Here in the Behavioral Research Department, we always have the opportunity to uncover unique and interesting discoveries. So, when we were tasked with planning a surprise Second Life engagement party for Spunlogic Account Manager Nalini Humphrey, we thought we had a pretty good idea of what we were in for. Unique and interesting definitely weren’t lacking, especially with Batman, flying watermelons and….Well, take a look for yourself … click on the video below. =)
Last night’s Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association’s (AiMA) event - “How Virtual Worlds are Impacting Interactive Marketing” - featured an exceptional group of speakers and really fascinating content.
The event’s panel was moderated by Del Ross, VP of Distribution Marketing (Americas) for InterContinental Hotels Group – and one of our very favorite-ist clients! The panelists included:
Christopher Klaus / Founder and CEO for Kaneva
Mike Donnelly / Director Worldwide Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola
Rhonda Lowry / Vice President, Emerging Technologies for TBS
Paul Greenberg / Director of Consumer Marketing for The Weather Channel
This event was special not just because Del wore his best jacket-tie combo, but because it was actually simulcast in-world. So people attended the real-life event and others logged into Crowne Plaza’s The Place to Meetisland in Second Life to see it broadcast.
Check out a quick video of how this looked from Second Life:
Attendees were treated to great insight from leading brands who have done more than just dabble in virtual worlds. A few interesting take aways:
Coca-Cola has been active in virtual worlds for five years, taking a very deliberate approach to how they engaged in this medium. They wanted to allow their fans the freedom to enjoy the brand while at the same time providing some structure around doing so. For example, one of their projects was a contest - allowing users to submit ideas that would satiate their fan’s thirst for “an experience” (a play on words). The result was creative - and very brand adherent - ideas.
The Weather Channel is one of the most popular island’s in Second Life. They took a gaming slant in their space. This has led to a tremendous amount of sports-related activities on their island, such as mountain biking and surfing. Residents have even taken it upon themselves to hold surf contests!
Turner has also been involved in virtual worlds for quite some time. Their CNN brand allows Second Life users to be in-world reporters (a version of the real life iReporter). Another one of Rhonda’s more interesting case studies was about tapping into an existing Myst Uru fan base of hundreds of people in Second Life as a way of promoting their own Myst Uru world outside of Second Life.
Finally, Kaneva’s Christopher Klaus provided his perspective on what he believes will shape virtual worlds in the future. His belief is that many people will look to virtual worlds as a social outlet, which is why Kaneva is built to support this kind of culture. His stance is that while many of the worlds that are more fantasy-based will always have a core fan-base, others would be wise to create an environment that fosters social networking.
The Behavioral Research Department is happy to announce the creation of our very own Virtual Worlds Research Team! The team, headed by DrRead Voom, consists of several avatars created by Spunlogic researchers and interns. Due to increasing popularity of utilizing online virtual worlds as marketing tools, the team was formed to help uncover many unique possibilities waiting for businesses in virtual worlds. The team has specific interest in how psychological principles can be leveraged to enhance in-world customer service as well as the overall experience.
So far, our researchers have conducted in-world interviews and surveys for our clients and for our own scientific pursuits. Using our understanding of human behavior in real and virtual world scenarios, the team has been able to identify the most effective testing locations, procedures and avatar qualities for several research studies.
While much of our research happens in virtual worlds, some happens in the real world too. Recently, we developed an online survey to assess the perceptions of infidelity in online and virtual world environments. News articles surrounding a real life divorce prompted by a Second Life relationship led researchers to question human assessments of fidelity with respect to technology. Findings from that study suggested that there is a relationship between social perceptions of infidelity and the mode of technology used to mediate communication. When communication is mediated by technologies like virtual worlds, people are far more tolerant of unfaithful behavior.
So, next time you decide to escape reality in favor of some virtual fun in Second Life, be on the lookout for our team! We’re often easy to spot as we sometimes wear our lab coats—as seen in the pictures below. And stay tuned to our blog because you just never know what the virtual worlds team might stumble upon next…
It’s been almost a month since Raghu Kakarala and I discussed widgets together at a Lunch seminar, and there’s been enough interesting news since then that it warranted an update on this topic. The take-away points were: widgets are here to stay (in other words: not a fad), they can be either extraordinarily interactive or simple (so build one if you haven’t yet). and widget distribution is key (because it will extend the footprint of your website’s reach).
Now that you’re all caught up, here’s your widget update for December:
Widget vs. Gadget Debate
We found it interesting that widgets go by various names. For instance, Yahoo and Apple use the term ‘widgets’ whereas Google’s iGoogle and Microsoft’s Live Spaces use the term ‘gadgets.’ According to Widgets Lab, the distinction between widgets and gadgets is that gadgets live in a specialized web environment (also referred to as an ecosystem). Unfortunately, Google has recently made their gadgets interchangeable between the web and the desktop sidebar so this naming convention will likely go by the way side.
Monetization of Widgets Debate
As widgets have become increasingly popular, technology pundits have challenged the widget community to show them that widgets have real monetary value. News broke last week that GoodWidgets, a widget company that offers a slideshow widget, is up for sale for $10k. While this is “small potatoes” in comparison to other widget makers like Slide (Slide is Pitching For A $200 Million Valuation. Or Not.), it demonstrates that widgets are evolving into a “product” that can be sold. This comes on the heels of news that Clearspring has rolled out an ad network for widgets which lets users monetize their widget traffic. So while we’ve still got a long way to go, there’s at least monetization momentum.
e-Commerce Widgets Become More Seamless
In our presentation, we talked about eBay’s listings widget that could feature items from eBay stores. The idea was that famous listings can garner more attention. In other words, now your blog post on the recent Britney Spears Birthday Bash could include the listing for the half-eaten chocolate cake from the party. Well, it seems that PayPal is taking that same concept a step further by offering a PayPal storefront widget with a shopping cart. So now blog owners can create a store, add merchandise that’s relevant to their posting, and post the store to their blog. The neat thing about this concept is that only the financial portion of the transaction has to be completed on the PayPal site.
Again, it is another step for widgets becoming more useful and a part of the mainstream web.
Recently, I’ve seen a great deal of positive press about the virtual world Kaneva.
Second Life has been the big player in the space, stealing much of the spotlight from other worlds. But, as we’ve shared in previous blog posts, it’s certainly not the only virtual world out there. With millions and millions of people creating virtual lives, this space will only grow and reshape as the market defines itself.
Among the producers of virtual worlds Atlanta’s Kaneva may be on its way to becoming the most “disruptive,” according to Strategy & Innovation, a Cambridge, Mass. newsletter founded by Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen.
That’s quite a statement. But, why Kaneva? Certainly Second Life has the greater mind share. Well, the article goes on with a quote from founder Christopher Klaus:
“Second Life currently has huge mind share, but they are after a different market,” says Klaus. “We want people who have never played videogames before.”
This is significant. Kaneva, unlike Second Life (and other worlds), encourages users to replicate themselves in-world, as opposed to creating a fantasy version of themselves. Kaneva wants to be the MySpace or Facebook of virtual worlds - a place to openly share your life and your interests with your friends. In fact, Kaneva has often been compared to the social network MySpace, not a frequent comparison for Second Life.
In the end, I’m left thinking:Perhaps we need to do away with the comparisons. The audience for Second Life and Kaneva are clearly different. There’s no reason at this point to say that it’s one or the other…just as there’s not just one social network, rather many that bring together groups of people with varying interests.
My “home” inside Kaneva - a little sad right now, but give me time …
On the official Gmail blog (aka Google’s Email service), Dave Cohen announced yesterday the release of colored labels for email. While labels have been around since the beginnings of Gmail, the introduction of colored labels simply adds a visual context to an already useful technique of getting your digital files organized. Below is a quick synopsis of labels and why you should start using them
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What are labels and where are they used?
Labels are essentially another term for a relevant tag or a keyword. A label can be applied to any piece of information, such as an email, bookmark or photo, in the same way that you would put a label on a manila folder.
They are commonly found on Web 2.0 sites, including:
Why are labels important?
Besides the fact that labels are now commonly used feature of sites today, they are also a means of helping us be more productive. As I think about the way that I managed emails, I used to create folders with either a person or project name (like “Emails from Boss” or “EDS Website Redesign”) and add relevant emails in those folders for reference. Unfortunately, I would end up with emails that could go in more than one place so I would have to pick a single folder (which was annoying). This would present an even bigger problem when I would need to fetch a specific email but couldn’t find it in that one folder as it was hiding in another folder.
Enter labels! With labels, I am able to get around this issue by applying one or more keywords to the same message. This way, the message appears in all of the right places. And further, with colored labels I can add a red color to my to-do label so it sticks out.
Where else can I use labels?
Since labels are not limited to email, you can apply them to other items that you need to organize, like your photos or bookmarks. For photos, you can simply tag who’s in the picture and what occasion it was taken and with bookmarks I tag them with several related. This system actually helps me find the “needle in the haystack,” especially when I have to locate a bookmark for a CSS hack regardless of whether I’m looking under “code samples” or “designing websites” (I know that Wade, our Creative Director, cringes whenever I say that!).
It may be a Dutch website, but they have the same great taste in music (less the awkward skew towards the still popular Journey, Asia and Air Supply). The microsite showcases 5 generations of VWs alongside the music of their era. The gaming portion of the site quizzes the user to pick which VW and era belongs with the song and the results are an engaging advergame that delivers some great music and memories.
So what were my findings?
VW sure has changed from the 5os, and still has yet to bring back the Karmann Ghia.
Quiz shows and advergames mix very well.
I have an odd skew towards 50s and 80s music.
Take the quiz and see how VW has changed over 60 years. Just click on “speel het spel” and enjoy the music. (It takes a while to load, please be patient!)
In Behavioral Research, we do a lot of interviews - and virtual worlds are no exception.
“In-world” interviews are an amazing way to uncover avatar needs, preferences, and expectations in virtual worlds. In the last few months, we’ve used this method to produce some really intriguing findings.
Take a quick look at what an in-world interview looks like:
I chose this morning to start combing through the many magazines that I have let pile up on my desk for the past few weeks. OMMA, B2B, Fortune, Business 2.0 (before it died), Inc., and on and on. I typically use Google Reader to keep up with news and trends but there’s just something about these printed mags that I still enjoy reading. When I have time, that is.
In the course of reading through one of them I came upon a new term: the Innernet. It was an article (and apologies to whichever magazine and author it was that mentioned it, but there’s no way I’m digging through my now overflowing trash can to find it again) that talked about the impact that social networking has had on how we use the Internet.
We’ve kind of gone in this circular phase of initially being bound to a network such as Netscape or AOL, then the web was opened up and we all abandoned any company that tried to control our experience, and now we’re almost back full circle to wanting to form an inner connection of our friends and family and spend most of our time in this new “innernet”. And I say “we” but of course this doesn’t apply to everyone, as I’m sure TS will have a comment about how I’m in love with Facebook and not everyone is a college kid looking to increase his/her friend count status.
Earlier this week I was on a panel at the eMarketing Association event in Atlanta and a decent portion of the discussion revolved around social networking and what it means to marketers. This topic continues to be hot as more and more people flock to MySpace, Facebook or other networks (oh, and Orkut, I have to mention Orkut because I have a sneaking suspicion that Google might index this post a little better the more I mention Orkut), and our experiences day-to-day are confined within these networks.
And now Microsoft just bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million. This values Facebook at roughly $15 billion. So I’m no rocket scientist but I have a feeling these social networks are only going to get more popular as time goes on. And the trick will be figuring out where marketing fits within them, if it even does.
Thinking back to the days of taking the SAT (did you hear they allow calculators now?!), I remember the analogy questions and I could imagine seeing this one:
Cat is to Dog as
Interactive is to…
a) Digital
b) Online
c) Print
d) Al Gore
The obvious answer would be c), right? Not so fast. I just read about a company called Structural Graphics that creates what they call “interactive print”. In an article by Mediaweek, the author writes about pitches that Structural Graphics has recently made on the concept of print ads with animation, sound and video to Time Inc. and other major publishers. The printed page would even have a coin-sized battery!
Although they say the product is about two years away from execution, you have to start thinking that we’re not too far off from having conversion-enabled (I just made that word up) print ads that connect to the web, possibly through bluetooth on your phone or a wireless network. Or I could see ads change based on when a person is reading that magazine (i.e. if there is an NFL ad for an upcoming game and you read the magazine two weeks later, the ad could refresh to the game that weekend).
This kind of technology leads me to believe that soon all marketing will be “interactive”. I was at a dinner the other night and someone high up on the interactive side at one of the largest companies in town made the comment that interactive marketing is now traditional marketing. And I think she’s right.
At Spunlogic, we have a lot of great experience and unique ideas to share. From work with clients to new approaches and trends, in this award winning blog you'll find Spunlogic experts sharing their opinions and ideas on all aspects of interactive marketing.
