It’s not escaped notice that a part of the job advertisement for a new Linden Lab company spokesperson lists “Plan and execute a broad PR strategy for communicating Linden Lab’s industry leadership and rebranding efforts” as a key responsibility.
The two words “Second Life” are, I believe, a lousy brand name, overloaded as they are with all manner of inappropriate meanings. In fact, the name – when originally selected – was not at all popular among many employees of Linden Lab itself, for just that reason.
However, “rebranding” covers a lot of territory, and doesn’t always include changing the name or logo of the brand itself.
Sometimes rebranding is better referred to as “repositioning”, casting an old brand in a new light. Changing its image, if you will. Certainly Second Life’s image is less than stellar, even if the service is used and enjoyed by many.
A rebranding example would be a popular brand of analgesic in Australia. A major product contamination incident forced the recall of products from retail outlets some years ago, and the brand lost considerable market-share to competitors as a result of the loss of trust in the product. The company worked hard to rebrand the product. Not by changing its name, or its logos or trade-dress, but by hammering home the message of how “trustworthy” the brand is.
Since that campaign started, I don’t believe there’s a shred of marketing for the brand that doesn’t reiterate how well-trusted it is. “Australia’s most trusted,” they say or, “Trusted by more Australians.”
Mind you, if you were armed with a well-equipped laboratory and a mass-spectrometer, you likely couldn’t discern the slightest difference between this product and any of its cheaper, more generic competitors.
Media literacy lesson: Watch out when a brand tells you how you should feel about it. If the brand says it is cool, or it is trusted, or it is hip – well, it probably isn’t. Either you already think it is what it is, or you don’t. It’s rare for a brand to tell you what its image is if the image is actually true. In approachable terms: Smiling Jim doesn’t smile very much, except when he’s taking your money; Crazy Eddie isn’t crazy, and apparently neither are his prices; and as for Honest Bob – well, I’ll leave that to you.
Bonus marketing lesson: “If you’ve got nothing to say, sing it.” – If you can’t even manage the above without choking, sing your company name, a slogan or a phone number. At least people will stand a chance of remembering it.
So – back on the topic, at last – Linden Lab’s rebranding efforts for Second Life are hard to pin down. I wouldn’t absolutely rule out a name change as “Second Life” is a rubbish name for a “shared creativity tool” – if that’s where the Lab wants to pitch the image.
Certainly there’s only so far the image can be repositioned, however, without actually going the whole-hog and changing the name – but that would be a huge effort.
I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see.
It needs to be one word, one syllable, and can be used as a noun or verb.
-ls/cm
We are at war with eurasia. We have always been at war with eurasia.
“Shared creativity tool” leaves out so much of what makes SL distinctive No mention of 3D, virtual environment, real-time interaction, or micro-economy. Word processors and drawing programs can be shared creativity tools.
I wonder if redefining SL without mention of a 3D virtual world with avatars is being done to allow introduction of something else entirely that doesn’t include those things.
They need to rebrand, the Second Life name already had has this bad rep with those who have heard of it in the mainstream, and the name itself is a turn off, insinuating you don’t have a first life if you need a second. Anyway, I hope they rebrand/rename. It’s one of the core things I believe that needs to be done to take the SL platform to a higher level. Just my humble opinion.
Wasn’t the original proposed name “Linden World”?
When I first came to Second Life, I did so believing it was a future-oriented product. I ignored most of the press I’d seen which described it as some kind of glorified chatroom because I understood the potentialities of the medium.
The amount of effort put in by the marketing/PR department of LL could be best summed up by the word “miniscule.” From the Burn events to the Birthday, even interior “awareness campaigns” are disorganized, chaotic and barely there.
There’ve been some bad moves too; slapping the edus, pursuing “copyright” on people who used the logo to promote Second Life… LL seems to ignore or be ashamed of the very aspects of SL that could be a huge, positive “branding” of Second Life as a tool of the future.
If LL wants to “rebrand” SL they should first take a look around and use some brains to figure out what they already have; what many of us already see as good reasons to invest time and money.
A new name for Second Life – that seems too late. Everyone knows Second Life and the negativity which has surrounded it, is long forgotten. People outside the small circle of SL users will not react with “age play” when they are asked the first thing they think about when hearing “Second Life”.
Leave the name alone, even the most impossible sounding names have great value once established. Abercrombie & Fitch, Hyundai, GAS (jeans, mind you), Nokia, Grey Poupon… the list is endless. Names are not that important. How you flog the product itself, that’s the thing.
And that is something which has gone awry in the past. Where IMVU were advertising with semi-clad avatars passionately hugging, SL – for fear of past scandals, probably – threw bunnehs at the world.
I think you are dead wrong Laetizia. Most people HAVE not heard of Second Life, and those that have, do not forget the negativity surrounding it.
I think the name is important… Battered Cod Pieces never made it to the marketplace unfortunately, that would have been a laugh, but I’ll never eat Faggots. period.
Rebranding/Renaming Second Life might be a good idea for further growth… however, they have to be careful what they pick new name for it. If it’s a bad or some what about the same as Second Life, it will kill.
“It needs to be one word, one syllable, and can be used as a noun or verb.”
How about:
“Hype”
?
There’ve been some bad moves too; slapping the edus, pursuing “copyright” on people who used the logo to promote Second Life…
Just a nitpick : that was trademark, not copyright, that they claimed on the letters “SL” for people promoting SL. I fully agree that it was a completely crazy move. (I was a Linden at the time it happened, and got in a lot of trouble for internally saying how bad I thought the move was and for not being able to keep my mouth closed about it.)
The original, Lindenworld, would have been fine. “Second Life” has a lot of “creep factor” for the 18-22 year-old students I’ve had use it. Perhaps LL never really wanted them.
Now I’ll put on the mortar board and get academic: consider the metaphor of “Facebook”: It’s your real face there (airbrushed and all).
@Rob, I wish they had listened to you before the “SL” debacle. Astronomers are good at the long view
It was a stupid “corporate” decision that put an awful taste in the mouths of many who wished to promote their platform, and it signaled to me that Philip’s utopian ideas were giving way to something more pinstripe and boring.
“Rebranding” is pretty overused these days, but SL could certainly benefit from a heaping helping of it!
Wonder about some iteration that includes the letters SL, sort of like Kentucky Fried Chicken rebranding to KFC, which was what most of the public was calling it anyway. Lost the horror of the “f” word that suggests it might be unhealthy, but kept the familiarity.
SL is sort of the same way, users already call it SL more often than Second Life – so it would keep the familiarity with those who are familiar with the platform but lose the negative connotations.
“‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet”
:- Juliet: “Romeo and Juliet” act 2 scene 2
“AvaLife”
When someone tells you “Get a life”, you can reply “I AvaLife”
(apologies for the groans…)
What the position says to me might speak volumes overall. To me, it indicates that Kim did her survey of brand and marketing strategy, came up empty handed (that whole social media idea as well as number of other things) and is now requesting backup from somebody who actually knows more about virtual environment space and how to effectively market it across the board.
Unfortunately, they aren’t going to find somebody of that caliber in the traditional sense. It’ll just be a continuing saga of corporate fsk-ups and half-baked ideas akin to throwing everything at the wall and praying *something* sticks.
So ends the “discovery” phase of Kim’s marketing strategy, coming up empty handed, and now looking for backup.
Silly Lindens… leave the virtual environment marketing to real experts before you hurt yourselves.
I agree that “Second Life” is a misleading name. It suggests that SL is a “life” rather than a place. When people are using SL, they say “I’m *in* SL.” precisely because it’s a place: something you can be in.
According to the ‘Sansara’ article on http://secondlife.wikia.com/ :
“Sansara was one of many alternate possible names originally proposed for Second Life. Sansara itself refers to the Hindu concept of the world and/or all that is material; that is, the stage where the performance of life takes place.”
I like Sansara because it says that-thing-that-was-SL is a place, but any place-name would do.
Other recent examples of name changes:
- Blackwater (the private military contractor) became Xe Services
- The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool became Viterra
- Apple Computer became – simply – Apple
I can’t imagine why Xe Services chose “Blackwater” in the first place, unless it was intended as a joke name. “Blackwater” of course means “Waste-water including fecal matter and urine” and came into common-use in the 1970s, starting to replace terms such as “nightsoil”.
“Second Life” is the best possible name for giving Second Life a Second Life. Why change it then?
Dropping the “Your World – Your Imagination” for something — umm..what is it??? cart race or what?? – was the last failed attempt by LL to “rebrand”. I don´t have much hope that the next move will turn out to be a better one – if someone really plans one.
And about the “Shared productivity tool”: It might be one, but hell, it´s sophisticated entertainment for grown ups and nothing but sophisticated entertainment for grown ups, based on hobbyist content creation. Some kind of advanced Sims Online. And that´s a grande conception, and anyone actually thinking of changing the whole thing into something which it is not and never can be is drop dead wrong. The problem is not the brand, but Linden Lab failing to adapt to their “residents”.