Pulic Relations in Virtual Worlds
May 27th, 2008 by Tim Greenhalgh
As part of the social media mix, how do PR agencies engage in virtual worlds?
Text100’s optimistic, if slightly aged, view is that virtual worlds are an essential part of the social network – and will grow in importance over the next few years.
A more sanguine views from brand communications agency Cow suggests there are opportunities but also current issues that make engagement in virtual worlds like Second Life problematic for agencies.
We’ve seen a few PR companies working in SL including: Text 100, Leo Burnett, crayon, Edelman, GSD&M, Lewis PR and Press Dispensary. Measuring the effectiveness of their engagement is a fuzzy process.
Recently, senior Second Life residents voted to ban PR from their environment (over-zealous marketers) but are still discussing exactly how to do that!
However, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company reports that virtual worlds are on the cusp of a major expansion - particularly as a way to reach younger customers - and that companies were “ignoring them at their peril.”
I wonder if there will be a second coming for worlds like Second Life – and with that, opportunities for PR agencies to engage. My experience of them has been largely negative – and recent upgrades in Second Life have not changed that view. But Second Life’s in-world economy is growing at 15 percent annually with user hours, concurrency, and economic transactions all showed robust growth.
Against that there’s been a recent slowing in Second Life new account sign-ups. In March only 408,000 new accounts were created, the smallest gain in absolute numbers since September 2007, and the smallest monthly percent gain since Second Life’s debut in April 2001. Second Life shed 1,656 paid accounts in March, the fourth month in a row more people got out of the land trade than entered it. Total premium accounts stand at 89,875, below last summer’s 94,607 peak.
Estimates of active users also vary from 500,000 to 11.7 million (total accounts: 13million).
Right now, there may be up to 20 virtual world companies developing in stealth mode. They may see the light in the Autumn at the Virtual Worlds shows in San Francisco and London. Multiverse has just released a platform upgrade that gives developers the choice to build worlds in 3D or 2D Flash.
And Apple’s iPhone games initiative opens up the potential for 2D/3D mobile social spaces.
At the younger end of the market, Habbo Hotel remains the benchmark. There are currently Habbo communities in 32 countries on six continents. To date, more than 94 million Habbo characters have been created globally and 9.5 million unique users worldwide visit Habbo each month (source: Google Analytics). The average Habbo user spends nearly 40 minutes on the site per visit.
In-game advertising company Double Fusion signed up recently to manage interactive brand campaigns with retail, fashion and sports companies in US. Over 200 advertisers have used Habbo globally - in-game billboards, contests, interstitials and instant-console messaging, customized brand rooms, sponsored quests.
Right now, I think that my advice to brands would be to watch and wait for Web 3.0, where hopefully the current technical and cultural dislocations in virtual worlds will have been resolved. Meanwhile, we could be thinking through exactly how to advise and engage when the time is right.
Tags: , habbo, PR, second life, virtual worlds
May 27th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Thanks for mentioning our virtual world work here. I should preface this with a note that the blog post you linked to is now almost a year old and the landscape has certainly evolved.
One of the most attractive qualities of virtual world environments is the ability to connect and socialize with other people that share your interests.
We’ve seen a proliferation of niche virtual worlds emerge over the last 12 months catering to very specific audiences. The opportunity for communicators is to help brands build communities and to facilitate opportunities for conversations and meet-ups on these platforms.
In the future, it might not be Second Life where this socializing occurs, but communications functions within organizations will be more empowered than ever to leverage these spaces for community building activities. It’s an incredible opportunity to engage customers at a very personal level. Toyota is an example of a company that is experimenting in several virtual worlds simultaneously to reach different audiences.
One last thing - the “banning PR people” conversation occurred more than two years ago. It was largely limited to the Dreamland sim and was a reaction to many companies participating in SL for the sole purpose of generating mainstream media attention by claiming to be “the first” in their respective industries to do so.
If a company enters a virtual world environment with objectives that include community building, collaboration or education, the opportunity to be immensely successful is very real.