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Friday, May 18, 2007

Adventures in a Second Life



Well, everyone's talking about it so a Thinktank volunteer had to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon to make up an alter ego, er, atavar, called Trixi and start a Second Life in search of the promised land of marketing opportunities.

Well, it was (sort of) interesting, if not quite for me. Being a bit of a girl I liked raising Trixi's cheekbones and lengthening her legs and was grateful a free pair of jeans so she didn't have to wear the weird faux middle age kit she was 'born' with.

But from then on I struggled… in all I found the experience rather frustrating and certainly something for 'the specialist'. I persevered for longer than the reportedly average 15 mins and went in active search of entertainment, education and brand sites which offered me a new level of interactivity and was disappointed on all fronts. Failed to find a cinema which had sounded interesting (can't say the maps were very helpful); clubs were only open in the evenings (sorry, but I do have better things to do on a Saturday night), an educational institution required me to get into a lift which then failed to operate and a site on philosophy was only going to 'open soon'.

Finally, I located the Sony Ericsson site which took the shape of a replica of their CEBIT stall. Looked good at first - with promoters on site who one could turn to for information, free T-Shirts and phones to try out. However, when I looked at/clicked on some of the phones there was no way of Trixi directly interacting with them in 'the world' and I was merely redirected to the relevant bit of the ordinary SE website. Boring. As, by the way, were the conversations between visitors and promoters who seemed to be mostly German. 'So you live in Kassel, are you a Frankfurt fan then?' So much for being an outlet for creativity.

I flew around a bit more, found making my own clothes too complicated (again, couldn't be done in the world, needed separate download AND Photoshop), was amazed by the number of people who named their atavars 'Nokia' and 'Sony' and marvelled at the long list of pornographic sites.

I was impressed by some very intricate and evocative graphics but then had a mildly disconcerting encounter with a satyr like male nude who kept creeping up behind Trixi. I flew off in haste to re-connect with my First Life.

So what's my verdict… Well, given that 2nd Life is hugely user-unfriendly and that there is such a focus on porn, I am - as are more and more others - not entirely convinced that (mainstream) brands really need to spend money on a presence there. And I'm not sure whether half-hearted efforts like Sony Ericsson's will make that much of an impression.

Having said that, Second Life could give both brands and researchers access to some quite interesting audiences. It is likely that the regulars of the site are at least at highly technophile - and although the Sonys, Nokias and German football fans might not be amongst them, I'd like to believe Linden Lab's PR that some of them are quite creative.

So perhaps Second Life could be a platform for playful interaction and experimentation with some opinion leading types. As I've said before, there could be opportunities for idea generation, especially for experiential brands - which could also work as PR/branded experiences for the relevant companies. If Thinktank had a client prepared to take the plunge, I'd be willing to get together with some geeks and look into to resurrecting Trixi as a Second Life Researcher!

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