Big Brand Second Life Hubs More Like Black Holes
Generally, the realization isn't surprising, but the metrics are. In this quick-hit report from BizReport, some of the big brands trying to "gain a foothold" in the virtual world aren't able bring in a sustained 500 visitors a month. Yes, Coca-Cola's Second Life hub doesn't get 500 repeat visitors a month, that's amazing.
The author thinks that maybe
Attempting to create a virtual hub for a brand may simply take time and money away from online marketing that does work: a branded microsite or creating a presence on a social network. Advertising on social networking websites, creating paid search campaigns and including display or online video ads are also proven methods of online advertising.
Have they seen the Coca-Cola Second Life Virtual Thirst hub? It's got nothing to do with spend, it's just a deeply bad way to try to engage customers.
Brands don't fare as well in virtual space - Research - BizReport: "Brands don't fare as well in virtual space"
3 comments:
Hey Schlomox,
I'm a part of Coca-Cola's Virtual Thirst team, and am well-acquainted with all aspects of our activities in SL to date. I've been following this conversation across a few different blogs, and the points of view about how much traffic we've had at the Coke Pavilion above Crayonville island have been interesting.
You may want to look at some of the conversation with Krista Knight and Wagner James Au as well, but in short there is one point that I'd like to offer up:
Much of the analysis around the traffic estimates by Tateru Nino assumes that the goal of Coca-Cola, or any other brand for that matter, is to drive a high volume of residents through a branded space (a "hub") and have them return to do so again.
While this is certainly a viable, Web-classic activity, it may not be the intent of any given brand in a long-tail marketing environment. In the Virtual Thirst campaign, that is the case. We have key success metrics, and we watch a lot of other data as well - but if our purpose was to move masses of people through a Coke hub, almost all of our campaign activities and investments would have been different.
We are seeing evidence that we've engaged with a specific segment of SL residents in a meaningful way, and taken some first steps in collaborating with them in translating our company's brand into SL. At this point, the calibre of those conversations and the depth of support we receive from residents matters far more than our turnstiles.
We do hope to have our brand become an integral part of residents' lives, but not necessarily in a theme-park way, where residents must teleport to our space to interact with us. Rather, we'd like to see residents helping to own our brand in SL, and bring it into their own second lives and spaces as appropriate.
Dave,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment. I will certainly read deeper on the conversations as you suggest.
I commend you on exploring virtual world(s) with such openess. I totally understand the long tail idea that meaningful engagement with few is ultimately more powerful than minimal engagement with the masses, but I'm surprised to hear that coming from a brand like Coke.
I'm fascinated by your vision. You said "We do hope to have our brand become an integral part of residents' lives" but how do you see that playing out? In the real world, we have real thirst we need to quench. There are brands + products that serve that need. In SL there's no such need so how does Coke create a virtual brand product? How can Coke provide a valuable "experience" that SLers will take home and share?
Lastly, how might these learnings (not a real word) from the virtual world translate to other marketing channels?
Thanks again.
- Marko
Hey Marko,
Thoughtful questions, all ... Let's take them one at a time:
"In SL there's no such need so how does Coke create a virtual brand product? How can Coke provide a valuable 'experience' that SLers will take home and share?"
That is THE QUESTION that stymies so many brands in SL: What good is a car when I can fly or teleport? Who needs a hotel, when my avatar doesn't need to sleep? Who goes to a restaurant if they don't need to eat?
When The Coca-Cola Company internalizes that issue, the question might read more like this: If Coke didn't sell beverages, what would it do? We've actually asked consumers questions like this, and the answers have told us a lot about the brand and its personality.
The truth is that in many markets, like the U.S., it has been a long time since Coke marketed on the basis of its products' literal, intrinsic qualities - cold, refreshing, etc. For all of our lifetimes, and probably that of our parents as well, Coke has been marketing experiences and ideas. Think through the iconic ads - Hilltop Singers, Mean Joe Green, Max Headroom, Polar Bears, Santa, Happiness Factory. These focus on extrinsic qualities of the products - things to which the brand has become associated through adjacency: joy, unity, fun, etc.
Mature businesses with very established brands and stable product or service lines tend to market more like brand management businesses - describing visceral emotional responses rather than product attributes.
Why do I bring all that up? It's not to geek out on marketing-speak. It's to say this: I believe that this is where things like Second Life make sense. When the brand becomes associated to a story that lifts you from one reality to another, there is resonance there - memories are made - and the product usually performs better. Think of Apple's "1984," Nike's "Just Do It" - they were great drama, and they practically transported viewers somewhere else. Second Life's possibilities in that arena are almost limitless.
So, its fair to say that the Virtual Thirst campaign's point of view on SL is not all about eventually replicating the real-world product distribution literally. Rather, with the help of residents, distributing amazing experiences that transform every-day [second] life into something a little better, if temporarily. We actually still like the question about what else the company would do - and now its just a little less hypothetical.
Q2:
"... how might these learnings (not a real word) from the virtual world translate to other marketing channels?"
Recent technology, long-tail thinking, and cultural megatrends all point marketers to the idea that, to be effective now, they must learn to "get small." (apologies to Steve Martin.) Good news for cottage industries, who know nothing else. Disruptive change for businesses used to broadcast mass marketing. In SL, with concurrent use limitations being what they are, this is not only a good strategy, it is a constraint.
We have had to conduct this campaign one IM, blog post, podcast, e-mail, and friend request at a time. This isn't the first Coke campaign to do so, but it's one of only a few recently.
You could throw an in-world event, and so could we. And whether it's your podcast, our Matthew Ebel concert, or a U2 show, either of us will only be interacting with 40-50 other people during that event. Even IBM, through clever use of adjoining space, only manages a couple hundred at a time.
What great practice for RL activities. Big companies can get good at getting ok (legally, procedurally) with driving conversation about the brand down to more intimate contexts, and using more of their employee base to do so.
It's also good practice in working overtly with consumers in shaping the look and message of the brand. The truth is that the consumer has always done the defining work of branding - it's an illusion that companies do more than influence the brand attributes that consumers assign. But as consumers have become more connected, more comfortable talking about brands, and more comfortable using terms like, "brand" in the last couple of decades, businesses and their agencies have wrestled with the reality that their RL brand artifacts are increasingly less controlled.
With Virtual Thirst, we've created a sandbox for an extreme exercise with this idea - we've asked consumers to re-imagine the brand, not simply translate it, for SL. It's a very open way of acknowledging where control is headed, albeit in a relatively contained space.
As Obi-Wan said ... that's good - [we've] taken our first step into a larger world.
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