Marketing Second Life

In all the furor over LL trying to "clean up" the grid, something has become clear to me. Linden Lab doesn't understand their own product. Because it was made by adults, relatively unsupervised, it contains adult content...and LL is ashamed of it. They're trying to change it into something it is not, in order to market it to universities and corporations and the intelligentsia for high and noble purposes.

But they (well, we) have created a gold mine here. LL just isn't marketing it right.

In Robert A. Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", a group of revolutionaries is attempting to overthrow a repressive "government", the Lunar Authority. But they have a hard time getting the rank and file population to join the cause, because, as Heinlein says through his main character, the average Joe is interested only in "beer, betting, women, and work". That's true not only on the Moon, but in every human society.

Well, we can't have beer in SL for obvious technical reasons. LL got rid of betting for reasons of legal liability. That leaves women and work...and not everyone wants to use SL to run a microbusiness, or as a tool to facilitate their real world business.

Which leaves...women. Well, sex, to be inclusive.

I'm not saying that LL should go out and cover the building with neon signs saying "HOME OF PIXEL PORN". But sex sells. That's why pretty women appear in commercials for everything from laundry detergent to cars. It's one of the main reasons people try out SL, and an awful lot of in world businesses are based, either directly or indirectly, on it.

If it's done with style, class, and finesse, Linden Lab can market SL to the masses *just as it is*, and bring in way more business than ever before.

So let's help out the boys in San Francisco. Come up with some advertising campaign ideas and slogans for them. Not *just* sex...how would you tell people about SL, in 25 words or less? Here are a few to get you started.

1. A glamorous, very expensive woman sips champagne. Someone tells her about, say, World of Warcraft. She laughs. "That's a game for kids. I play Second Life." She stretches luxuriously. "THAT's a game for grownups."

2. Second Life: When you outgrow kids' games.

3. A man is counting a stack of dollars. "Second Life may be a virtual world...but the money I make is REAL."

4. A happy couple on camera. Woman takes her husband's arm and smiles lovingly at him. "I met the love of my life in Second Life."

Your turn.

"Second Life. Build the basement of your dreams. And Mom's. Where taking out the trash is a mouse click away."

"G.I.R.L.s gone wild!"

Har har har. I'm serious. If we can give LL some Really Good Stuff, maybe they'll go off and start using it to give SL's image a makeover. Instead of trying to rearrange the grid on us to do the same thing.

Your world, your imagination, no matter what.

"style, class, and finesse," ...... "market ... to the masses"

Well, there's always a first time.

Bonus points, BIG bonus points, for getting a couple that did actually meet in SL before they met in RL.

I'd have them just media-blast the screen. Seifert, Greenies, Javiar (yes, THAT Javiar), cool furry builds, Jopsie, Starax/LW/Madcow/Cheen/NPIRLers, giant snail races, IoW, Apollo, surfing, racing, flying, sailing, shooting, (edit: Caledon!!) etc. Talkin' about 100 images in 30 seconds, fade to black, fade in "SecondLife.com".

(edit: not talking about showing pictures of these residents - talking about pix or quick vids of their works)

"'Second Life'; a great place to spend time until 'World of Warcraft' releases its *next* expansion!"

---true story.

that'd be my wife and me...

Second Life: Where your dream girl might actually be the obnoxious guy on the barstool next to you.

make a commercial like those ones that advertise chat lines

hot girl in skimpy clothes saying "I know where the action is, that's why I'm playing SL tonite...I can do ANYTHING I want"

*naughty smile*

Problem is, everything I've read suggests that Linden Lab has always and forever wanted SL to be something like "Web 3.0", an across-the-board alternative to the conventional 2D web. Now clearly the web has LOTS of adult content on it, and sex is an inestimably huge driving force there (quite possibly the biggest and most influential force), but asking Linden Lab to market SL as a platform primarily for entertainment and leisure you are also asking them to give up the dream of becoming Web 3.0, and instead aspire to becoming "Facebook 3.0" or something like that. Not an easy transition to accomplish.

Note that I absolutely agree with you; SL is not a suitable business platform for all kinds of reasons; on the other hand it's a fabulous entertainment platform for grownups and should be marketed that way. I just think it unlikely in the extreme that Linden Lab will give up on the vision I mentioned any time soon, and might even let SL fail outright before changing that drastically, despite the Golden Goose being right here in their hands already.

*cough* sorry. Anyway...

- A man in "successful casual" dress (chinos or pressed jeans, short sleeve cotton shirt):
"I spend my days managing someone else's empire. But in the evening I'm making my own!" *zoom in to impressive build on monitor*

M.Linden was brought in to fatten the LL coffers by any means possible.

Good one, Anti. And I, in return, agree with your points and your assessment.

The problem is an inherent one. The 2D web is a very bare framework indeed, which allows almost anything to be hung on it.

Any "3D web" carries with it some additional requirements and restrictions. Bandwidth, for one thing. Content protection -- on the Web, I have to enter a URL to navigate to someone's content. In 3D space, I just move my camera over closer to it. No "fences". Some 3D worlds try to fix this by making each person's space a separate "room"...but then you lose the 3D-ness of the overall space...

Ahem. (Drat it, I am too easy to derail. Keep OT for once, Lin!)

Keep 'em coming, please.

So help him do his job without screwing (pardon) up our fun. How would YOU sell SL? Keep those cards and letters coming!

CUT TO: Desmond Shang, in front of a complex Caledonian build.
"I founded my own nation in Second Life. Caledon has XXX happy residents, and a waiting list of potential immigrants that's as long as my arm."

or...

NARRATOR: Why do people love Second Life?
CUT TO: Sound and video bites of several avatars.
"I love the parties!"
"I love walking on the beach under the stars"
"I love making beautiful clothes...and selling them."
"I love to explore."
"I love meeting people from all over the world."
"I'm free here to live as I please. That's what I love about Second Life"

But.. but.. but.. SL already is the 3D web!! The only thing they're really missing (aside from stability/scalability) is an SL version of banner ads that can be charged for. (Desmond suggested once that those could be done while you're waiting for your TP to complete.)

here's another, Mark...

WHAT IF...you could live anywhere you wanted? (Series of SL landscape screenshots)
WHAT IF...you could fly? (clip of avatars flying, preferably hand in hand)
WHAT IF...you could live like you were a millionaire? (shot of avatars partying on large yacht)
WHAT IF...you could make anything you could imagine? (speeded up sequence of building. "Starry Night?"
WHAT IF...you could BE anything you could imagine? (screenshots of human and nonhuman avatars)
There's a place like that.
SECOND LIFE. Your World. Your Imagination.

How do you sell sex, romance, and the sexiness of SL "to the masses" without making it look like eharmony with avatars? That is my concern. To me that narrows or drastically changes the market for SL in ways I'm not all that comfortable with.

Humans are sexual creatures. I don't think the problem is imagining the sexual possibilities of a virtual world or finding as much of it as we would like when we get here. I think there is a bigger problem of SL being so strongly associated with sex and online romantic relationships. I know that is the first reaction of anyone in my RL who I've mentioned SL to, and the reason they don't approve of the fact I spend my time here let alone want to sign up and see it for themselves.



I think these are all great. I guess what I don't understand is how the new policy hurts any of these.

BTW, I really like and respect you, Lindal. I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm actually very interested in a discussion about this. It's fine if another thread or a conversation in PM would be a more appropriate place for that. I don't want to derail your thread.

I completely agree.

Only problem with interstitial ads during TP is they'd never rez in time, even on those days when TPs take forever because those are the same days texture loading takes forever

OK, in the spirit of th thread I have a few ideas...

Empty nester aged couple at home, nice house, well decorated, but empty. Man and woman each nestle into their comfy chairs in the living room. *Voice over says something like "Living in different places doesen't mean everyone can't come home for Sunday dinner." Camera pans in over the woman's shoulder and you see on her screen a similar house, this one in SL and bustling with life. Avatars of all ages are there sitting on the furniture, maybe gathered around a table chatting in text and voice. RL family portrait in a prim frame hanging on the wall. Camera pans out a little more to the outside of the house beautifully landscaped, idyllic, sunsetting over the water. "Second Life, come home again."


Another:
Messy, bustling house. Parents in their thirties helping their kids finish off homework, packing lunches for the next day, finally tucking their kids into bed.
Wife: I'm exhausted.
Husband: Want to get out for a little bit?
Wife: Thank God we bought that beach house.
Cut to a scene of them in SL on a white sandy beach, each reclined in a hammock gently rocking with the sound of the ocean in the background.
"Second Life, where you can get away, no matter where you are."

Too cheesy?

Hush, Nim.
You might even be right, that the new policy would be consistent with these marketing concepts.

What I am trying to do here, though, is to get LL to stop fiddling with US, the residents, in an attempt to make SL "look better" to Corporate America...and concentrate on selling the product AS IT IS RIGHT NOW to a wider audience of individuals.

Yes...they could do both. But they risk losing their existing customers in an attempt to appeal to new ones, a very dumb idea. The old saw is "better a bird in the hand than two in the bush", and in business terms it works out to "keeping one existing customer happy is worth ten times more than getting a new one."

I'm trying to show them how they can do that...keep the existing customers happy AND get more.

I like the second one a lot, Nimue. No, not too cheesy.

I agree LL is pretty bad about this. When it comes to the userbase, they seem pretty willing to rely on churn and the constant influx of new people, rather than hanging onto the majority of people they already have. It's a problem.

Good point. I think the trick is to not deny the sex and romance aspect, while also mentioning all of the OTHER great things about SL. Note that each one of the concepts I've thrown out make at least a passing reference to it...without saying, "GET YOUR ASHES HAULED IN SL".

You're absolutely right. We're sexual creatures, and any world we create (given the freedom we have had here, up to now) is going to reflect that. But it's not everything. "2 to 4 %", according to LL. I don't believe it's THAT small, but still, there is a lot more to SL.

Let's market the whole thing. The sex and romance, the entrepreneurs, the socializing, the creativity.

(and no, you weren't snarky at all. *HUGZ*)