Shanth Interactive Co-Sponsors Virtual Worlds --The Rules of Engagement
Mixed Reality All Day Event

The lines between the “real” world and the virtual world are blurring. There are millions of dollars flowing through virtual economies for goods and services ranging from realestate and clothing, to in-world concerts and book signings.

Join us on May 4, 2006 as we explore the new Virtual Economy and its implications. You can attend in person at the Computer History Museum or at SDForum's Innovation Island in-world (see event page for SLurl)

Date of Event: Thursday, May 4, 2006, 9:00 AM-5:00 PM
Registration Time: 8:30 AM
Location: Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA

Register now

Key Speakers
Will Harvey, CEO, IMVU
Joi Ito, VP of International and Mobility, Technorati
Philip Rosedale, CEO, Second Life

Speakers
Wagner James Au, In-World Journalist, SecondLife
Danah Boyd, Social Media Research at Yahoo! Research Berkeley
Corey Bridges, Co-founder, Multiverse
Shawn Carolan, Managing Director, Menlo Ventures
Susan Choe, CEO, Playarena
Kevin Efrusy, General Partner, Accel
Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings
Michael Kim, Partner, Rustic Canyon
Nicole Lazarre, CEO, XEO Design
Shital Mehta, Founding Partner, Shanth Interactive
Jerry Paffendorf, Futurist in Residence, Electric Sheep Company
Jeff Sandquist, GM Developer Platform Evangelism, Microsoft
Adi Sideman, CEO, Oddcast
Alex St. John, CEO, WildTangent
Reuben Steiger, CEO, Millions of Us
Daniel Terdiman, Reporter, CNET
Philip Torrone, Make Magazine
Bill Turpin, CEO, Multiverse
Sibley Verbeck, CEO, Electric Sheep
Sharon Weinbar, Managing Director, BA Venture Partners
John Welch, CEO, Playfirst

Utilizing New Media in Your Communications Strategy

Looking for new ways to engage and influence trendsetters in technology? Virtual Worlds such as Linden Lab’s Second Life, Habbo Hotel, World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Sims, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies and a few others are an exciting opportunity for marketers.

Things that happen in virtual worlds are starting to have a real-life impact. In fact people who play online fantasy games routinely buy and sell fantasy-game currencies and other cyber-game assets using real dollars, sometimes on Web sites hosted by the game developers, sometimes on third-party sites. The lines between the “real” world and the virtual world are blurring. There are millions of dollars worth of virtual world artifacts being sold on ebay and craigslist, real IPO’s are happening and people are even making a very nice living off of these new economies.

As these communities continue to evolve into their own cultures it’s important to remember that as art mimics life so do these virtual worlds. Some folks are (believe it or not) craving advertising and marketing—after all our “real” world is saturated with them and a virtual world can’t be entirely “realistic” with out any of these messages and images.

So how do you actually market in these worlds? Below are just a few tips to get you started:

1) Make the Virtual Worlds an extension of your current marketing and communications objectives

When trying out new “real-estate” and marketing techniques, it’s important to stay mindful of your brand. You don’t want conflicting messages or images. Try to create “events” that are complimentary to an existing marketing campaign.

A great example is a recent visit to Second Life by Larry Lessig, a well-known author and legal critic. While Lessig is well acquainted with speaking in front of large groups this event was quite unusual. Taking the persona of an avatar--a digital representation of a person or character--designed to look like himself.

Lessig and an audience of close to 100 "Second Life" members gathered in a digital amphitheater in a section of the virtual world known as Pooley. The audience was no normal book tour gathering. Instead, it was comprised of avatars such as a giant Gumby, a huge white cat, a lion and many other bizarre and unusual characters. Many of those on hand were toting digital "copies" of "Free Culture" that had been created especially for the event (a great touch), and that contained the book's entire contents. Lessig also stuck around afterward to "autograph" the books, a process that involved his avatar touching the books and applying a digital signature. This was indeed a great extension of his current marketing campaign for his book.

MTV is another great example of a brand experimenting with virtual worlds.

They recently held a call for auditions for avatars (virtual people) that will be featured in an upcoming fashion show on MTV's internet channel "Overdrive." MTV Second Life Avatar fashion show was great way to build traffic to their website and build relationships with their more “forward thinking” audience.

2) Engage with in-life citizens

These worlds are created and built by the users in them—they are in fact the ultimate form of "user created content.” New Media today is created and grown out of the ideas of participatory media, virtual worlds are the manifestation of this movement. The best way for marketers to reach the in-life citizens is to facilitate interaction and encourage participation.

Wells Fargo is attempting to do just this. Wells Fargo’s Stage Coach Island is a digital environment intended to help young people learn financial responsibility. Visitors there can skydive, fly hovercrafts, dance and shop. But woven into the experience is a series of financial messages intended to help them learn something about money management.

Players are given $30 in imaginary money with which to buy clothes, pay for rides and the like. The idea is to teach players to save money--they can earn 10 percent per day on "deposits"--and to learn new things about money management through a series of quizzes that, when completed, reward players with $5 of new funds.

3) Get the word out

One of the best ways to ensure maximum participation in these in-world events is to reach out to in-world journalists. Yes, there are even journalists reporting live from these virtual worlds. New World Notes’ Wagner James Au aka Hamlet Linden http://secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/ is an embedded journalist in Second Life. He has a rather large readership by both in-world and out of world accounts.

Don’t forget the bloggers. There are quite a few who are “reporting” on their experiences and happenings in these virtual worlds. For more tips on reaching out to bloggers please refer to our article Blogger Relations—The Rules of Engagement .

The virtual world is boundless and developing. This is the time for marketers to shape the norms and polices surrounding these new mediums. Think big, stay flexible and stay true to your brand message.

I was invited to speak at the WITI Conference in San Diego on Tuesday, February 14th on a panel about Technologies, Marketing & Media in the New Millennium.  I was joined by Vivian Lin, founder of Tangent Entertainment, Miro Copic, co-founder of BottomLine Marketing and it was moderated by Morgan McLintic, vice president at LEWIS PR.  We had a lively discussion with a standing room only audience.  If you are interested in hearing the discussion here are the links: Part 1, Part 2  (33.8MB, 22.5MB download respectively, but worth the wait!!!  We are working on a solution to make it faster)

Here is a quick synopsis:

The focus of the workshop is to discuss the new technologies and marketing methods that have evolved in the marketplace in recent years.  In general, the traditional marketing methods and media distribution are now being replaced by those that are used by a younger generation of professionals, the "Millenials".  By 2010, this generation (the eldest of this generation born between 1980 and 2000) will outnumber both baby boomers and Gen-X'ers among those 18-49 - the crucial consumers for all kinds of businesses, from automakers and clothing companies to Hollywood, record labels and the news media.  Advertisers, media and technology companies, mindful that young consumers have migrated away from the traditional carriers of their messages, have begun to find new ways to reach them, including: podcasting, blogging, media content delivery, and more.  Additionally, social networks have become the method of choice for professionals of all ages to market themselves, and to maintain personal networks, i.e. companies such as LinkedIn, MySpace.com, etc.

Utilizing New Media in Your Communications Strategy

Building an effective communications program in today’s rapidly changing media landscape requires companies and organizations to embrace new media. New media can be an inexpensive way for your company to build community and culture around your products or services, gain visibility and provide a medium for you to get your message out efficiently, rapidly and effectively.

Technorati now tracks 19.6 million blogs, a number that has doubled about every five months for the past three years. If that growth were to continue, all 6.7 billion people on the planet will have a blog by April 2009. Given these numbers there is no debate anymore about the validity of this medium. Instead it’s time for organizations to start thinking about how they can effectively utilize this new medium and get in the game.

Creating a strong blogger relations program is the first step towards an effective communications strategy. Nokia recently garnered a lot of attention and won the hearts and minds of many influential bloggers by launching a dedicated N series N-90 Blogger relations initiative. Here Nokia is able to offer up material and information to bloggers in a medium and tone that makes sense to them. Nokia built a site http://n90.bloggercomm.com/ and has a team of folks dedicated to tracking and partaking in the online conversation. Unlike journalists, bloggers are looking for much more interaction. They are not just interested in facts, they are interested in being part of the development of products. In many cases, feeling part of a community or something larger is what drives a blogger to have a favorable opinion of your product or company.

Don’t have millions of dollars or handful of people to dedicate towards blogger relations. No problem. There are simple things emerging companies can do to ensure that they keep bloggers engaged.

Below are a few tips from Shanth Interactive’s Blogger Relations practice.

1) When in Rome act like a Roman

Reach bloggers where they are most comfortable, on blogs. By becoming active in the blogosphere you can start to build relationships with the tastemakers. Post comments, send personal emails, write about them on your blog, include them in your communications outreach and finally make them feel part of something larger. Maybe even include them in the development of your product. Let them do the work for you.

One of our clients recently was preparing for a product launch. They had a tight budget and limited resources. In addition to a more traditional media launch strategy we suggested getting bloggers involved before hand by offering up a free beta version. Our client had over 500 people sign up within two days and had the blogosphere buzzing. By including them early in the process we gained their respect, trust and forged strong relationships. Many of these bloggers made suggestions and improvements to the product, in turn giving them more of a vested interest in the outcome of our launch. The buzz generated from the blogs helped us propel our launch even further. Not only did we successfully garner media attention, we also had hundreds of bloggers helping us spread the word when the time came.

2) Have an authentic voice

Following the lead of other companies like General Motors and Microsoft, American Express paid a handful of bloggers to discuss small business. This left a bad taste for those brands in the blogosphere given that paying folks to write about products or services seemed to be more suspect than trustworthy. The backlash taught marketers a huge lesson about consumer driven content. Have an authentic voice.

When it comes to new media if you are a small company you have an advantage here. Your sincerity and entrepreneurial spirit rubs off on bloggers especially when they have direct contact with executives. Letting bloggers to some degree help you set the industry agenda empowers them and in turn gives you a whole community to lean on during important launches or announcements.

3) Take online conversations offline

We were at a conference a couple of months ago and heard the CMO of Palm speak on a panel. He recalled a situation where an influential blogger was giving unfavorable reviews of a new Palm product. After contacting the blogger several times the CMO was able to secure a meeting with the blogger. After arriving at the agreed location, the bloggers house, the CMO realized that the infamous blogger was a fourteen year old boy. Palm was able to successfully change the bloggers opinion and make him one of Palm’s greatest fans by giving him the personal attention of a Palm executive and really listening to what he had to say.

Sometimes it takes more than a posting or a link to build a relationship. Feel free to have “human” interactions with bloggers. Maybe even consider having an event or summit of some kind. Just like media relations, building relationships with bloggers takes time.

Consumers traditionally voted with dollars but today new media give them a megaphone straight to the ears of executives. Executives are you listening?

This article was published in SDForum news February 2006/March 2006