SXSW07: Avatar based Marketing

I took these hurried notes on my phone, believe it or not. 🙂 Italics are my editorial comments. Overall thoughts: I didn’t think it was that good a panel (sorry, Tony!) . Seems like not very sophisticated thinking from lots of questioners, and folks planning to do marketing in virtual worlds have a lot of learning to do.

Tony Walsh’s panel on avatar based mktg. Besides tony, also a sr editor at Harvard Business Review, a social media community company ceo, a guy who worked on Virtual Laguna Beach and The Hills, and a Puzzle Pirate.

Video of the hills. The girls from the hills: ‘the best thing about the hills and it’s like the show but virtually. The best part is the dancing! You can sit down and make out! Fashion challenges.’ Very mtkg-ingy video .

Overview of project leapfrog. How to bring mass tv audience . Build lifestyle brands is goal. Via interconnected multiplatform network. Plan to move aggressivley in next two yrs. Stepped out of mtv to skunkworks it. Trying to get consumers to engage more deeply. Vlb was first.

Describes lb, then vlb. Live the show. Then was the vHills spinoff. Extended their roles from the life into the virtual world. Chars who do fashion in show do fashion challenges, guy at epic records does a music show online.

Built connected worlds tat mimic real landscape.

Then he gets cut off — this s supposed to be a panel, but he had slides. On to lauren wheeler from 3 rings.

2.7m registered pirates. Revenue shot up when doubloons introed. Recently launched bang howdy. And then whirled. Shows demo. All about making games ‘we are giving them our games to hack up, we have a few small codebases for those who can hack actionscript.’

Attention currency is called ‘flow’ ? Eventually translatable to ‘gold’ which is the real currency.

That was the intros, sheesh, rambling. Q’s now.

Pp: haven’t decided on ads. There are brands and themes, but we leave space open for others.

Linda zimmer: how did you go from muds to this? Bc of social media. The web is going this way. Most brands are sitting back.

Huh, tons of spam text msgs here.

HBR guy wrote av based mktg article which was a catalyst.

Gruber from mtv said that sl was where he first realized the mktg power.

Lauren was on simcity and sims and such.

Pp was always planned to have resident-resident transactions. Cf the crafting systems.

Talk about identity? Pp more guided, but sl or there are extensions of real self. HBR says 2 streams of thought. One is spaces as venues to sell. Lots of power there. But subquestion is if you go in as a company does it matter that the ppl u sell to are not real ppl? Are the consumers acting as they would in rl?

Linda: big debate. No agreement. Perception that you sell to avs not ppl. Avs have diff needs than extending yr brand into the rl world.

Mtv: no, you can’t separate them. Avs & ppl are same, the mktg is to them.

HBR: puppeteer is always there, but consider disinhibition. Will av try products they wouldn’t? And then extend it to rl?

Uh, isn’t this a settled question by now?

From audience:

Sl player, rev tuna oddfellow. Did in world funeral for virtual friend, then weddings, etc. No question here, just long comments that real emotional contact matters.

Betsy book of there.com: in yr exp, have you found that some brands work better than others? Linda: cos that grok content. Mtv, cnet, reuters. Media companies. Consumer cos: not so much, they don’t get 1 on 1 community bldg.

Mtv: we work close w companies. There are demo differences & suitabillity. Most products can fit.

HBR: a brand or product which takes advtg of the interaction and engagement. Clothing, the mtv world. Less useful is it is billboards.

Does it relate to identifying w brand? tony: you need sensitivitty to culture. Nothing worse that contextually inappropriate ad.

HBR: 1st thought that dannon yogurt in sl was stupid, but maybe works for identity reasons.

Iota, music co: done experiments in sl, cannot measure success rate well. Need to prove that it is valuable and not a fad to bosses. Need stats.

Mtv: will give stats at virtual worlds 2007.

Iota: found that avs want to interact w artists. But bands can’t use sl, too hard. How do u measure attention in a vw?

Mtv: reports on traffic, activity.

Pp: we have attention currency for games, when you chat, review, play, you get this. Then you can trade attention into ‘real’ currency.

Iota: what about literally stealing a brand? Or pretend I am someone else?

Tony: TOS. Not supposed to…

Mtv: we show auth info on cast so they can’t be impersonated.

Linda: don’t overlook offline stuff when measuring. On ip, body doubles hop in sl lets you buy celebrity avs. Virtually blind blog by ip attorney. Do not be surprised that players want to use yr brands, you spent $ to make them want to. You need to adapt on ip restrictions.

Discovery chnl: value of in sl vs outside sl?

Mtv: we looked at many choices. Sl audience vs teenage girls were different, and sl was hard to get into.

Disc: does choice of not sl limit your audience?

I boggle — vlb may have more users! Sl is far from being the only choice!

Linda: target yr audience.

Tony: like pcdlounge.

Q: how mainstream does it get, what happens when sl caps?

Tony: lots of worlds out there and more coming…

HBR: shopping sites going av based.

Linda: amazon wld kill for 20k concurrent. Rly??

Q: we do rl politics. what lessons wld u point to?

Pp: we are not looking solely for mktg space, but for social networking. Inspired by myspace. Create groups, forums, any topic.

Tony: need to ask what r ur goals, get on spaces and see their attitudes.

Pp: if they want to spend $, they may not want to spend real money vs the virt currency.

Q: played coh, ads subtle. And ms bought massive. Myspace coopted by mktg. Cld this become nothing but messaging and users get alienated?

Tony: don’t spam ppl! Can’t be in face.

Linda: connect pl to each other, not ppl to brand. Drop ad mentality, it does not work.

Q: sl as 3d net, coopting community. Mktg shifts from the sl community to mktg to casual users… Wht happens?

Mtv:

Had to go then for lunch 🙂