Imagine being able to try on clothes before buying them from your own home, driving the latest hybrid car seeing what the interior looks like without leaving your living room, all of this and more is possible in virtual worlds. Virtual worlds have the ability to reach people and cultures without the boundaries of space all one needs is access to a computer.
McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm whose observations about corporate behaviour are closely watched, said that virtual worlds were on the cusp of a major expansion – particularly as a way to reach younger customers – and that companies were “ignoring them at their peril.” (Richards, 2008)
With more and more companies looking to become involved in the next big thing, Virtual worlds are primed to be the next big innovation in mass communications.
VIRTUAL WORLDS FOUND ME
I was doing research on internships and working from home job opportunities when I came across an article on Second Life (the largest virtual world) and how companies are using the virtual world to hold interviews and company meetings. It was free to join and that started my exploration of virtual worlds. Mass communications is defined as a process in which messages distributed by institutions such as the media have the potential to reach very large, anonymous audiences. Virtual worlds provide an anonymous way to reach large audiences and are primed for mass communications.
VIRTUAL MARKETING
The Internet is the fastest-growing advertising medium, as traditional forms of marketing like television commercials and print advertising slow. For businesses, these early forays into virtual worlds could be the next frontier in the blurring of advertising and entertainment. (Silkos, R.2006). Many companies are reinventing advertising strategies and gearing the concepts to virtual worlds. Coca cola recently sponsored a contest to design a vending machine. CSI had episodes filmed inside the virtual world of Second Life. In virtual world you can play with the next latest toy from Hasbro, stay at a replica of a hotel in the real world even visit replicas of cities such as London or San Diego. Virtual world do not have the cost of building new products in the real world. You can build a virtual model and test it next to nothing.
As many as 10,000 people are in the virtual world at a time, and they are engaged in a gamut of ventures: everything from holding charity fund-raisers to selling virtual helicopters to operating sex clubs. Linden also makes money on exchanging United States dollars for what it calls Linden dollars for around 400 Linden dollars for $1 (people can load up on them with a credit card). A typical article of clothing — say a shirt — would cost around 200 Linden dollars, or 50 cents. As evidence of the growth of its “economy,” Second Life’s Web site tracks how much money changes hands each day. It recently reached as much as $500,000 a day and is growing as much as 15 percent a month. (Silkos, R. 2006). So much revenue is being generated that congress is investigating whether virtual assets and income should be taxed. (Silkos, R. 2006). The internet started as a way for scientist and educators to collaborate. It took advertising and marketing companies a long while to see the potential of the internet. They are not looking to make the same mistakes and are now staying on top of new technologies to further mass communications. The possibilities for advertising in virtual worlds are tremendous. `Second Life goes outside of everything else. It’s not a game, not the actual Internet,” Fleck said. “So as eyeballs migrate away from traditional forms of media — television, radio, print — virtual worlds offer a new way for businesses to inject their brands. And the interactivity is almost unlimited.” (Abelson, J. 2006) In virtual worlds, we create representations of ourselves called avatars. They do everything we do in the real world, buy clothes, watch movies, run businesses, etc. Paul Hemp from the Harvard Business Review wrote about Second Life “Clearly, many of Second Life’s 100,000 or so residents are highly involved with this place. And that makes it potentially a dream marketing venue. Instead of targeting passive eyeballs, marketers here have the opportunity to interact with engaged minds. Commerce is already an integral part of Second Life. Residents spend—in Linden dollars, the local currency, available at in-world ATMs—the equivalent of $5 million a month on resident-to-resident transactions for in-world products and services. Certainly, introducing real-world brands, in some form or another, is a logical next step.” (Hemp, 2006)
THE VIRTUAL FUTURE
Technology is always expanding and with virtual worlds being a new product there is a long way to go for its development. As the technology grows more and more companies will come in and follow the people. The companies are not just using the virtual words for marketing they are also using it for mass communications for their employees and for customer service. With rising gas prices and companies globally expanding, it is more cost efficient and effective to have meetings in virtual worlds. IBM is the first company to set the standard. IBM, one of the largest corporate users of Second Life, said that the new technology will allow its employees to move between its custom-built, firewall protected Second Life environment and the open version of the virtual world without having to log on and off. Linden and IBM’s goal is to enable other corporate workers to use a single Second Life client interface to access both public and private spaces. As part of their agreement, IBM and Linden plan to join industry efforts to ease communication among users of social networks run by different vendors. (Havenstein, H. 2008) These collaborations will ensure that more and more people will be visiting and living in virtual worlds. The same people will be looking for goods to buy, ways to obtain news and entertainment. The future of virtual worlds is still up in the air but with the technologies that are combined in virtual worlds no matter where it ends up mass communications will be there. As a platform for commerce, Second Life first repeated the Internet’s indulgent failures. But at the moment, there’s at least some hope it’ll repeat its successes, too. (James Au, W. 2008). The success of Second Life is already seeing the opening of several competing virtual worlds. The latest being Google openings its virtual world “lively”. With more and more worlds openings mass communications within these virtual worlds will also grow.
References
Abelson, Jenn (2006). Virtual marketing Firms create online worlds as a new way to reach big audiences. Boston Globe (July 21, 2006) retrieved from http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/07/21/virtual_marketing/
Havenstein, H. (2008, April 7). IBM, Linden Plan Corporate Version of Second Life. Computerworld, 42(15), 12-12. Retrieved July 19, 2008, from Academic Search Premier Database.
Hemp, Paul. (2006) Avatar-Based Marketing. Harvard Business Review (Jun 2006, Vol. 84 Issue 6 p48-57. Retrieved on 07/17/2008 from Business Source Premier.
James Au, Wagner. (2008) Second Life Marketing: Still Strong. (May, 25, 2008) Business Week. Retrieved June 17, 2008 from http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2008/tc2008054_665274.htm
Richards, Jonathan (2008) McKinsey: ignore Second Life at your peril. Times online (April 23, 2008) retrieved 07-15-08 from http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3803056.ece
Silkos, Richard (2006) A Virtual World but Real Money (October, 19, 2006). New York Times. Retrieved on 07/17/2008 from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/technology/19virtual.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
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