“They wouldn’t be the first beer brand to enter the world. The press and publicity that was showered on companies like Toyota, IBM and Starwoods when they debuted in SL wouldn’t be likely to be repeated for the third or fourth beer brand to enter.”
In other words, they don’t trust on a ‘return on investments’ without the media attention. The public within SL is not enough. I think this might be a line of thoughts many companies will continue to have for a while, at least until there are enough people IN Second Life. Suddenly there is no objection to entering it as the ‘third or fourth’ beer to enter’.
“They found research from Market Truths (March 07 - costs $100 or L$12,500) which said that if brands fail to position themselves correctly in SL, they can expect a backlash from residents. This led the company to conduct its own research among residents. It turned out that almost half thought that the Heineken brand would not be a good fit within Second Life. Only 19% said they thought it would. Don’t ask me why that was the case - as I understand it, there was something of a backlash against all commercial brands in the world earlier this year and it may just be part of that.”
The backlash was largely caused by companies that copied their off-line branding in the virtual world. Adding nothing and claiming unproportional attention, later spinning this to negative reports. Once they left they claimed SL did not work for them. The research they talk about is a good start, but based on wrong data. The extrapolation seems to be way of as well, research costing $100 (actually, 12,500L$ is only $46.00) can never be a good reflection of the opinion of a community counting roughly 1.5 million members.
“It didn’t sit very easily with the company’s CSR policy. Heineken wants to be seen as promoting the socially responsible use of alcohol. Clearly, if they made Heineken bottles and kegs available in SL, it would be reasonably likely that residents would play-act drinking to excess. What else is there to do with a keg of virtual beer? (or errm… real beer).”
This is the strangest reason of all. They claim their beer would be virtually ill-used, enacting drunkenness and sending the wrong image? What do they base this on? There are at least 6 or 7 beer brands already inside Second Life, 4 of them made by the companies themselves. The 3 others created by the users. The irony is of course - Heineken is already one of those 3, and the ’sightings’ of open drunkenness have been ‘fairly limited’.
If anything it would be an opportunity for their ‘responsibility’ campaign to reach out to their target audience. The male, 18-28 is largely represented within Second Life. The key, as always, is adding something to the community, and being remarkable at the same time.
“Hand-in-hand with this came worries about the age of SL residents. It’s company policy at Heineken not to sponsor events where the proportion of adults is lower than 70%. Linden Labs’ own figures suggest that this is comfortably so, but the company had an alternative report created by ComScore that suggested that only 68% of SL residents are 21 or over. This made them fear that Linden’s figures were unreliable. Again, this wouldn’t sit well with their responsible drinking policy.”
32% might be 21 years of age and younger, I don’t know how these statistics claim to accurately narrow it down to the last 2 percentages. Also, I am not sure how well their 70% rule fits in their Dutch cinema campaigns (they advertise in and before nearly every movie after 7:00PM). But isn’t this the age you have to reach out with the responsibility campaign? Obviously the Heineken marketing department thought not, I can only disagree…
“Joined with this was some anxiety about litigation. It seemed a reasonable supposition that there are ambulance-chasing US lawyers sitting in SL and waiting for a beer brand to give some of their product to a minor. Such a suit could well seem newsworthy to a technophobe press keen to sniff out any suggestion of child abuse online.”
There is no actual beer given to a minor, it is virtual. You can flag content as ‘mature’, making the user sign an agreement they are at least 21 years of age, effectively making them responsible. This overcautious statement doesn’t sound like Heineken at all, advertising in movies approved for 12 years and up…
In conclusion I am not saying Heineken should have entered Second Life at all. I think it might not work out in Heineken’s favor to enter in fourth or fifth position. But for the following reason: they have always been known for their innovative and unique advertising campaigns. Entering at this point, they risk receiving some of that dangerous ‘me too’ image. But the 5 reasons given don’t seem to have anything to do with whats really going on in Second Life.
Posted on: November 26, 2007 | Share on:
Abhishek Saxena on 
Sophie on 
What Businesses learned in 2007 about the Digital Race | Digado said on January 4th
[...] and social image were never its strongest points to begin with. Many brands and developers such as Heineken are holding back on even mentioning Second Life, so I believe it has certainly slowed down the [...]
VeeJay Burns
said on January 9th
This is all pretty strong PR BS from Heineken off course. They’ve got an island in Second Life since early 2007. Rumours say that their virtual representation has been finished since summer 07 but that Heineken is keeping it closed because it fears the current negative attitude in the media.
Rick van der Wal
said on January 9th
It will be interesting to see what Heineken will do. This has never been an official press release (the statements of Heineken are made by Marco van Veen, a manager at the Innovation & Collaboration Center at Heineken, during a presentation), but it made opening their island even harder - up to the point where I seriously doubt they will unless they can blend in with other brands - which would be very counter-productive to their initial goal of creating attention.
Another option is to find something really innovative - something that will get you noticed not because you are Heineken, but because you’ve created something of value for the community.
I really hope they go with the last option rather then to abandon the idea and ‘come back later’.