Marketing Second Life: We Can Do Better

[LaskyaClaren]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Rodvik seemed excited that SL was attracting 20,000 new signups a day when he arrived. He didn't mention that SL was losing 20,007 of them per day. New signups are now down to 11,000/day, of which we're losing maybe 11,007. 

They're disenchanting only half as many people as just three years ago.

That seems like a significant improvement to me. 

Maybe LL

is

doing a better job of marketing?

Retention is the issue.

---

Sorry, Maddy; I don't know how I missed this. Maybe if you were less nefarious and sneaky, I'd have seen it . . . ;-)

Yes. Retention is the issue.

BUT . . . they need to attract those that they are capable of retaining, if you know what I mean. There is no point in attracting as new sign-ups people who are not going to be happy with what the platform has to offer, or who are just looking for a quick "snack," and will be contributing little or nothing to the economy, the culture, etc.

[LaskyaClaren]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

It's like watching a glorious landscape roll past from behind the window of a bus.

;-)

---

I have fond memories of a group effort to convert the rear window of one to stained glass, using nothing but gently licked Jujubes.

---

Ewwwwww . . .

Well, it's actually a pretty comfortable bus. No onboard food or drink, but they have wifi, and the seats are good for napping. :-)

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

It's like watching a glorious landscape roll past from behind the window of a bus.

;-)

---

I have fond memories of a group effort to convert the rear window of one to stained glass, using nothing but gently licked Jujubes.

---

Ewwwwww . . .

Well, it's actually a pretty comfortable bus. No onboard food or drink, but they have wifi, and the seats are good for

napping

. :-)

---

Be thankful you don't wear glasses, the temptation would overwhelm me.

[LaskyaClaren]

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

It's like watching a glorious landscape roll past from behind the window of a bus.

;-)

---

I have fond memories of a group effort to convert the rear window of one to stained glass, using nothing but gently licked Jujubes.

---

Ewwwwww . . .

Well, it's actually a pretty comfortable bus. No onboard food or drink, but they have wifi, and the seats are good for

napping

. :-)

---

Be thankful you don't wear glasses, the temptation would overwhelm me.

---

But I don't even like jujubes!!!! :-(

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Rodvik seemed excited that SL was attracting 20,000 new signups a day when he arrived. He didn't mention that SL was losing 20,007 of them per day. New signups are now down to 11,000/day, of which we're losing maybe 11,007. 

They're disenchanting only half as many people as just three years ago.

That seems like a significant improvement to me. 

Maybe LL

is

doing a better job of marketing?

Retention is the issue.

---

Sorry, Maddy; I don't know how I missed this. Maybe if you were less nefarious and sneaky, I'd have seen it . . . ;-)

Yes. Retention is the issue.

BUT . . . they need to attract those that they are capable of retaining, if you know what I mean. There is no point in attracting as new sign-ups people who are not going to be happy with what the platform has to offer, or who are just looking for a quick "snack," and will be contributing little or nothing to the economy, the culture, etc.

---

Less nefarious? That's like asking me not to breathe. People have done that.

 

Attract those they can retain.

Retain those they can attract.

Two ways to grow.

There are probably more.

[Madelaine McMasters]

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

It's like watching a glorious landscape roll past from behind the window of a bus.

;-)

---

I have fond memories of a group effort to convert the rear window of one to stained glass, using nothing but gently licked Jujubes.

---

Ewwwwww . . .

Well, it's actually a pretty comfortable bus. No onboard food or drink, but they have wifi, and the seats are good for

napping

. :-)

---

Be thankful you don't wear glasses, the temptation would overwhelm me.

---

But I don't even 

like

jujubes!!!! :-(

---

There you go again, thinking it's about you.

It's about me, it's entirely about me.

[BLADEZRAVEN]

    

 

     ok let's be honest, most of us are artists and whatnot ,  so if you want new players you have to represent sex and relationships, its the only way, if the marketing dept want to portray SL as an upscaple imvu then so be it !  alot of teens are leaving fb and we might snag them

be honest artistry and deep thinking will not snag them, but sex will, we need teens and twentysomethings to join , then down the road after 5 or 6 months they will discover the artistry and creating etc ...

me personally i think SL should have game cards like imvu and wow and club penguin in all these stores it would really really help us gain new members , 10 and 25 and 50 dollar cards would be awsome

lets not try to be so complicated, if juvenile efforts work then so be it  .

 

.

 

            

[Dresden Ceriano]

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Rodvik seemed excited that SL was attracting 20,000 new signups a day when he arrived. He didn't mention that SL was losing 20,007 of them per day. New signups are now down to 11,000/day, of which we're losing maybe 11,007. 

They're disenchanting only half as many people as just three years ago.

That seems like a significant improvement to me. 

Maybe LL

is

doing a better job of marketing?

Retention is the issue.

---

Sorry, Maddy; I don't know how I missed this. Maybe if you were less nefarious and sneaky, I'd have seen it . . . ;-)

Yes. Retention is the issue.

BUT . . . they need to attract those that they are capable of retaining, if you know what I mean. There is no point in attracting as new sign-ups people who are not going to be happy with what the platform has to offer, or who are just looking for a quick "snack," and will be contributing little or nothing to the economy, the culture, etc.

---

The problem with retention is that most people in today's society expect their entertainment to be handed to them in a readily consumable state.  Very few are willing to put any sort of effort into being entertained... some aren't even capable of entertaining themselves on any level.

Television, movies, porn... they all offer instant, effortless entertainment.  Most successful social media sites require very little effort as well.  Video games set forth a structured set of events/goals which, once achieved, supply a participant with the sort of instant gratification to which they're accustomed.

Second Life works contrary to this type of mindset and therefore is, and always will be, at a disadvantage, comparatively.  No type of marketing can overcome this phenomenon.

That doesn't mean that LL shouldn't try to pull these types of people in.  After all, those that "get it" and stay may very well be part of that demographic... not realizing themselves that they've got the capability to enjoy something more demanding than mindlessly sitting on a sofa and watching vampires fighting witches or being witches fighting vampires in some video game.

...Dres

[Dillon Levenque]

---

Dresden Ceriano wrote:

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

It's important that it continue to focus also upon the idea that this is a world of the imagination that can take you places that no other social media platform can.

---

I've been following this thread since its inception and have been reticent to comment so far, simply because my knowledge of marketing strategies is pretty much non-existent.  Nevertheless, I've decided to use this sentence as a jumping off point to give my uneducated opinion.

It seems to me that should one wish to market a product, the focus of that marketing should be largely based upon what that product can offer people which no other product is capable of offering them.  In the case of Second Life, that offering is customization.

Within no other platform, game or virtual world can one achieve the level of avatar and environmental customization which SL offers, period.  This is the very thing which enamored me with SL in the first place and keeps me coming back for more.

I may very well be an anomaly in this respect and this aspect alone may not be sufficient to entice people to try SL, let alone ensure their continued use of it.  But, I'm convinced that it is the single thread which runs through everyone's SL experience, no matter why else they may choose to stay.

If someone smart were to figure out how to display this concept in a clear, succinct manner, it could also be the thread which holds together an ad campaign which can then focus more narrowly on other aspects such as socialization and creativity, while still highlighting this ability and the fact that SL has the market on it.

Perhaps the word "Freedom" should be used, since, if you think about it, that's what this ability translates into.  How hard can it be to sell the concept of freedom?

...Dres

---

It's unusual for me to quote an entire post; I usually just quote the nuggets. This whole post is nuggety (and I've heard that word used in RL so give me no credit for creating it). It's like the slogan should be, "Your world, your imagination. No, really. Go for it."

There has to be some way to make that point. I doubt it can be done with banner ads but I bet there are at least 3,298 people in SL who could create a 30 or 60 second video that would make your premise clear. As has been stated before and since your post, the learning required needs to be part of the message, but I think that can be done.

 

 

edited for punctuation

[MizzFuzzyMoran]

---

BLADEZRAVEN wrote:

         ok let's be honest, most of us are artists and whatnot

---

no were not

and thats the main misteak your all makign hear

most peeple are spectators

who want to talk in bars about wot they have seen

[LaskyaClaren]

---

BLADEZRAVEN wrote:

    

     ok let's be honest, most of us are artists and whatnot ,  so if you want new players you have to represent sex and relationships, its the only way, if the marketing dept want to portray SL as an upscaple imvu then so be it !  alot of teens are leaving fb and we might snag them

be honest artistry and deep thinking will not snag them, but sex will, we need teens and twentysomethings to join , then down the road after 5 or 6 months they will discover the artistry and creating etc ...

me personally i think SL should have game cards like imvu and wow and club penguin in all these stores it would really really help us gain new members , 10 and 25 and 50 dollar cards would be awsome

lets not try to be so complicated, if juvenile efforts work then so be it  .

 

---

With respect, Bladez, there are some serious inconsistencies and problems with these ideas.

To begin with, if teens are "leaving" Facebook (and they are not really "leaving," they are just not using it as much), they are moving instead to simpler chat-based mobile apps such as Snapchat, and not to more complicated PC-based platforms, Second Life represents the kind of programme that is actually the exact opposite of what is now attracting teens: it has a high learning curve, it doesn't play well on a smart phone, etc.

And if we are trying to attract teens, then we are, at the very least, misleading them by suggesting that they can get involved in sex here. Users under 18 are restricted to General areas; they don't even have access to such relatively modest sexuality as is possible in Moderate areas -- unless they lie about their age. And it would be unethical and counterproductive, to put it mildly, to launch an ad campaign that winkingly encourages those teens to circumvent LL's own age restrictions.

Your idea about more games in SL has some potential, perhaps, but let's not forget that LL has in fact been trying that now for a few years, with little obvious success. Possibly simple games of the sort that you describe would be a better focus. However . . .

It is also important to remember that an ad campaign for new users can potentially do more than simply augment the existing user base. It can actually change it, and in so doing, change the very nature of the platform. In the (unlikely) event that LL succeeded in attracting hordes of hormone-crazed teens, their presence would indelibly change the demographic, and the economy of Second Life. If SL merchants and sim owners begin to respond to this new demographic in a major way, there is some potential that they might end up alienating existing users. The result might be that Second Life ends up a very different place than it is now. Might it be more profitable? Perhaps. But it would no longer be recognizable to most of us, and that might mean a net loss in user base.

[Inara Pey]

I've spent three years saying that the Lab needs to look at narrative marketing as a vehicle for marketing and promoting SL. If they needed any more proof as to the power of the the approach, they need only to look more broadly at Draxtor Despres' The Drax Files.

Not, I hasten to add, that they should necessarily go the same route with 5-minute in-depth video "infoverts", but rather that they have a wealth of broad-based community-driven and use-driven stories that could be woven into a rich narrative of linked marketing opportunities. 

There's a much broader issue here than simply promoting SL. There is the entire relationship between promotion and then bringing people to where they (might) want to be in SL. Leaving aside the tackiness of something like the bikini ad or the narrow focus of the vampire ad, there is no actual narrative flow from such ads to the sign-up process through to arriving in-world.   

In this respect, marketing actually touches upon the entire new user experience, as Tateru Nino once observed:

Crafting an effective new-user experience for Second Life starts long before the user logs in for the first time. The Second Life viewer user-interface is not the most important part of a new user’s story

And to take a leaf out of Dusan Writer's pages of wisdom: the Lab really should hire anethnographer.

 

 

[LaskyaClaren]

---

Inara Pey wrote:

I've spent three years saying that the Lab needs to look at

narrative marketing

as a vehicle for marketing and promoting SL.

If they needed any more proof as to the power of the the approach, they need only to look more broadly at Draxtor Despres'

The Drax Files

.

Not, I hasten to add, that they should necessarily go the same route with 5-minute in-depth video "infoverts", but rather that they have a wealth of broad-based community-driven and use-driven stories that could be woven into a rich narrative of linked marketing opportunities. 

There's a much broader issue here than simply promoting SL. There is the entire relationship between promotion and then bringing people to where they (might) want to be in SL. Leaving aside the tackiness of something like the bikini ad or the narrow focus of the vampire ad,

there is no actual

narrative flow

from such ads to the sign-up process through to arriving in-world. 

 

In this respect, marketing actually touches upon the entire new user experience, as Tateru Nino

once observed

:

Crafting an effective new-user experience for Second Life starts long before the user logs in for the first time. The Second Life viewer user-interface is not the most important part of a new user’s story

And to take a leaf out of Dusan Writer's pages of wisdom: the Lab really should hire anethnographer.

 

 

---

Thanks Inara! I was just about to link to your really excellent blog post on this.

I'll do it again anyway: http://modemworld.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/tell-me-a-story-marketing-second-life/

Botgirl Questi's suggestion of stories of RL users is of some relevance here too.

I suppose one possible objection is that most people don't have the patience for narrative: they respond quickly and somewhat mindlessly to reductive visual imagery.

To that I might respond that

 

 

• Even a simple image can evoke a narrative, and can lead more interested users to a more developed one

   

• i doubt that those who are incapable of appreciating narrative are likely to be retained in SL anyway

   

• The success of narrative-based sites such as Upworthy and BuzzFeed suggests that this approach can be very effective even in this age of lightning-fast consumption

Thanks again for this!

[LaskyaClaren]

Botgirl Questi's new blog post, "The Virtual World as Medium, Platform and Product" is relevant to this discussion as well.

http://www.botgirl.com/2014/03/the-virtual-world-as-medium-platform.html?spref=tw

I particularly liked this (in part because it contains within it a justification for forum threads like this one):

"

Second Life lost its way when Linden Lab disrupted the feedback loop between platform developers and platform users

. In the early days Lindens were enthusiastic community members of the world they were building. They didn’t only have an intellectual understanding of the users’ point of view, but knew it viscerally through first-hand experience. Since the departure of Philip Rosedale as CEO, the direction of Second Life has been largely in the hands of people who aren’t active and enthusiastic users of Second Life. This disconnection caused them to waste resources on initiatives that neither brought in new users nor improved the experience of existing users."

[Inara Pey]

Narrative doesn't have to be long-winded .

Look at WoW's successful "celeb" campaign a couple of years ago - that contained 30-second stories on its own.

Again, I'm not suggesting SL goes down that particular route. But there is no reason why even 2D advertising cannot carry a more appropriate story than that of boobs'n'bikinis, particularly if linked into a broad campaign, such as utilising video (which the Lab have used in the past, although how widely / effectively is really hard to tell), and then linked-back through the likes of the What Is? web page.

The narrative can be as much in the way everything is strung together to draw people into SL and help them on the way to engagement with the platform as it can be in the ads themselves.

 

[MizzFuzzyMoran]

stories are sooooo 2013

but thats about five years ahead of lls marketing department at the moment

or maybe 50 years if that bikinis and bozo ad is an example

[LaskyaClaren]

---

Inara Pey wrote:

Narrative doesn't have to be long-winded

.

Look at WoW's successful "celeb" campaign a couple of years ago - that contained 30-second stories on its own.

Again, I'm not suggesting SL goes down that particular route. But there is no reason why even 2D advertising cannot carry a more appropriate story than that of boobs'n'bikinis, particularly if linked into a broad campaign, such as utilising video (which the Lab have used in the past, although how widely / effectively is really hard to tell), and then linked-back through the likes of the What Is? web page.

The narrative can be as much in the way everything is strung together to draw people into SL and help them on the way to engagement with the platform as it can be in the ads themselves.

 

---

Oh, I agree. Really, a "narrative" is nothing more (or less) than a particular way of structuring and organizing information to make it more intelligible. 

Of course, part of the issues is the kind of narrative LL chooses to tell. Both the bikini pic and the "romantic" advert tell stories too, particularly the latter. The question, to some degree, is what kinds of stories we want to tell.

[LaskyaClaren]

---

MizzFuzzyMoran wrote:

stories are sooooo 2013

but thats about five years ahead of lls marketing department at the moment

---

Tell that to Upworthy.

[MizzFuzzyMoran]

---

LaskyaClaren wrote:

---

MizzFuzzyMoran wrote:

stories are sooooo 2013

but thats about five years ahead of lls marketing department at the moment

---

Tell that to Upworthy.

---

its peaked

i nearly wrote piqued

vine defines the net populations attention span in 2014

its not even this long

[Jo Yardley]

Great to see this discussion, so many swell ideas.

As I wrote in my blog, no need to stop advertising that sexy side of SL, but just add some of the other sides as well now and then.
One woman in bikini, one woman in space suit, one man in cowboy outfit, etc.

That would cost no extra effort of money.

Pile it on, the best thing about SL is the limitlesss options when it comes to imagination and creativity.

Try stuffing that into an ad.

And although this is of course much too long for an advertisement I still want to share this video because it is awesome, a glimpse of the future if you're  a hopeless optimist and also beause even though it still has romance and love as a subject, it manages to make their virtual world not something randy;

[Jo Yardley]

Oh and btw, we also discussed this subject in the Drax files radio show;

http://draxfiles.com/2014/03/21/show-11-the-road-to-vr/

 

[LaskyaClaren]

---

Jo Yardley wrote:

Oh and btw, we also discussed this subject in the Drax files radio show;

http://draxfiles.com/2014/03/21/show-11-the-road-to-vr/

 

---

Thanks for this, Jo. It was indeed listening to that podcast that sponsored my tweet to you. :-)

This is a great and important conversation to be having, in all of the various venues in which is it occurring -- let's hope that someone is listening!

[BLADEZRAVEN]

 

 

 

hmmm everything you said makes alot of sence so i cant really counter your argument, all i can say is if SL isnt profitable then down the road 5 or 10 years from now it  ( MIGHT )   not exist, so  i don't know, i do not want it to change either i like it just the way it is now, but years from now if i have to choose  '' nothing ''  or  a  '' much different SL'' ?   well i guess anything is better than nothing ...

 

 

 

 

.

 

[LaskyaClaren]

---

BLADEZRAVEN wrote:

 

hmmm everything you said makes alot of sence so i cant really counter your argument, all i can say is if SL isnt profitable then down the road 5 or 10 years from now it  ( MIGHT )   not exist, so  i don't know, i do not want it to change either i like it just the way it is now, but years from now if i have to choose  '' nothing ''  or  a  '' much different SL'' ?   well i guess anything is better than nothing ...

 

 

---

In theory, Second Life is sufficiently diverse and "customizable" (see Dresden's comment above, about the "Freedom" that SL affords) to permit all sorts of experience, including whatever might work for teens. The problem wouldn't be so much that LL is targeting teens (if, in fact, they are), but rather that with their current approach to marketing, they are only targeting one particular audience. If SL is to remain diverse and customizable, then they need to attract a diverse audience.

I'm still not sure how likely it is that teens will be looking to SL, although you'd think given their experience in children's platforms like Club Penguin that they'd feel comfortable here. To repeat something I say above (I think), what we need for teens is a revived "Teen Grid" that features things specifically geared to teens, and is not merely a rather empty "G" rated version of the main grid.

[Merrytricks]

If teens are who LL want to attract (and that in itself is a questionable choice) they should be told that real teens don't want to be created-at. They want to create. They've been producing videos for longer than they could hold a pencil. They speak multiple programming languages. They built everything that could be built on minecraft. Show them just a hint of the possibilities they'll encounter as content creators in SL. In short, if you let them build it, they will come.