McKinsey & Company on Virtual Worlds: Companies Are "Ignoring Them at Their Peril"

Last May, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company  launched a virtual ventures contest in Second Life. Now it's looking at how more established businesses can use virtual worlds. An unnamed senior consultant told the Times Online that companies "absolutely"  should be "experimenting in virtual worlds" to attract customers under 30 and were "ignoring them at their peril."

"Our clients are telling us that they're not able to reach out to the video-game generation the way they have to newspaper audiences, say, and that they want to distinguish themselves in the digital space," the consultant continued.

 

The Times spins that for the headline "ignore Second Life at your peril." It's worth noting, though, that McKinsey's consultant seems to be generalizing more about virtual worlds. It makes sense: about 3/4 of Second Life's users are over 25, and consumer-oriented marketing hasn't taken off as much as other use cases. It may some day, but in the mean time, companies looking to target  younger users may also want to consider the plethora of youth-focused virtual worlds already out there.

The Times does, though, discuss how Second Life (and virtual worlds more generally) can be used for internal collaboration and enterprise use.

With the newly announced leadership changes at Linden Lab, potential and existing users are looking at how the virtual world might change to be more useful. The Times cites analysts that predict more enterprise use and applications developing. On the other side, though, there's still concern that the virtual world's barrier to entry is just too high, something new CEO Mark Kingdon understands.

"It takes a significant time investment, but it's pretty clear that once someone has made that investment and crossed that divide, they stay and they stay engaged," he told Virtual Worlds News this morning. "All good things come when we make that easier and shorten that learning cycle. And it's very possible and doable. There are lots of complex technologies that people have added extremely simple interfaces to. For that reason, they're joyous."

[via Times Online]

Comments

[Pedro Ivo Rogedo]

I'm glad that McKinsey made such a remark. However, I'm not so sure if they will be able to understand the whole thing. A typical consultant is analytical and model-oriented, while a understanding a virtual world demands other kinds of behaviours and attitudes towards technology.

[David Crespo]

I just heard this was from an ultra-swanky meeting yesterday held in London, at an exclusive private members club called theHospital. Many of the top metaverse people attended: McKinsey, Linden Lab - Philip Rosedale, LewisPR, Rivers Run Red, Standford Research among only a few

As a European developer, why are we not hearing more about this?

CrespoInteractive - Madrid, Spain