Take for example their social responsibility concerns:

It didn’t sit very easily with the company’s [Corporate Social Responsibility] policy. Heineken wants to be seen as promoting the socially responsible use of alcohol. Clearly, if they made Heineken bottles and kegs available in SL, it would be reasonably likely that residents would play-act drinking to excess. What else is there to do with a keg of virtual beer? (or errm… real beer).

Why would it be “reasonably likely” that residents would be play-act drinking to excess? What kind of poll did they do among residents? I can’t imagine a bunch of play drunk furries play drinking to excess. More likely a bad musical or comedy act might be pelted with penises or flying virtual bottles of Heineken.

There was also some concern about attorneys sitting around waiting to sue companies for promoting drinking to people under 21. They might have a point on this one, although if they are promoting in the adult grid, should the assumption be that the drinking age is 21 legally worldwide? No.

Then there is the concern that they wouldn’t be the “first” beer brand to enter SL. This one doesn’t make a lot of sense with the legal concerns in the last paragraph. Why would Heineken be any bigger target than other beer brands in world?

Ultimately it’s the decision for each business whether to take their brands virtual. Do you think Heineken made the wrong decision? It doesn’t sound from Ian’s post like they closed the door completely.

Thanks to SL Insider for helping me track this down. I found it in a google search within seconds before the commercial even ended.

Todays worlds of cyberspace captures a lot of attention. Hi5, MySpace, Facebook gets the high schoolers and college kids involved with social networking. Whether we want to admit it or not places like There, Kaneva, Hipihi, and Second Life has much of the “older” crowd social networking… but what about the younger groups? What gets the attention of the 6 to 13 year olds?

I remember a time in my youth when I went to my Grandmother’s house which was way out in the country. It was a time when my mother visited with her brothers, and her parents. Of course the big event while there was “the” meal, at least through the eyes of a young boy. All the really fun things, like chasing the chickens would get me in trouble.

Usually after the excitement of first seeing Mamaw and Pawpaw thing turned boring quickly. The adults would gather in the living room talking about things I didn’t understand and chasing the chickens was a no no… what is a boy to do? If I was really lucky, Uncle Carl would bring his daughter Sherry with him. Believe it or not she always has something to play with that I hadn’t ever seen before. One of those days that sticks out in my memory is a day she brought paper dolls with her. They came in a book that looked like a magazine, and you had to cut out the “clothes,” but the dolls were made of cardboard.

I remember us sitting on the front bedroom floor turning those pages and wondering what that dress would look like on the cardboard doll. Then I remembered where I saw some scissors! I still remember sneaking out of the bedroom and into my grandmother’s Beauty Shop then slipping back into the bedroom.

Those dresses had to be cut out carefully, and we messed up the first dress we cut out. We didn’t understand that those white tabs were meant to be cut around so they could be folded and hold the dress on the doll. After a couple of tries we got the hang of it, and soon there were these little shreds of paper all over the bedroom floor and a stack of dresses, pants, and shirts which could be fit over the cardboard doll in an endless variety. We were having a pretty good time playing with these paper dolls, when my mother came into the room and saw all those tiny shreds of paper all around the room.

I was beginning to think fussing about the paper would settle down when my Grandmother asked what we used to cut those clothes out with. If you don’t know, let me tell you… Beauticians can get pretty picky about how their hair shears are used! But you know what? At the age of 5 or 6, we had a good time playing with those paper dolls even after all the trouble was factored in.

The world of technology has changed the world for high schoolers to adults. Why would/should it be any different for the really younger crowd? Technology has taken the scissors from the hands of six year olds cutting out clothes for dolls. Now a few mouse clicks and a child can dress a hand-drawn dress-up doll. And there are no tiny shreds of paper that takes forever to clean off the floor.

Cartoon Doll Emporium (CDE) is a youngster networking site which according to CDE caters to girls ages 7 to 14. When I first went to the site to investigate for this paid review… I thought it was terrible– until I realized I was looking at it through adult eyes. That is when I remembered the story above.

Our kids today see us sitting in front of the computer, either working or playing, for hours on end; why should we think they wouldn’t want to emulate us? It is a natural thing for a child to do, and each wants to be like mommy or daddy. The question is, at what age should we allow our children to begin using the computer? With the speed in which technology is advancing, can they ever start learning at to young an age to do something that will probably benefit them throughout their lives? So how do we safely introduce them to the computer and social networking?

Cartoon Doll Emporium claims to be a carefully monitored environment that employs real, 24-hour-per-day, 7-day-per-week moderators, as well as automated scripts to protect the children from inappropriate material or people. CDE has more than 600 hand-drawn dress-up dolls, as well as fantasy makers, scenery makers, room makers, and other dress up games. The site also contains quizzes, picture galleries, arcade games, music, and a chat forum where children can network and claims more than a billion hits a month on their site.

The only thing I saw to report negatively on was the fact there are a lot of google ads on the site. One google ad that I saw was from YourFortuneRevealed then there was the Match.com’s dating site Chemistry ad along with a vertical banner for perfectlover…. Seems like some of the advertising may be a little to much for such young minds…

How young is “too Young” to start social networking…. If you have a young child maybe you would like to check out webkinz.

Remember “Stagecoach Island” built by Wells Fargo to attract tech-savvy customers and teach them about banking. Have you noticed it no longer exists? Wells Fargo has chosen to create is own virtual world, a stand alone virtual world that Wells Fargo can monitor and control more closely.

According to Business Week, Starwood Hotels and Resorts is getting ready to leave also. After coming to Second Life, with a highly publicized entrance, Starwood gathered feedback from residents for its new “brand” of hotels and is preparing to bail.

Starwood discovered avatars don’t need to sleep, and so a virtual hotel didn’t make much sense in the long run. Unlike Adidas or General Motors, which sell digital versions of Reeboks and Pontiacs in the online world, Starwood didn’t have goods to sell—and found itself unable to sustain avatars’ interest.

Seems to me Starwood didn’t bring anything to the community, but rather took what they wanted and cares less they will be missing the chance to build a loyal following of customers by branding their name to interesting interactive events. Which seems such a shame; as their largest expenses have already been spent.

So what you can’t rent a room in Second Life? You can sponsor good interactive events which will have people tying your name and good will to the events, and will remember you on their real life business trips. (where they will need to rent a room) Go ahead and wad up all that cash you have already invested in Second Life, and throw it into one of the designer trash receptacles. Personally I would hire someone like Skinny Shepard,Kim Seifert, Sanity Inn, or any one of the many talented performers to draw a crowd and speak “PR” for the chain.

Maybe furnish a venue for live business conferences, where the interaction of real people in close to real time in the 3-D space allows the mind to fill in cognitive details… forming a sense of realism and bonding that can not be achieved with a conference call.

Use a little imagination and find your own niche that will attract people to your property, hire and train people to interact with Second Life residents, provide some fun, relief from stress. I think your Hotels and Resorts would receive huge benefits for pennies on your advertising budget.

With companies such as Wells Fargo, Disney, who has hired the creators of Habbo Hotel to design and build their own Virtual Magic Kingdom virtual world, and MTV Networks creating creating stand alone Virtual worlds attempting to attract and capture a younger market; I agree, then Second Life is not the place to be. Especially if you are going after the pre and teen audience. (I have no experience of the teen grid)

Businesses, looking for tech-savvy customers, that have the imagination and will to provide a value to the community can be rewarded with a growing base of loyal, faithful residents.

This is Linden Lab’s chosen PR firm which means they likely have permission to do this so readers should not take the headline out of context. Of interest is that TechCrunch editorial on Second Life has been more negative than positive with six mentions of Second Life in May 2007 alone. The Techcrunch site search doesn’t show any mentions of Second Life prior to May which can’t be right, can it? Not according to Google which shows an estimation of 1,440 results.

When questioned in the comments area regarding positive SL coverage by a TC commenter named Jeff, Duncan refuted that there was any advertiser influence on TC editorial:

“… until you pointed it out I didn’t even see the ad, and from what I can make of it it’s for a PR firm that works for SL or something like that, 110% promise you that there is no editorial interference, I have zero involvement in that side of things and I’ve never been asked to positively review a sponsors product.”

While some of TC coverage has been misguided, the overall flavor that Second Life has issues at TC is factual and well supported by coverage here at VTOR and other publications. Curious why a PR firm would want to advertise Second Life on TechCrunch? Is this their best client example in the so called web 2.0 space?

VP of Lewis PR Morgan McLintic wrote back in October 2006:

My team just won the PR campaign for Linden Lab, creator of Second Life. It was announced last week while I was in the hospital for Jake’s delivery. Thrilled by this too since it’s such an exciting, game-changing company and we really get on well the team at SL.

Interesting use of the word “won” regarding the PR campaign. The PR work for Linden Lab to date has been impressive, so if Lewis PR is behind the media coverage they’ve done an admirable job. Somehow Linden Lab mainstream press coverage has focused more on the major corporations establishing a presence and explosive growth over the last year rather than the dodgy running service that has gotten more worse than better since this SL resident joined in December 2005.

Based on the TechCrunch advertise page it’s not clear if Lewis PR is a paid ad (they aren’t listed as one of the companies who have supported TechCrunch to date), but if they are, this might be how much they paid:

Pricing for each sponsorship unit is currently $10,000 per month … There is a minimum term of two months, followed by a month-to-month plan where either party may terminate the relationship on 30 days notice.

$20,000 minimum for two months or if you’d rather see it in Linden Dollars at current exchange rate that would be, oh, about L$5,312,523.

MMORPG gold farming, character buying and selling

We use a service called ReviewMe to allow advertisers the option to buy reviews and our very first review request came this week from a site with a service that showed players where they can buy gold for the cheapest price for the MMORPG World of Warcraft and Everquest. Since I’m the one who handles responding to these requests on behalf of the group, I need to make sure these advertisers fit the type of businesses we want to write reviews on and promote.

I immediately thought of the consequences of publishing a paid review which told players the places with the cheapest prices to violate the TOS of games and this wasn’t a decision I should make alone for the group and proceeded to contact all of the eight VTOR authors and poll them individually about the issue.

Though the site in question wasn’t a site which directly sold gold, only providing a service telling where to buy the gold at, it seemed a more gray area than a site which directly sold the gold and/or characters.

This would be an important milestone for our publication. If we accepted and wrote the review then we would be setting a precedent that these kind of sites were ok when in fact they aren’t ok with terms of service for games we like playing. We looked at the possibility of agreeing to write this one and perhaps only review, taking all the money and donating it to a worthy charity in-world. That idea appealed to a few of the authors.

Another concern was what if we decline the review, will this mean that we don’t receive any more paid review requests? As it turned out, before even making our decision, three more paid review requests came in. One of them Darius has already written on Wii Game Cheats.

What makes strategy guides and game cheat sites different from gold farming? A lot, actually. A cheat is usually something programatically that you can do or an easter egg in the game. Strategy guides and maps are not violations of any MMORPG games terms of service, but additional help for players to better enjoy the game and more advance faster.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I don’t visit many cheat or strategy guide sites. That’s not saying I never do so please don’t misunderstand, but I prefer exploring and learning things in games on my own. Still, there are times every gamer needs to reach for an instruction manual, map, strategy guide or tip website. That’s reasonable. There are also some sites which focus more on helping players through gameplay that stays within the TOS. I would like to think we’d continue to write about and share links to those type sites.

Also, I pointed out to my fellow VTOR authors that we were already tainted somewhat as I’ve seen Google Adsense ads running for gold farming and character sale related sites. Another VTOR author pointed out that this was a passive form of acceptance since we don’t get to choose which ads run on the site.

With Google Adsense you can filter up to 200 domains but it isn’t very practical watching for any gold farming domain and blocking it when there are thousands more than the alloted 200 that could be use. So if you see Google Adsense ads for gold farming — perhaps in this very post (how is that for irony) — it’s not because we ever approved the ads as a group, it’s because Google’s algorithm decided to show that type of ad.

The voting
I’m proud of the group as a whole and how everybody voted on this important issue. It wasn’t a straight up no answer from every author and those who choose yes did so pointing out different reasons why they felt we should consider writing reviews on these types of sites and ervices. At the end of the day we ended up with three no votes and four yes votes with my vote being the final undecided vote.

If I chose yes then I’d be committing VTOR to the review and need to explain our intentions why we were taking money for a paid review for a site that violates terms of service. Even though we would be donating this money to a charity, one of my concerns was that some (most?) readers would see this as siding with dishonesty. That VTOR would suffer an integrity hit. We’re trying to grow our readership, not chase it away.

If I voted “no” we’d be tied 4-4. Since our group had seven VTOR authors until recently when we added Darius (#8) we’ve never had a tie vote situation before. We hadn’t discussed or planned how to deal with ties. Our next meeting was this coming Friday and there was not enough time to make another vote on how to deal with ties. The more I thought about a tie, I was reminded that a tie was still not a majority, so that made a no vote mean we would decline the review and a yes vote that we would approve, write and publish the review.

Supporting shoddy work conditions
Whenever I started thinking about gold farming and power leveling the last couple days (the review decision window was 72 hours) I thought about groups of people behind player names working in small confined places making pennies on the hour. I’ve ran against groups camping monster spawn areas before and wondered if they were gold farmers. Always left a negative impression on me both that they were taking up a spot where people wanted to play a game versus making it a business. I also know how hard my own teenage son has worked over the last couple months to get his WoW character to level 70. And lastly, I remember how hard I’ve had to work personally to level up characters. I’ve never managed to get any character over level 25 in any MMORPG because of the time involved. I’m hoping LOTRO will be my first 25+ character since we’re going to have one lifetime account.

It is this spirit that fuels the Terms of Service behind these MMORPGs that prohibit this activity. While it might still be cheating to look up a code for unlimited lives or to have a higher level character buff you and give you powerful items, it’s not the same as paying money to completely skip the process of leveling.

Some find leveling tiring and boring work and would rather pay to play at higher levels than spend the time. I do understand and respect that point of view, but I don’t see how as a publication we can, Google Adsense type arrangements aside, accept money for this type of advertising and therefore be promoting these types of businesses. How indirectly or directly we support them is something the group needs to continue to ponder and come up with a published guideline so prospective advertisers will know in advance what types of businesses we’d like to promote on VTOReality.com.

Never say never
This doesn’t mean — nor should it be interpreted as — we’ll never write about gold farming or (gasp) link to these type sites in news/opinion posts but at least for the time being we are saying no. Since we are a group and we make group decisions, it isn’t only my vote this time — nor will it be in the future — that counts. I think that’s part of what makes this group blogging venture cool. The group was split on this issue and that’s how the record will stand.

With a 4-4 tie and without a majority, the review was declined. This coming Friday our group will ponder the other reviews we have pending and what to do when there is no majority in a vote. I’d also like to see us post on the advertising page what types of businesses advertising we will specifically not take for this site. If we make too many rules nobody will want to advertise, thus we need to be very specific about what types of sites and services we don’t want.

I’m proud of our group — yes, even the ones who voted that we should do this — because overall their individual comments showed careful consideration. I thought about sharing who voted what in this post as well as a few choice quotes but then decided I’d rather see each individual author speak for themselves about how they feel about the issue of buying and selling characters and gold. I don’t want to put words in any of their mouths or paraphrase their perspective. They can piggyback off this post for one of their own in the future or use the comments below. I hope they all speak out about the issue and elaborate.

At the end of the day, this is not something I would do if this were my own site and don’t feel comfortable promoting these type sites. When we started VTOR it was and remains a major goal to focus on the quality of the posted material. This was our first defining moment with a certain type of advertising where we really needed to think beyond the dollars and cents and whether it made good sense. I’m happy that it turned out the way it did.

Your turn
With that said, we’d like to open this up to readers for comment. Are we being too judgemental turning down these type ads? It’s too late for the one discussed herein, but should we have a more relaxed policy for these type ads going forward? Would you consider ads/reviews an endorsement by VTOR for these types of sites/services? Must admit I do, but I’m not sure how the rest of the group feels about that, or how you feel?

Please take a minute and share with us how you would feel about these reviews and/or ads appearing or not in the future.

There is also incentive to actually view the ads.   The users are paid L$1 every fifteen minutes.   This L$1 requires the user to click in a random spot to collect the L$1 which deters bots from being scripted to run up the bottom line.  In return, the users are shown ads that are fulfilling and very interactive and one that can be updated with a single click of the Update button on the Main menu.  Referrals of the advertisement HUD also allows the user to gain money from their friends HUD units, up to L$20.   While this isn’t much, it’s still offers incentive to share the advertisements.

Advertisers also gain from the HUD display versus billboards.   The heads-up display offers a more rich interactive image instead of a having a potentially washed out and pixelated image on the side of some building.   It allows demos to be sent directly to the user at the user’s request and also teleports and information cards are at the viewer’s disposal.  The advertiser in return gets real-time impressions, total user views, and four different levels of click-throughs.

As one can see, the small version of the ad seems to be taking very little of the screen real estate.   I will also point out that this is on a 1680×1050 resolution so your mileage may vary depending on what you can support via hardware.  The larger display takes up about a quarter of the screen.

Unfortunately, the current ad network has been full the last couple of days of viewers.  This is due to a user limit that has been set since the network is still fairly new and the advertising base supports a finite number of viewers currently on a payrate.  Lassard hopes to pull this limit when there are enough advertisers with AdHUD.  Just as with the current stagnant marketing tactics in RL, Second Life has yet to enjoy a new niche marketing  strategy.  Hopefully Lassard’s AdHUD breaks the traditional mold of advertising and begins a new era of interactive public relations.

I found a place in Second Life which allows you to wear an advertising board on your avatar so you can walk around as a moving ad. You can make $2L/10 min walking around. First you go to publicenter corporation (SLURL) and go to the back of the building to find the ad distributors. Click on the device and you will receive the wearable ad in your inventory. Wear it and a notecard will tell you the rules!

BEWARE, IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO WEAR THIS SIGN IN PRIVATE LAND, LIKE CASINOS, DANCINGS, PRIVATE CLUBS AND IN THE AREA WHICH YOU ADVERTISE. EACH PERSON NOT RESPECTING THIS RULE WILL BE BANNED FROM PUBLICENTER CORP.

This rule looks very clear to me so when I walk around in second life with this on I stay on the public street. There is a floating text above me to show others how to get involved with this. It’s not a lot of money and I have no idea how they track to make sure you are following the rules. I walked around, stood still, sat down and still made the 2L every 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes the money gets paid to you right away. Don’t have to wait to go back to the center. But after awhile you will be told to go back to the center to get a new ad board.

I’m sure there are camping chairs and other places which pay lot more than this. After checking this out they moved their building to a new sim. There’s also been talk about it being a scam from Prokofy Neva who had a store near them. At this time of this writing I have used it and did get paid. As an advertiser I would hope they give information where these people are going. I have seen some of these people wearing the board in private places which is not liked by the owners.

For people who are looking to advertise this way there is an email to get information about the prices. Not sure what ads they accept but most look like international places. There is no other information about the prices in the building so they probably want to deal directly with the advertiser. I have no ad to place so I can’t try it and see the results. It is an interesting idea outside of the camping chair mentality. Just have to wait and see how long they will be providing this service or how many people get banned from places who don’t want them.

Is this better or worse than giving out t-shirts with your place’s name on it? One difference is the boards pay for you to wear them. Another difference is that the boards are scripted which won’t work in non scripting areas. Is this good or bad for advertisers? Is this good or bad for Second Life. In my opinion it’s too early to know for sure. There are better ways to advertise in SL and better ways to make money.

Movietickets.com has moved into Second Life and that’s great, right? I can see myself playing some slingo and tringo to win some money and then buy some tickets to watch a movie at a local theater. I was all excited to visit the island for movietickets.com but couldn’t find a way to pay for tickets with lindens. All I could do was watch previews and get free 3d glasses. Yes the 3d glasses look really cool and watching previews can be interesting. When I click on the movie poster it links me to their website to buy tickets with real money.

I did find out if you go to the different theaters you will be able to see the preview which shows on the outside sign. I didn’t know this before and couldn’t find any instructions about this. They should have somewhere which explains this at least. Be sure you stop the movie first before going into another theater. Sometimes I get the same preview I saw or nothing but a blank screen.

Click here to read the press release

Some pictures of the theaters

You might have to wait a couple of seconds or a minute for the preview to start. Some theaters are not showing any previews or the wrong previews too. Couple of places didn’t have theater seating to sit on. There is also a teleporter on the left side of the building which takes you to each of the theaters. I barely found it and it didn’t list the previews playing. This place needs to be fixed up a bit more and I really want to see a way to buy tickets with lindens. Now that would be a big announcement! I hope they have this planned for the future! Reading the press release they do have some interesting ideas for the future.

Following on from that, someone with the deceptively cuddly name of Kitten Lulu has reported on marketing “experiments” in Second Life. This, it turns out, is an experiment to see if customers would be willing to spend time searching for a half-price product, or would rather buy it at the normal price.

Taking the second one first: most people have enough trouble at the moment with teleporting, seeing the the prims around them as they slowly rezz, and being able to read the textures about them. They may read your picks or signs in your shop and go on a magical mystery tour to find the product at half price. If they don’t, you might decide that they have taken a conscious decision that it was better to spend the extra money than get trapped in a far-off sim unable to teleport anywhere else.

On the other hand, most of the clients who bought the HUD may simply not have realised that it was available anywhere else. They may have walked in off the street, seen the product and bought it, and not read any signs or your picks. You may have made erroneous conclusions due to insufficient data. Maybe you should employ the other bunch to take a look at that….
This ignores for the moment the morality of charging higher prices simply because you may, the subject of the Reuters article.

In the real world, people are willing to pay high prices for a number of reasons. They know that manufacturers of items may have overheads such as shop rental, staff costs, material costs and transport, distribution and marketing to pay, and these vary at different places in the market. A tshirt made by a couture house may indeed cost 100 times in overhead what a tshirt from a supermarket would cost.

In SL, people still have overheads. They have to pay for graphics programs, land or rental costs, and the time which they have invested in making products. Other than that there are no material costs, no fabric to buy, no seamstress to pay, no distribution costs to meet.

I feel very uncomfortable about the whole idea that creators should just go ahead and charge what the market will stand. I think that creators should proceed with care. What 105 people tell you about what they might do in theory, is very different from what people will do. There is a rising scepticism about marketing and market research in SL that may well lead to a disortion in results. So even if you do “proper” market research, you can’t know if it is statistically significant until you try it out.
Kitten may find that her customers resent being manipulated in the way that she describes and would prefer to pay a fair price, than get a coldly calculating discount. Maybe she doesn’t care, and the bottom line – an increase in income – is all that matters.
It may be that market research can translate to the virtual world entirely without taking into account the differences in SL… but if that were true then I would expect the big brands like Adidas and Reebok, and their wasted urban desert sims, and Sony, with their empty listening posts, would be a greater success, and in-world brands, like Bare Rose, and Moopf’s store would be less of one.

The challenge for people creating and marketing in SL is to understand how the virtual world differs from real life, and to work with and celebrate those differences, rather than dragging the attitudes of real-life shyster marketing into SL.