Sustained engagement with brands supporting creativity
Earlier this week we filmed our weekly Real Biz in SL show, hosted by Cybergrrl Oh, on Orange Island. I had the pleasure of meeting Fab Outlander, the island manager, at the Second Life Community Convention in Tampa, Florida several weeks ago.
The show did a tour of the Mad Pea game environments. Mad Pea are an innovate production company who have made several mystery games in Second Life. They were finding it hard to continue paying land fees to keep their free games operating. After approaching Fab he immediately made space available on Orange Island for them to set-up their games. To see the amazing skill of these creatives you can watch the full show on SLCN.TV.
I find Fab’s idea particularly smart given the number of brands who have demonstrated that creating corporate headquarters or shop fronts in Second Life is not enough to attract potential customers.
The era of UGC means that brands simply need to support content initiatives that are relevant to their brand, rather than paying outrageous fees to advertising companies (or virtual world development houses) to create content themselves.
This encourages more of a marketer-user interchange and stimulates the viral push for spreading the word to a wider audience.
Leo Burnett had a similar idea way back when they set up Motorati Island for Pontiac. Instead of building their own island of excess, they offered free space to anyone interested in creating something with a car culture bent. The island was home to high profile tenants such as Callie Cline, Ask Patty and the Dirtfield Raceway. There have been few examples like this since.
Despite the backlash of brands having a disappointing experience in Second Life because they were oversold and under-delivered on the opportunity, I can see that many brands are starting to take a peak back inside the virtual world space. After all, sign-ups and concurrent users of Second Life are still growing and our rising viewership statistics indicate that the community is very much alive and well.
Sure, the numbers don’t compare to prime time TV, but neither do the costs. There are also advantages to be gained from growing sustained and valued relationships with customers - or as Zain Naboulsi from Microsoft called it ‘deep touch’.
I encourage any brand manager to look at some of the amazing creativity and dedication of people participating in virtual worlds and to work out how to support and nuture them as part of any future thinking marketing strategy.
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