Filed under: Digital Adoption by Digado

Here is why I love to read the blogs of ‘Virtual World naysayers’ more so then I like to read the blogs of those that agree with the potential of Virtual Worlds.

After they hit you with 5,000 words of steaming horse pockey about socio-virtual-graph-branding consumer empowerment (or whatever the hell it is they prattle on about) and you, like a normal person, blink slowly and say, “Wait, you want me to involve my business with that? No way!,” they respond with, “Oh, well you just don’t get it.”

This is quoted from a website called ‘AdvertisingAge’, an article called Newsflash: Second Life is still a waste of time, money. Now apart from the 2 cheap shots about the title and contradicting himself in this one line he makes a good point. If we trade his own constructed line of buzzwords and exchange it for more real, commonly used buzzwords such as immersion, rich brand engagement or even social networks and user generated content, and keep using them to explain the advantages of Virtual Worlds - we keep preaching to the choir.

Businesses that are not on the cutting edge of technology, which is a vast majority I believe, don’t understand these terms. Its not because they don’t want to or think its untrue - It’s more likely no one has told them how this helps their brand in terms of sales, and adding something to the things they already do. Remember most of these companies are already spending their advertising budgets, or innovation budgets on other things. Virtual Worlds to them is just another option and whats missing with most ‘believers’ is the ‘elevator pitch’ or the ‘executive summary’ telling the decision makers WHY they should invest. Something short, and powerful on the potential of Virtual Worlds in a language the CEO’s or lead marketing departments of today understand.

I think Reuben Steiger had a good go with the video on Millions of Us. But even he at some point drifts of into the ‘Age of the Avatar’. That that will get you some attention in the virtual World believers side, but it will lose you the same amount of attention on the other side, discarding it as more ‘horse pockey’. Now if there was an easy way of creating this pitch I am certain it would ave been done - and maybe it has. I don’t consider the presence of lÓreal or Coca Cola evidence of this because they are such major corporations they have nothing to lose. Their R&D could just be experimenting, researching, trying to find answers to questions that Second Life hasn’t been able to answer yet.

My point is - ‘You don’t get it’ (and I am somewhat guilty of this myself) is not ‘their’ problem, its ‘ours’. If the believers of the potential of Virtual Worlds are so convinced, why is it so difficult to get traditional media and companies to understand? Are we missing some information, or hiding it? Is it just too ‘theological’ at this time or maybe an attitude new technology brings (web 2.0 snobs). Getting told ‘you don’t get it’ is really not what the decision makers of any corporation wants to hear - even when you don’t say it this crudely, you might be with choosing words that sound convincing to you, but in fact just blur the essence of your pitch.

To illustrate my point - I want to take you back to 2006, the peak of Linden Labs’ hyping machine. What was ‘the hype’ all about? Numbers. Not theories, not technological potential or marketing ideology - Linden Labs produced the language the decision makers understood. 6.000.000 ‘users’, growing with substantial numbers every day. People willing to spend by trading between 1 and 2 million dollar each day in stuff that is not even real! Of course this all collapsed once these same decision makers where told these numbers where either wrong, inflated or just not as good as the thought they would be, and the hype turned against Second Life in particular.

Posted on: January 1, 2008 | Share on: