Why understand Second Life? One reason is because you can try out ideas that may not be ready for the real world, or may be just begninning. In this way, you can gain strategic insight fairly quickly.
For example, one of the fads in addressable advertising right now is a technology called Blue Casting out of the UK. Blue casting is a bluetooth transceiver that sits behind a billboard, kiosk, etc. When it senses a bluetooth phone nearby, it’ll send that phone content, whether it’s a message, a video, or whatever.
The big idea is that the BlueCast server can sense someone because of their phone.
Well, in Second Life, Linden Scripting Language has functions that can sense avatars and objects. You can actually prototype out the idea in Second Life to see how it might work in the real world. Isn’t that a great way of setting expectations?
By prototyping the process, you can find out the best way to interrupt people, because let’s face it, it’s still interrup marketing. Advertisers who jump on the bandwagon may benefit from prototyping the process in Second Life. You can see how people preferred to be interrupted; what categories they may be most responsive to; and other usage information, all of which may help prevent a marketer from making a heavy-handed mistake in how the execute in the real world.
What’s most likely cheaper? Prototyping the process in a forgiving environment, or running a test in mall with real hardware and real people? For early stage ideas, Second Life may be cheaper. It may also get you into the real world more appropriately, which could be your strategic advantage.
2 responses so far ↓
1 John // Dec 13, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Hello, not having any Bluetooth devices I am curious. Do people like having unsolicited messages sent to their devices? Is there a method to opt out or for those who are not interested just consider these like SPAM?
I for one would not appreciate unsolicited note cards or such while moving about in SL. It seems even the term of interrup marketing is unseemly. Who wants to be interrupted - its why no-call lists were invited and so popular.
Do the coveted 18 - 39 group like interrup marketing? Might be revealing my age range here, but interrup marketing seems counter productive.
Just some thoughts,
John
2 Joel Greenberg // Dec 14, 2006 at 12:12 am
It is an excellent question, which can be partly answered by prototyping in SL.
There may be levels of annoyance. Certainly, having to deal with unsolicited notecards, which cause a dailog box to appear, could be annoying after a while. However, seeing messages appear in the chat window is less annoying. Indeed, many objects in SL do address avatars by name, so scanning is already in common. For example, many stores have a scanner that puts, “Hello. Welcome to ” in the chat window.
Many marketers are blinded by the desire for results and wouldn’t necessarily think about the interruption issue you raise. However, if they prototyped it in SL and people rebelled, they’d be better off than if they did it in the real world and people rebelled.
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