Second Life Branding Boo Boos
BL Ochman in his What’s Next Blog writes about Big Brands in Second Life Attracting Few - If Any - Visitors.
Besides the sale of YouTube, nothing’s been hyped more this year than companies, from IBM to Starwood Hotels to ad agencies and PR firms, opening in Second Life. Visit them and you’re likely to find yourself alone, or maybe find one or two other people there. The biggest problem: everyone’s jumping in because everyone’s jumping in. They’re often not bothering to visit Second Life first, let alone learn the culture.
The second biggest problem: you have to download software to enter the metaverse and big corporations generally won’t allow anything downloaded on their servers. And once you do download it, the software is clunky, slow, and hard for newbies to grasp.
There’s nothing worse than jumping onto a band wagon without recognizing the unwritten laws that govern the community. Whether it’s Myspace or Second Life, it’s best to join the culture and learn the unwritten rules before you begin trying to harness the marketing possibilities.
Way back in the 1990’s, the Listserv ruled the internet. A listserv allowed you to submit a question or something that you want to share to the listserv. Your submission would then be distributed, via email, to all of the other people on that list. Clumsy marketing wannabes would sign up for a Listserv and begin marketing in earnest to the subscribers. These messages were greeted with the same enthusiasm then as spam messages that arrive in your email box are greeted today.
Imagine, walking into a party and finding dozens of people engaged in lively conversation. You walk up to a promising group and interupt the conversation with your sales pitch. While it rarely happens in real life, I’m sure it’s not hard to imagine your reaction to such an intrusion; you’d ignore the interloper and return to your conversation.
Well, Listserv has gone the way of the BBS, the laws of human interaction still remain intact. Before entering the alternate reality known as Second Life, companies must first learn the culture and discover the unwritten laws of this alternate universe. Learning the lay of the land is always best before entering a new world. While the 2 million plus members of Second Life community may very well be ripe for the picking, if you break the unwritten rules, you’ll find your efforts failing miserably.
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