Scion Extends Campaign in There.com

Today Scion announced that it was extending its campaign in There.com. The first phase involved turning Scions into giant dance clubs available to users. The new phase will allow users to respond in kind by decorating the clubs and creating custom Scions to drive, share, and sell in There.com. Obviously Scion must consider the first part of its campaign a success, but neither party is sharing any numbers. "In this space, I believe you need to be non-traditional in how you consider ROI and measure it," Adrian Si, Scion Interactive Marketing Manager, told VirtualWorldsNews.com. "Virtual worlds are still developing from a variety of aspects, so traditional ROI measurements don't really apply."

"Right now, we’re looking at buzz, verbatims and the amount of engaged users who like to throw parties and hang out in our space," Si continued. "There.com reports that Club Scion is one of its most popular destinations.  Because Club Scion has been a success, we decided to introduce this new campaign which allows users to be creative. As you know, Scion encourages creativity."

Scion, which is involved in Second Life, Gaia, and Whyville in addition to There.com, is deeply connected to virtual worlds marketing. A strong component of successful virtual worlds campaigns has always been user-generated content and interactivity.  However, that always presents a balancing act between brand protection and brand awareness.

"We have tons of [user-generated content], and when you submit an item for sale, what happens is that we make sure it's not profane or violating IP," said Makena CEO Michael Wilson. "This is a contest where we're going to be picking the best."

That's a factor that Scion is taking into consideration.

"For There.com the user-generated content goes through an internal approval process," said Si. "Therefore, we know any inappropriate content will be filtered out. Whyville has even younger users, so users will be penalized for not following the rules.  However, if users post negative comments about Scion we appreciate it and learn from that. Sites like Second Life do not filter user-generated content."

Metaversatility helped create the initial club, and it's been brought on again to help extend the campaign. Additionally, frequent Makena collaborator Trilogy Studios was brought in to help add driving capabilities and a gameplay element to the campaign. Trilogy and There.com have long been proponents of adding game-like activities to campaigns and worlds to give users something to do, but There.com shied away from drivable cars in the first go 'round with Scion.

"It's something we didn't do the first time because it's been done to death," said Wilson. "But they're going to be able to customize them now. The first time we said, 'Everyone has done it before, so why should we do it again?'  But the second time we asked our users, and this is what they wanted. That's one of the strengths of our community team is that we can elicit that feedback, and it also shows that Scion is responsive and innovative."

That innovation is something that seems crucial in virtual worlds marketing, and it's a large component of the idea that virtual worlds marketing is still an emerging space. Every campaign is a learning effort in addition to an actual attempt to gather eyeballs. And with so many worlds in its portfolio, even Scion is still in a learning mode.

"Because marketing in virtual worlds is still relatively new, I think there is still a lot to learn for any company in the space," said Si. "From the beginning we’ve worked directly with the virtual worlds to create something specific for each world that will benefit the users.  Each world has its own unique environment with different user demographics so what works in one virtual world will not necessarily work in another world."

That said, virtual worlds generally fit in with Scion's interactive goals of working deeply with smaller sites. As long as they stay that way, Si says he plans to keep working in them.

"Consumers do spend a great deal of time interacting with us in virtual worlds, as opposed to some of the more traditional mediums," he explained.  "We’ve learned a lot from the worlds we are in now.  We’re not just making an appearance and leaving.  We’ll continue to use virtual worlds as a marketing tool as long as the worlds are small and emerging and the users are creative."