the time or put the resources to learn how to do it, falsely believing in “if the just built it, the community would come.”

So much of this reminds me of the mid-1990s when companies rushed into the internet and made real bad websites for pretty much the sake of building a presence. I can remember working at Plantronics when our first web site was being developed and what a piece of crap that one was. But we learned from it, realizing that this was the future.

American Apparel

The first super hype company in Second Life was American Apparel, with its launch in June 2006. At the time there were great promises made by American Apparel as it was the first major retailer to set up shop in Second Life. Many in the Second Life community were alarmed by corporate entrance, as many of the fashion designers were worried that their business would be wiped out by $1L clothing. Industry analyst at the time were focused on sales:

“The amount of money American Apparel has made so far on Second Life is probably not as much as they would make in a day at a single store,” says Evan Wilson, a videogame analyst at Pacific Crest Securities.- Source: Newsweek

And while American Apparel made promises of hiring virtual sales reps, introducing new products and test marketing, in reality nothing happened other than the odd-community protests and griefing events. So where was the community outreach efforts? From my perspective, America Apparel had a wonderful island built, then they just left on its own. So when they closed the sim one year later, it was considered a failure of Second Life.

Could it be that it’s actually the creative execution that’s at fault here, rather than the medium?

AOL’s presence in Second Life was a theme park; you took pictures, got a few things, and then nothing. AOL left Second Life so it could incorporate AIM into another virtual world. What was their purpose in Second Life?

Pontiac

One of the most successful community developments was done by Pontiac. It had a very strong community within Second Life to the point that they had a virtual spokeswoman Callie Cline. But the effort ended. As Callie wrote:

just remember this… most large companies have an agency they work with who implement their marketing plans… report back to the client, etc. they try new things all the time… (not just pontiac, all companies) pontiac does things like “the pontiac garage” where bands play, (one in time’s square, one on jimmy kimmel live, etc) and they do tons of other marketing things that shape and leave an image of the brand in people’s mind.

so i’m sure SL was one… well i know it was. personally, i think most companies, like most of us, are not sure about SL’s future, and the early ones who are trying are working in a world with no real established rules, and we’re all sorta making this up as we go along, aren’t we?

so to see some of them leave, is sorta like them stopping advertising on a particular tv show or magazine for a bit, no? it doesn’t mean they won’t ever come back, to them it just might be, “we tried that… *scratch head* hmmm, should we keep doing it?”

i think as time goes on, and trends and methods are established in virtual worlds, the companies coming in will have more to look at.

don’t be scared nexi!!! it’s ok!

personally, i had a BLAST working with pontiac, they did a lot of things no company did who had come into SL, the community they built loves them as does a lot of the SL community. i’ve gotten probably 90 im’s of people very upset by this… and most from people i have never met… that was surprising.

they did build a hub of “car culture” in SL, so to see them announce a departure is a bit sad.

Now with the Geek Squad, we read that Best Buy would not let there be community development. From The Avastar:

The island is set to close on September 7 after owners Best Buy continually refused permission for it to be properly promoted, according to the source who wishes to remain anonymous.

He told The AvaStar that he had been encouraging Best Buy to let him hold events such as computer training classes and technology seminars to boost traffic flow but was rebuffed at every attempt. He continued to try to promote the island by hosting events without telling Best Buy, and by working with other tech companies in SL.

Now the mass media – and I am talking about the likes of CNN, Time and even Wired – will just hear about a closing and never ask the hard questions. Why did it close?

Maybe Best Buy thinks it got all the value it can out of it. Maybe Best Buy see no value in community outreach and development. Maybe Best Buy has no clue.

Cisco Live

If you are a brand the worst thing you could possibly do is try and replicate your RL brand strategy wholesale in a virtual world – different rules apply. In my discussions with potential clients, the first question I always ask is “why do you want to be in Second Life?” If they can not answer this question, then I know that they are not ready for a virtual world presence. My second questions is, “What type of Web 2.0 offerings do you have?” If a company does not even have a basic blog, they are not ready for a virtual world presence.

The strenght of virtual worlds is the immersive and interactive aspects that give the user a sense of presence with others, which is not defined by location. Authentic experiences happen “within” an individual – the more personal they are the more authentic, because they enforce the self-image.

As reported in the Times Online:

Virtual worlds such as Second Life will become an indispensible business tool and vital to the strategy of any company intent on reaching out to the video-game generation, one of the world’s leading consultancies has said.

McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm whose observations about corporate behaviour are closely watched, said that virtual worlds were on the cusp of a major expansion – particularly as a way to reach younger customers – and that companies were “ignoring them at their peril.”

As a developer for Cisco Systems, it has been my profound pleasure to watch them grow into their virtual campus. Not everything and every event has worked perfectly, but they have learned, adapted and continue to pursue community building. Their success is measured by interactions. Dannette Veale recently shared how they do their virtual world planing:

1. Figure out who your audience is and what they are looking for.
   1. For example in Corporate Event Marketing our primary audience is Cisco customers or potential customers. Therefore I developed our Second Life TechChat series rather than a program to address employee training.
2. Identify your key virtual environment program objectives. This shouldn’t be a list of many items, rather a list of a few targetted items.
   1. For example with our TechChats our primary objective is to raise awareness about a variety of technical area that Cisco is working to address and a secondary objective it to grow our audience base inside of Second Life.
3. Determine how you will measure item 2
   1. Will it be click-throughs to follow-up URLS?
   2. Will it be surveying of attendees?
   3. Will it be eyeballs that viewed the event live and/or archived?
   4. A combination of elements?
   5. Something entirely different?
4. Determine the longevity of the virtual environment you are programming for.
   1. Is this a one-off communication need?
   2. Are you looking to create a pernicious community?
   3. Will you utilize the environment for ongoing outreach, events or training?
5. Allocate budget based on 1-4
6. If you are still stuck in the ‘dialing for dollars’ budget dance, it might be time to scale back your program objectives identified in step 2

In the closing part of the article, Dannette shared a email that she received:

Dear Dannette:

I and my staff at iFiber Communications would like to thank you, John Chambers, and the rest of the folks at Cisco Systems for bringing Cisco Live! to Second Life. We really enjoyed the presentations, tour, and the customer appreciation party. If it had not been for your bringing these events to Second Life, we would not have been able to attend Cisco Live. We are in a very rural area of Washington state, four hours away from SeaTac Airport, making both travel time and budget a limitation…

…We hope to attend more Cisco Second Life events in the future, and we look forward to Cisco’s expansion of its Second Life presence. It is a great way for us to keep up with technological changes, and it is also an excellent educational medium. And, we would love the opportunity to increase our Cisco training through Second Life events, if/when that becomes available.

Lastly, I would just like to mention that although we attended through only one or two avatars, there were, at times, five of us watching the presentations at our NOC. So, there were actually more folks attending virtually than just the avatar counts!

Sincerely,
Cassandra Heide (aka Zena Silverstar)
Director of Information Technology

Other clients have not been as successful. When asked why, I state “Once you get past the development stage, the real work begins and to many companies do not want to invest the resources to grow their community.” Or put in web 1.0 talk, if you do not update your website, your traffic does not come back.

So in closing, if you want a “successful” presence in any virtual world, realize that it requires more than just building it.