Gartner Follows up on Personas

On Tuesday we reported on a new prediction by Gartner that the way we represent ourselves through virtual personas--from 3D avatars to Facebook profiles to Amazon wish lists--will become more important for business than who we are as actual people.  We followed up with Principle Analyst Adam Sarner to dig into his predictions. "The persona bot is a key issue," he said, referring to an idea that didn't make the press release. "I think that's a fun one. I envision worlds where we'll have fully automated personalities to somewhat sentient persona bots to go out and facilitate our life goals for us as directed by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Because the world is so vast, we're eventually going to have company bots that are artificial, self-replicating, morphing personas as the front face for the customers."

"I envision this world beginning with us controlling a persona that will walk up to the company bot who will then notice what we look like, our mannerisms, how we've been communicating with people, and then morph into a persona that will mirror us," Sarner continued. "The best sales people are people like us. Think of a car salesman, for example. You walk in and you're thinking of a new car, and then he notices a tennis racket in your back seat. He then says, "Oh, after this I'm going to go play tennis," and it makes a connection. That's what the company bot will do."

Abraham Maslow theorized that humans are drawn first to satisfy their physiological needs (like food and shelter), then needs of safety and security, then to provide a sense of love leading to a goal of self-esteem, and, finally, the need for self-actualization. Sarner draws heavily on Maslow's  ideas as a way to look at driving forces for business and interactions. As the virtual world gets bigger, individuals won't be able to search out solutions to satisfy all their needs on their own. Some fixes will come in persona bots; others must come from business models.

"The real fundamental business recommendation is that as more and more people are going online and trying to facilitate Maslow's hierarchy through social interactions in a kind of a Web 2.0—Mazlow's top point is self-fulfillment—companies are going to have to design and create experiences through virtual worlds to facilitate these life experiences while at the same time creating a path to their services," explained Sarner.

That path ranges from simply providing a beginning-middle-and-end transaction like Woot.com's daily deals or a seemingly open-ended 3D environment that offers a user the chance to explore while still guiding them toward a product. If a product is sold while fulfilling a need from the consumer, Sarner calls it a win-win situation, but that environment won't work for all models.

"That's what separates us from businesses asking, 'Should we have a virtual world?'" said Sarner. "Maybe. It depends on what you're doing. I have a bit of a problem with virtual malls. Let's say you're going to a virtual Circuit City. If it's really virtual, you'll wait in line for 30 minutes. You won't be able to find parking. And you'll talk to a salesperson who doesn't know what's going on. Really you want to simplify it and match the world to the need you're creating. If the need is more exploratory and self-fulfilling, it will probably manifest itself into more complex environments. It's about figuring out where you connect in that hierarchy of needs and then getting them to come to you and connecting to these personas."

Immersive worlds like Second Life or World of Warcraft offer users the chance to not only explore environments, which can be used as marketing tools for tourist destinations, for example, but also the opportunity to explore the self. Sarner argues that Warcraft offers the ability to act in ways that users wouldn't otherwise. Instead of a business model based on billboards, it sells subscriptions for fulfillment.

On the business side of things, the longer a customer stays in the world, the more the company knows about their persona and can adopt accordingly. While some might see this as a privacy risk, Sarner sees it as a privacy protection.

"The idea of the persona is taking back this idea of privacy," he explained. "When you build personas, you're creating filters of what you want to project rather than projecting the whole thing. Rather than saying your name, address, number of children, and W-2, you're only leaving little crumbs of yourself to get what's relevant to that area. Now, if there's a value proposition and a win-win to give out more of yourself to get something, that's okay. What people hate is giving up part of their privacy with no payoff. If there's a payoff, I give out these aspects of myself to get something, I think that helps. The old adage is 'Privacy is dead, get over it.' Mine is 'Privacy is alive, get over it.'"

For some companies, that's going to be a tough adage to realize. Sarner  cites examples of companies like  Axiom and Experience that have compiled massive amounts of demographic data. That's all approaching worthlessness under his model. Instead of looking at physical data to determine what a person is like, he believes it's wiser to simply let the persona tell a company what it likes.

"I did a case study a while back with a cosmetics company," Sarner explains. "They knew who the people were through offers and sent out a thing saying, 'Fill out this survey and we'll give you free stuff.' Turns out the older people lied, and 60-year-olds said they were 20 and wanted stuff for 20-year-olds.  What do you do with that information? Do you send them stuff for a 60-year-old and say, 'Stop lying'? No, you send them stuff for a 20-year-old and get over it. You sell to the persona not the person. That gives you clues to how they want to be treated."

That seemingly flies in the face of Gartner's earlier recommendation to remember that behind every avatar is a  real person. Sarner wasn't involved in that study, but he believes that while sales must eventually convince the actual user at the keyboard to pull out his or her wallet, that's one of the easiest parts of a transaction.

"I'm a marketing analyst," said Sarner. "I know that the best marketing programs ever created are selling experiences and dreams. We have to be mindful of the person at the keyboard, but to quickly go to the keyboard and ignore the crumbs they're leaving.... If we've learned anything from Web 2.0 and people discussing how they want to be treated, it's that you can't ignore it. If you look at the buying process, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done before transaction. I look at the transaction as the easy part. It's the transaction that involves identification. 80% of the process is potentially anonymous".

Some trends like Open ID and standard identification for avatars could change the way those personas operate, but Sarner believes users will almost always want to keep certain aspects separate. Instead of simply worrying about how to identify a person, he believes virtual worlds developers and companies interested in using virtual worlds need to determine where they stand in relation to personas' needs. The drive to satisfy our goals online isn't going away.

"Here's why it's not a fad," Sarner closed. "Mans' need for self-fulfillment. Mans need for food clothing and shelter. It's transcendent. Food clothing and shelter is so last year? I don't think so. My recommendation to companies is to look at those needs. If you can facilitate those needs, it's going to transcend any way we have of doing it."

Comments

[len]

That's a smarter analysis and marketing savvy. Disco succeeded because people who make $100 a week DO want to be someone else on the weekend. "Sweet dreams are made of these. Who am I to disagree?"

But it also means that virtual worlds are Prince Prospero's abbey. You can't cheat an honest man or avoid an inevitable transaction.

[Bill]

Gartner has drank the VW cool aide. The idea that business --- real world transactions with real money and real property --- will be conducted between avatars (puppets) which can be anything people want them to be to include disappear or change shape when the transaction goes south is a VW crack fantasy.

[len]

Gartner is in the business of selling analyses. A bit of spice helps.

From a marketing perspective, a puppet avatar can fulfill the same functions as the office geishas do. They engage the customer, entertain them, collect information, and report back to their manager. I don't see any contract-based negotiations there, but intel gathering is a distinct potential.

Keep in mind that the soft data mining potentials are huge for predictive analysis. As with any predictive analysis model, the critical decision is what operations are initiated based on the analysis results. "Launch on warning" as a generalized idea is typically a bad one. "Investigate on pattern match" is a useful one.

[Bill]

Len, Yes I see your point. But I see an inherent conflict in cultures between the escapism and identity changing within the VW's vs. the transparency required in business transactions. The desire for constant fan dancing (changing persona's) by many who seek to reinvent or disguise themselves based upon the situation, is at odds with "I want to know exactly who I am dealing with in case there be fraud afoot". This happens today within forums and the inherit flame wars where arsonist come in under anonymity or a nom de forum with the sole intent of rabble rousing --- no money is even on the line.

From an intelligence perspective, the opportunities for deception multiply when users are capable of donning disguises at whim.

[len]

I agree.

http://3donthewebcheap.blogspot.com

See the top blogs. Poetic license, but essentially my take is that the notion one assumes a 'virtual personna' to protect oneself on the web is too much like saying one should don a sheath and hit the redlight district. If the conversation is that dangerous, one might want to not participate. That is what is wrong with those analyses; it is a blame the victim game.

The ironic bit is to read the warning blogs from people about identity, Facebook etc. when these are the same people who helped to create the system that enables the problems all the while keeping those who were warning about this in check. It wasn't as if it wasn't obvious even in 1993.

Careerists and post-hoc apologists once they have their money make me a little ill.

len

[Markus Breuer]

Bill, your critical points about avatar's anonymity are certainly true. Especially, when you are selling a mortgage or a 3 year lease plan for a new car.

I would like to question, though, that the majority of business transactions going on today needs full transparency (or disclosure of full identity) on the consumers side. If you sell someone a can of coke, an MP3, a ringtone, a concert ticket, a newspaper etc. etc. you don't need to know the true name, the address or telephone number of that guy. You only need to make sure that someone will pay for your goods or services.

In some cases it is important to know if this someone is a repeat customer or to know a bit more about his or her needs. Your can use this knowledge for a better sale. But you still don't need to know the full identity. You just don't need it. And many customers don't like to disclose their identity for trivial transactions.

Additionally, the online "persona" at the other side actually might have different desires then those you would deduct from knowledge of the physical human behind that persona. The grandma buying girlie cosmetics or the guy buying clothing for his female avatar (or vice versa) are just very striking examples. There are many 'milder' ones. You don't need 'The Truth' (whatever that actually is) to close the deal.

What Gartner's Sarner is saying can be condensed into three statements:
(1) transactions involving non-physical goods will become more and more common (just a quick reminder: music, movies, many subscriptions, stocks, etc. are all non-physical goods)
(2) companies can use non-physical outlets to sell physical and non-physical goods. These can take the form of websites or presences within virtual worlds.
(3) customers will come into these outlets in the form of personas, where one human can acquire different personas in different contexts. It is important to recognize these personas and adapt the sales process to them - more important than trying to find out who the customer 'really' is in physical reality.

All of these assumptions/predictions seem not too implausible to me, actually, when I take a look at the already visible trends in online marketing and sales.

[len]

Trivial transactions require trivial id unless there is a coupled transaction. To get a Coke at the local drugstore, one doesn't produce ID unless one uses a debit card. The debit card requires a real valid ID. Regardless of using the personna, the requirement for the real ID remains.

The second problem is false personnas expose innocents to fraud or outright victimization. The recent MySpace associated case based on a deliberate false identity used to drive a bipolar teen ager to take her own life is warning enough.

It isn't worth it. The whole notion of false personna as a means of obscuring transaction identities is simply wrong. Trying to make this out as some kind of 'neat new feature' is also wrong. Gartner is selling analyses to a market desperate to create financial returns and not taking the reponsibility to think it through.

[Prokofy Neva]

Totally. My dozens of alts in Second Life are getting to be such expensive mouths to feed. I never know what they'll get up to.

It's a very short step from having your avatar camp and make Lindens while you're AFK and generate traffic for a land owner, to having that avatar also do your shopping. In fact, it's also a very short step from having merchants update their merchandise and send you out updates to having you preset a list of configured needs/desires and have the avatar out shopping for you as new things appear.

[Prokofy Neva]

BTW, I do have to point out that in fact Paul Hemp was first to begin this conversation in the Harvard Business Review last year lol. It's subscription and you have to search here:
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/index.jsp

Then I responded in a really dilatory and boring article here:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2006/07/harvitar_and_gr.html

But here is a summary:

1. Marketing gurus who figured out that the avatar is an extended, discretionary, spending entity only loosely tethered to human beings with different purchasing habits are way ahead of the game. As I pointed out, quoting the famous song, "Guys and Dolls," like those guys in love, avatars spend huge amounts.

2. VW makers and marketers need to care more about compelling worlds that keep the avatars happy and logged on -- just plunking down billboards or stores with RL-like stuff is static and boring, and just draining them of their dollars will make them get wise and go away.

3. To reach these finicky and skittish creations of the soul, marketing gurus need to go to where they live, whether through events or groups. It would be great if groups and group IMs worked outside of SL while people are at work or unable to log on, so much the better.

4. As Paul Hemp explains, the data mining possible through avatars is extraordinary. And as I point out, there are terrible consequences for our freedom of all this data scraping and mining, and people and avatars will react by becoming more complicated, more finicky, and hide more and rebel more, even though a certain amount of harvesting will be possible against their will.

5. The next century will be about the war between marketing gurus, groups, and individuals pushing and pulling in social media.

[len]

It's a shorter hop to having reporting services from vendors to parents for online activities by kids. Demand it or pull the acoount. Consider that to be a volunteer for a church function where your role is baby wrangling now requires a background check in some states. Reporting services would be a positive adaptation by the vendors.

Ummm... is there some reason to have an avatar shop for you? Does it resist impulse buying, have trendier tastes, or know how to haggle? Then there is the problem of an avatar engaging another avatar to sue you for changing your mind without reconfiguring it first. Bots have rights, yanno.

A web service talking to a database doesn't know if you're a diva or a dog.

[Bill]

"A web service talking to a database doesn't know if you're a diva or a dog"

Precisely Len!...pithy as always. When you think of the layers upon layers of law and legal framework that we have acquired to guard against fraud in the marketplace when real identity is correlated with real existence in "meatspace"...how all this can be wished away or transcended through avatars (who won't be held accountable for fraud or mistakes --- as we have said in the Army --- what are they going to do? stamp my meal card no dessert?) is utterly bewildering.

[len]

They will do it with Reporting Services just as they do it in the banking system now. Consider impersonate() a sort of universal function to the database except instead of your banking client, they use your avatar client. One of the new bigCos entering the market will get this done and then the new legacy worlds (eg, Second Life) will have to catch up or close their doors.

The idea of Reporting Services in game or virtual worlds may incite the usual griefer suspects, but these are an inevitable part of the bifurcation of game worlds and virtual worlds into business and entertainment apps. Regardless of claims made in the panglossian blogs, VR is not a "separate reality" or a "magic circle". It is a product in a market subject to all the usual laws and now some news ones.

Consider that last Sunday in the local paper here they carried an article about a local lady with serious physical disabilities who has been abused by the Second Life griefers up to and including meatspace harassment. Linden can claim that isn't their problem but eventually a legislator will make it their problem for example as part of the licensing of their business.

That is a topic for dull architecture work but nonetheless, a problem that has a solution. Acountability became a problem for virtual worlds before SL (see the Cyberworld discussions pre 2003 about the child protection laws). These worlds already do what is necessary to control populations. SL and the other noobs will as well.

[Alex]

@All
The label 'Reporting Service' sounds kinda... right. Could you specify though, what exactly should be 'reported' and to whom in particular? Presumably info in such 'reports' should be actual and true, who is responsible for its validity? How do you view it in general?

[len]

I wrote a blog on the topic at

http://3donthewebcheap.blogspot.com

and invite commenters to expand on the information set I suggested. Initially I am looking at reporting services for parents of children. Of course, reporting services (eg, SQL Server Reporting Services) are very generic and provisions would be needed to harvest logs, etc., as Reed suggests on the blog.

[Andreas Beer]

maybe some of you would like to read my thoughts on maslow's hierarchy of needs in application on virtual world sociology:

http://thoughtsnessays.blogspot.com/2007/07/necessidades-maslow-online.html