Blogging the SLCC: Second Life in Europe

Second Life has been seeing a change in its growth. While the initial adopters were United States users and United States brand, it’s becoming more and more of a global platform. Justin Bovington of Rivers Run Red offers his perspective on what those changes mean, and how marketers can react. “The predicted shift is a 90/10 ratio of active users between Europe and the US,” said Bovington.

SL in Europe
Justin Bovington, Rivers Run Red

Arguably, Second Life is now  a European product. There’s a second wave, of what we’re doing after they hype. Of where it’s going now.

The predicted shift is a 90/10 ratio of active users between Europe and the US. There’s a massive shift in active users. Early adopters will lead to adopters. And there’s a difference in branding.

[image of the new consumer, lying on couch with TV remote and laptop]

We’ve done some research on why virtual worlds are catching fire. One of the most important things is that generally people are seeking richer experiences. We all know this, the thing is how we deliver it.

WE’ve all got a challenge in the next year. We’ve sponsored SLCC since 2005, and we’ve watched the change. The last six weeks have been hectic for all of us. There’s no clear level of communication about what we’re trying to deliver. I did a conference, and a heckler stood up and shouted “It’s all about sex.” I asked, “Where do you see it.” And he said, “I haven’t. I’ve just read it.” There are commentators who aren’t involved.

The old model of market entry is gone. The new model of sustainable evolution, we think 60% of our business in the next year will be in the collaboration space. We think if you’re anAvatar to Avatar person there’s that. If you’re B2C, there’s niche communication, brand immersion, and co-design. And there’s B2B as well.

In Eurpoe the question is whether you’re talking to the avatar or person behind the keyboard. On a serious note, we learned that there’s a 90% dropout rate at the welcome island. It’s going to be very important to persuade your client to get their own brand experience from the beginning.

When you go out to the clients, it’s important to educate them on what’s important. It’s not about being first.

What I want to do quickly is take you through some examples of what we’re doing.

Diageo:
Traveling without moving. One of the biggest ROI question we can give out is asking how much it costs to send all the delegates out to a conference.  What’s interesting about Diageo is that its promoting collaboration. We have stuff at the moment happening where there are work spaces where you can blog from in-world and create MP3s that post automatically to out-of-world blogs.

We’re also working for contextual meetings. Silly things like putting your hand up can be used to texture meetings. We’re now going back to producing handouts, starter guides and user guides to get people going. It stimulates people to realize that this is not just about technology. And we’re using Wiki technology to allow people in the meetings to work across multiple areas.

Before I go on, I want to say that it’s about giving people pre- and post-experiences. It’s about getting people to come back and use it again and again. We’re also working on new input devices.

[slide of Fujitsu tablet] This is a shared graphics tablet where you can upload and download immediately.

There’s a lot happening that’s going to influence brands like Diageo who will then bring it back to the community.

William Gibson spook country launch:
What we did was think about exclusivity and inclusivity. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you can only get 50 people on a sim. We created from that event a podcast that then 125,000 people experienced. And over 900 blogs covered the event. Second Life isn’t about outside moving in, it’s about inside moving out.

Coke:
There’s no island, and it was a closed event, but we reached more people than most other events would. We had 15 people over a 5-6 week period create a Second Life premier for our advertisement for the Happiness Factor. We included Avril Lavigne, so people experienced both celebrity and Machinima. I don’t know exactly what the downloads are, but it’s been hugely successful.

SecondFest:
The reason it was so succsssful is because we linked with the Guardian, the newspaper in the UK. It was so successful that we would probably do it as a yearly event.

Sky News:
IT’s looking at a way of how you can interact with a TV audience to complement TV stuff. What we did was use SL as a sutiod audience. The outcome was better questions and a more vibrant crowd than they’d seen in 15 years of broadcasting.

These are just scratches of stuff in Europe that we think are changing. We have this opportunity to take this open source and take it out. Give your clients that one killer image to take from the experience.

Q: The relationship between inside and outside, how does that work in community and providing longevity?
A: The longest experience you’ve probably had at this point is a 6-7 month long community. And SL gets disproportionate coverage. Facebook’s footprint is much bigger. But we’re all influencers. Anything that we do in Second Life gets picked up by blogs and then lazy journalists that just use feeds.

Q: Do you forsee a time that you’d have a campaing that would reach 15,000 people stricltly in-world?
A: When we were talking to William Gibson, we were talking about one of his ideas of a concept that took on its own life. But I think it’s important that you don’t identify SL as its own world. It has to be a part of a mix.

Joey Seiler
www.VirtualWorldsNews.com
joey (at) showinitiative.com
(512) 535-8650
skype: joey.seiler.vwnews

Comments

[Nobody Fugazi]

"But we’re all influencers. Anything that we do in Second Life gets picked up by blogs and then lazy journalists that just use feeds."

Well, they'll get less play on a few blogs because of that, I'm sure.