I'm quickly approaching my 1 year anniversary as a resident of Second Life and lately I've spent a fair amount of time inside this virtual world. The more time I spend the more interesting people I meet. The more interesting the person the more I realize that they are living in a reality where their avatar is perceived as the first persona and their real persona is now on the shelf collecting dust.
Being married with a young child and a dog I am forced into a world of normalcy. Sure, I make a concerted effort not to fit in with most parents my age, because their sense of normalcy gives me the shakes although I do have my quirks which I freely admit to possessing and which I fully embrace. When I originally created my avatar, MSGiro Grosso, I tried my best to design it after my human self, even right down to choosing an Italian last name. The only liberty I took was to have a somewhat crazy hairstyle, which is impossible to recreate in the real world unless you have five different products from Bed Head. I only use two which means my hair is borderline different. When you see the effort and great lengths that Second Life residents go to in order to create their perfect persona you realize how easy it is to fall in love with that character and eventually want to become them.
Creating a persona on the other side of a computer where nobody can see you and pass instant judgment upon you is quite empowering. It gives you great confidence when total strangers are drawn to your avatar and quickly strike up a friendship. I can see how one may want to become that person and in some cases I've befriended people within Second Life who now want to be known by their avatar name and/or persona in the real world. Even Second Life developer, Aimee Weber, is somebody else in the real world yet she prefers to go by her avatar name. It's as if avatars have given everyone the ability to have a stage name, which was until recently only reserved for the entertainment industry. I wonder why it took a 3D virtual universe to bring that confidence out in somebody, because obviously it's been stored away inside of that person for a long time and yet they don't possess the confidence to tie that newfound attitude to their birth name, because somehow that name has established characteristics and expectations that cannot be changed. I'm sure in 5 years time a group of researchers will release studies on the influence of avatar based society and it's sociological ramifications on the human based society and I hope I'm the first person to read about their findings, because I find this to be so fascinating.
I bring this up, because as a marketer I'm curious if this is going to change how we look at Second Life demographics when approaching the build-out of a client's presence within the environment. Sure we may have loads of data on the typical behavior of a 28 year old single woman who is the manager of a drugstore in the South, but does that mean you have to cater your messaging to her or do you apply it to her avatar who is a 6' tall, redheaded, bombshell who spends her time as an escort in Second Life? Who am I speaking to? That's our challenge. As the community expands even further this should work itself out in one direction or the other, but for now it has forced us to be sensitive to this new reality and carefully assess our approach.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Who is your avatar?
Sunday, July 22, 2007
A sideways smack at the focus-group methodology
Focus groups -- the most picked-on market research methodology of them all -- got a sideways smack from James Surowiecki in the New Yorker's July 9 edition. I say "sideways" because the point of the article was not to dump on focus groups, but to tout the much more fashionable prediction markets as a potential method for identifying hits and misses in the consumer market space. The slap at focus groups was just a by-product:
Second, note that when people complain about focus groups they always complain that they were wrong at predicting a product's success (usually) or failure (occasionally). Yet among professional qualitative researchers, the idea that you might use focus groups to predict *anything* is ludicrous. So, once more, repeat after me: Focus groups help you discover why and how -- not how many. The job of quantifying and predicting falls to quantitative research.
Here's a similar example from another New Yorker writer, Malcolm Gladwell. In his book Blink he tells the story of the Aeron chair: Apparently in the early 1990s, when the concept for the Herman Miller Aeron chair was being researched, focus groups were held with "facility managers and ergonomic experts" -- the target market. These group participants mostly did not like the odd aesthetics of the chair. Gladwell gives the Herman Miller folks a big pat on the back for going forward with the launch anyway. And what happened? Quoting Gladwell:
A smart qualitative researcher would have been able to dig deep and get a sense for what those findings meant. It's *not* about whether the groups hate the Aeron and Seinfeld -- it's about gaining insights that help Herman Miller put together a product-launch strategy for the Aeron that....about understanding the kinds of reactions Seinfeld elicits from a specific small demographic. The mistake comes with premature closure. The findings are not insights or recommendations. They are not quantified. They are not predictions.
The purpose of focus groups is not to predict or quantify. The purpose is to understand how and why, to get the "lay of the land," to come to an understanding of the opinions of a particular, very small group. There are lots of ways to do this, of course -- observational research, such as traditional ethnography or an online hybrid; one-on-one interviews; interviews and groups online, in virtual worlds; interviews and groups with target markets, with existing customers. Gathering 8 to 12 strangers in a room and asking previously written, non-directed questions of them, leading them into a group discussion, is a perfectly legitimate method -- as long as it's done correctly.
The prediction market, as cool and up-to-the-moment as it is, won't give you the depth of insight and understanding in people's likes, dislikes, and motives that qualitative research will. But I can totally see how it would be way better for predicting who'll win the Oscars, and may also be better at predicting how well a given book will sell (the subject of the Surowiecki article).
I'll give Surowiecki the last word, because despite his sideways slap at focus groups, this indicates that he *does* "get" consumer research -- but like a lot of others, he just can't resist smacking the focus-group methodology around a little.
"Prediction markets avoid many of the faults of focus groups, which tend to be dominated by the loudest and most opinionated people, to be driven toward consensus decision, and to discourage disagreement, making them of limited usefulness. ('Seinfeld,' famously, was a complete bust with focus groups.)"First, surely someone can come up with something newer than Seinfeld about which focus group respondents were wrong. That example is aging.
Second, note that when people complain about focus groups they always complain that they were wrong at predicting a product's success (usually) or failure (occasionally). Yet among professional qualitative researchers, the idea that you might use focus groups to predict *anything* is ludicrous. So, once more, repeat after me: Focus groups help you discover why and how -- not how many. The job of quantifying and predicting falls to quantitative research.
Here's a similar example from another New Yorker writer, Malcolm Gladwell. In his book Blink he tells the story of the Aeron chair: Apparently in the early 1990s, when the concept for the Herman Miller Aeron chair was being researched, focus groups were held with "facility managers and ergonomic experts" -- the target market. These group participants mostly did not like the odd aesthetics of the chair. Gladwell gives the Herman Miller folks a big pat on the back for going forward with the launch anyway. And what happened? Quoting Gladwell:
"In the beginning, not much. The Aeron, after all, was ugly....however, in California and in New York, in the advertising community and in Silicon Valley, it became a kind of cult object....It began to appear in films and television commercials....and by the end of the 1990s....was the best-selling chair in the history of the company."I'd like to point out here that this is *exactly* what the focus group research indicated. Not predicted -- but indicated. The target market didn't like the chair and wasn't likely to adopt it. That is a finding -- not an implication, insight, or recommendation. (The fact that the focus group did not like Seinfeld was also a finding, not a recommendation.)
A smart qualitative researcher would have been able to dig deep and get a sense for what those findings meant. It's *not* about whether the groups hate the Aeron and Seinfeld -- it's about gaining insights that help Herman Miller put together a product-launch strategy for the Aeron that....about understanding the kinds of reactions Seinfeld elicits from a specific small demographic. The mistake comes with premature closure. The findings are not insights or recommendations. They are not quantified. They are not predictions.
The purpose of focus groups is not to predict or quantify. The purpose is to understand how and why, to get the "lay of the land," to come to an understanding of the opinions of a particular, very small group. There are lots of ways to do this, of course -- observational research, such as traditional ethnography or an online hybrid; one-on-one interviews; interviews and groups online, in virtual worlds; interviews and groups with target markets, with existing customers. Gathering 8 to 12 strangers in a room and asking previously written, non-directed questions of them, leading them into a group discussion, is a perfectly legitimate method -- as long as it's done correctly.
The prediction market, as cool and up-to-the-moment as it is, won't give you the depth of insight and understanding in people's likes, dislikes, and motives that qualitative research will. But I can totally see how it would be way better for predicting who'll win the Oscars, and may also be better at predicting how well a given book will sell (the subject of the Surowiecki article).
I'll give Surowiecki the last word, because despite his sideways slap at focus groups, this indicates that he *does* "get" consumer research -- but like a lot of others, he just can't resist smacking the focus-group methodology around a little.
"The collective intelligence of consumers isn’t perfect—it’s just better than other forecasting tools. The catch is that to get good answers from consumers you need to ask the right kinds of questions; asking the market to predict how many copies a book will sell, which requires predicting how a wide readership will behave, is better than asking the market to predict which manuscript will get a book deal, which requires predicting the decisions of a small number of editors. (The Simon & Schuster experiment with MediaPredict, unfortunately, focusses more on the latter.) And you need a critical mass of people to participate."
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
3 Essentials of Virtual Worlds
Much of whether or not a business has success in the virtual world space depends on whether business comes to understand these 3 things about virtual worlds:
1. Virtual worlds are a 3D version of websites that offer a social, spatial, and experiential factor not present in today’s websites. Proof point - “The more time a consumer spends immersed in a brand, the more willing the consumer is to spend money with that brand.” - J. Walter Thompson Advertising. Today’s consumer is less influenced by company advertising and marketing, and more influenced by their experience and the experience of their peers and thus it is less about click-thru, CPM, and conversion and more about the brand interaction.
2. Many of the historical marketing metrics (such as conversion rate, click-thru rate, CPM, etc.) that are used today to evaluate online success are not (yet) applicable to virtual worlds. Solution - we must look at experiential metrics and determine the success of people spending minutes if not hours immersed in a brand. The typical banner ad creates something like 5 seconds of brand identity, while the typical website gets 4 to 12 minutes, and the typical virtual world presence gets 30 minutes plus. Anyone who has been anywhere for more than 30 minutes will most likely tell someone that they were there, thus creating a viral effect as well.
3. It requires some work to discover the way to best utilize a 3D website (which is important because if you remember correctly, we did not know at first the best way to use 2D websites, either). Solution – we must realize that you need to have brand consistency, brand education, and integrated media support (blogs, Web 2.0, etc). You also need to make your site fun and push the messaging from a direct in-your-face message to a message that delivers via the experience.
1. Virtual worlds are a 3D version of websites that offer a social, spatial, and experiential factor not present in today’s websites. Proof point - “The more time a consumer spends immersed in a brand, the more willing the consumer is to spend money with that brand.” - J. Walter Thompson Advertising. Today’s consumer is less influenced by company advertising and marketing, and more influenced by their experience and the experience of their peers and thus it is less about click-thru, CPM, and conversion and more about the brand interaction.
2. Many of the historical marketing metrics (such as conversion rate, click-thru rate, CPM, etc.) that are used today to evaluate online success are not (yet) applicable to virtual worlds. Solution - we must look at experiential metrics and determine the success of people spending minutes if not hours immersed in a brand. The typical banner ad creates something like 5 seconds of brand identity, while the typical website gets 4 to 12 minutes, and the typical virtual world presence gets 30 minutes plus. Anyone who has been anywhere for more than 30 minutes will most likely tell someone that they were there, thus creating a viral effect as well.
3. It requires some work to discover the way to best utilize a 3D website (which is important because if you remember correctly, we did not know at first the best way to use 2D websites, either). Solution – we must realize that you need to have brand consistency, brand education, and integrated media support (blogs, Web 2.0, etc). You also need to make your site fun and push the messaging from a direct in-your-face message to a message that delivers via the experience.
"______________ Sustainability" (Insert New Technology)
Sex, Pranks, and Reality - Forbes July 2, 2007
Will the Last Corporation in Second Life Please Turn off the Light - TechCrunch, July 14, 2007
Avatars, advertisers alike having second thoughts about virtual world - Austin American-Statesman, July 16, 2007 (by way of the LA Times)
What do the above have in common? They are all spreading the sensationalism that a growing technology – virtual worlds – might be headed down the proverbial drain.
I won’t waste your time de-bunking these claims, as there are more inconsistencies, mistakes, and lies by omission than you can shake a stick at. Instead just go read nwn.blogs.com Wagner James Au’s excellent de-bunking in his blog posts Forbes Flunks School of Second Life and De-bunking 5 Business Myths about Second Life as Wagner James does a great job of educating the realities of the virtual reality.
I would prefer to talk about virtual world sustainability and the relevant importance to the way we entertain, conduct business, socialize, and surf the Internet in the near future. Virtual worlds on the Internet are here and they are here to stay. This is evident from the over 20 major worlds in existence and the millions more that play online massive multi-player video games. Moreover, virtual worlds like Second Life, Kaneva, There.com, and others have proven to us that a 3D Internet is very possible and is an obvious evolution of the Internet.
Thus, to me, the debate is not whether virtual worlds are a relevant technology, but rather what is the best way to utilize this technology. This is the not the first time we have been through this type of cycle. In case anyone has forgotten, we went through the same type of high tide/low tide with 2D websites back in the mid-to-late 90’s. However, if you were to just listen to the journalists (who may or may not have ever spent more than 1 minute inside a virtual world) they would sound much like the iconic fairy tale character, Chicken Little, as they scream in unison “The sky is falling, the sky is falling.”
I sarcastically applaud the Austin American-Statesman, NY Times, and the other “news” agencies that diligently took an LA Times article and re-tread it for their paper without as much as lifting a pencil sharpener to check facts. Why is this the case? Simple – it is the NASCAR syndrome. People would rather hear about the crashes than the wins, even if the crashes were just slight fender rubs.
As these articles reported, yes, some companies, are leaving Second Life, but is this Second Life’s fault or is the fault of the “market” not yet knowing how to best utilize this type of technology to communicate, interact, and integrate with the virtual world community? Many of the early adopter companies (which not so coincidently are some of the ones bailing out) moved into Second Life knowing that it would be an experiment. They also had a “if you build it they will come” mentality, which is 180 degrees from “virtual” reality, as you need to continue to provide compelling content within a virtual presence just like you would re-invest in any website, banner ad, press release, email or other e-circular.
The question of whether or not virtual worlds are sustainable is to me just another attempt to refute the potential boundaries of technological evolution. Doubts have been cast on every new technology, including the TV, telephone, and telegraph. Recall that in 1995, Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet wrote an article for InfoWorld in which he listed 10 reasons why the Internet would fail, mostly due to the fault of the "people." Sound familiar?
The real question for me (and for many people who are much smarter than me) is not whether virtual worlds are sustainable, but how quickly can virtual worlds grow and be accepted by businesses.
And in the end, it will be the people and residents of virtual worlds that determine their sustainability – and so far those combined numbers reach into the 40+ million range (including all MMOG’s) and the numbers are climbing. To me this says the people have spoken and it is up to as marketers, corporations, and organizations to determine the best way to communicate with them.
Will the Last Corporation in Second Life Please Turn off the Light - TechCrunch, July 14, 2007
Avatars, advertisers alike having second thoughts about virtual world - Austin American-Statesman, July 16, 2007 (by way of the LA Times)
What do the above have in common? They are all spreading the sensationalism that a growing technology – virtual worlds – might be headed down the proverbial drain.
I won’t waste your time de-bunking these claims, as there are more inconsistencies, mistakes, and lies by omission than you can shake a stick at. Instead just go read nwn.blogs.com Wagner James Au’s excellent de-bunking in his blog posts Forbes Flunks School of Second Life and De-bunking 5 Business Myths about Second Life as Wagner James does a great job of educating the realities of the virtual reality.
I would prefer to talk about virtual world sustainability and the relevant importance to the way we entertain, conduct business, socialize, and surf the Internet in the near future. Virtual worlds on the Internet are here and they are here to stay. This is evident from the over 20 major worlds in existence and the millions more that play online massive multi-player video games. Moreover, virtual worlds like Second Life, Kaneva, There.com, and others have proven to us that a 3D Internet is very possible and is an obvious evolution of the Internet.
Thus, to me, the debate is not whether virtual worlds are a relevant technology, but rather what is the best way to utilize this technology. This is the not the first time we have been through this type of cycle. In case anyone has forgotten, we went through the same type of high tide/low tide with 2D websites back in the mid-to-late 90’s. However, if you were to just listen to the journalists (who may or may not have ever spent more than 1 minute inside a virtual world) they would sound much like the iconic fairy tale character, Chicken Little, as they scream in unison “The sky is falling, the sky is falling.”
I sarcastically applaud the Austin American-Statesman, NY Times, and the other “news” agencies that diligently took an LA Times article and re-tread it for their paper without as much as lifting a pencil sharpener to check facts. Why is this the case? Simple – it is the NASCAR syndrome. People would rather hear about the crashes than the wins, even if the crashes were just slight fender rubs.
As these articles reported, yes, some companies, are leaving Second Life, but is this Second Life’s fault or is the fault of the “market” not yet knowing how to best utilize this type of technology to communicate, interact, and integrate with the virtual world community? Many of the early adopter companies (which not so coincidently are some of the ones bailing out) moved into Second Life knowing that it would be an experiment. They also had a “if you build it they will come” mentality, which is 180 degrees from “virtual” reality, as you need to continue to provide compelling content within a virtual presence just like you would re-invest in any website, banner ad, press release, email or other e-circular.
The question of whether or not virtual worlds are sustainable is to me just another attempt to refute the potential boundaries of technological evolution. Doubts have been cast on every new technology, including the TV, telephone, and telegraph. Recall that in 1995, Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet wrote an article for InfoWorld in which he listed 10 reasons why the Internet would fail, mostly due to the fault of the "people." Sound familiar?
The real question for me (and for many people who are much smarter than me) is not whether virtual worlds are sustainable, but how quickly can virtual worlds grow and be accepted by businesses.
And in the end, it will be the people and residents of virtual worlds that determine their sustainability – and so far those combined numbers reach into the 40+ million range (including all MMOG’s) and the numbers are climbing. To me this says the people have spoken and it is up to as marketers, corporations, and organizations to determine the best way to communicate with them.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Curiosities: Why opera singers can be heard over the orchestra
Scientific American magazine explains why opera singers can be heard over the much louder orchestra. Bottom line -- opera singers employ a number of strategies to maximize their sound output at frequencies above 2,000 Hz, while the orchestra is typically loudest around 500 Hz, and the human ear is most sensitive around 3,000 to 4,000 Hz.Image: www.coloraturasoprano.com
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