Someone recently asked me to check with the Lab and ask about the “Big Marketing Push” that the Lab said at SLCC that it was gearing up for. If I recall rightly, the question was along the lines of “Has it happened yet? Or is it still to come?”
I’m sorry, I’ve completely forgotten who it was who asked me – but I did ask the Lab and get an answer.
“No, you didn’t miss it. Our display ads and other marketing efforts are continuing to bring new users to Second Life, and as conversion rates improve and we launch new products, you’ll see more marketing from the Lab.”
I think that basically means that the banner ads with the vampires and the vampire-themed marketing were basically what we were talking about.
On the plus side, not too long after I got that answer, the Lab has completely reworked (or should I say ‘revamped’?) the Web-site… err, with a vampire taking the front spot.
I still don’t actually know that I like the marketing message, so maybe it isn’t the plus that I might have suggested.
“Experience and create anything you can imagine.” is not actually true. I can imagine a whole lot more than Second Life can deliver.
“Play games with friends” is cool.
“role-play with vampires” … not so much.
“shop for unique fashions and attend live music performances!“ is fine.
But the actual videos/trailers for marketing Second Life are…. I’ll charitably call them misrepresentation. It’s not that avatars cannot do the things depicted so slickly in the videos, so much as that it can require hours of stage-management to get them to do some of the things that are so casually displayed.
That sort of thing bugs me, and I’m not even quite sure why.
Now that is an excellent idea, Tigro!
I despise the “be a vampire” push they’re doing…City of Lost Angels (CoLA) owner Suzanna did a push with LL about vampires, despite CoLA being not vampire-theme at all and the vampire faction is in fact one of the hardest to find. So it was bitter sweet, because it was a big ad for my home sim, but also somewhat misleading.
I know Suz is working on a new version of CoLA, and I really hope that vampires are NOT the prime focus of the new sim. Suz hasn’t done that to date, so I’m not expecting it now, but one never knows..
Disappointing that some of the promos are for sims that don’t exist anymore (Nemo).
@Ezra: “We’re all smart enough to know Legos aren’t really alive.” — I beg to differ. Have you ever hung out at an infohub?
Where i live toy ads must add warnings like “movements added by computer”, “doesn’t really fly”, “it’s play food, not for eating”; and car ads say things like “maneuvers performed by trained professionals in a closed course, respect traffic laws”
Sympathies Tigro
Do you also have “warning – contents hot” or similar on fast food coffee like beverages? =^^= And Arduenn – you just made my Solstice 
But credit where credit due .. the Lab have once again at least tried and done so in their own unique way.
I knew I should have worked on my high five animations.
I’ve seen “contents may become hot when heated” on food and drink packaging.
Ad analogs aside, Linden Lab has an issue where 90%+ of everyone that ever tries Second Life quits fairly quickly. Expectations have to be managed a bit more carefully than Legos I’d say, especially when the responsibility falls on those of use that stick around to explain what’s actually possible and what isn’t as invitingly and optimistic as possible to new users.
It’s really not easy explaining to a friend how to rez and unbox their clothes, manipulate resize scripts and take shoes into Edit mode. Its a bit worse when their expectations are to twirl around and viola, instant new clothes and animations.
Ideally in a couple of years Second Life will work like those trailers, but at the moment it doesn’t. They may lead to more sign-ups but the fact that 90% or more quit means first impressions have been squandered. That kind of marketing deserves to be 2 years from now when maybe its a reality. Second Life as is deserves beta-like marketing that alarms new users of the rough edges. That way first impressions would center around the challenges that actually exists moreso than expectations of ease.
I don’t have so much of an issue with the videos making things look slicker and smoother than they really are in practice. Video gamers are used to this. They *expect* the actual play to not be as cinematic and visually perfect as the trailers and the “new level lead in” videos.
Nor do I object to Linden Realms, except for those dratted Mesh trees that they forgot to make Phantom. I feel like a pinball. LR can perhaps be a “game-like” introduction to SL for newcomers. Plus, it provides the thousands of newbies unwilling to unlimber their credit cards and buy $L a way to obtain some linden dollars to spend on the virtual economy…e.g., in our stores and clubs.
I do object to the emphasis on vampires. Yeck.
IMO it would be a much more efficient use of their money and resources if they fixed their policies and the platform itself, and allowed free word of mouth do the advertising for them instead of trying to use the traditional advertising channels with idealized representations that don’t quite match what the target of those ads will experience if the ads do sway them into giving it a try.
@Tigro Well, that was the strategy from 2003 to 2006, pretty much.
How was the overall growth and the maintenance of new users from that period compared with what went down afterwards? Didn’t it start accelerating downhill faster and faster, with at most some plateaus and bumps along the way but nothing that managed to affect the overall downward motion?
It was the last month or two of 2005 that things really started to take off, as far as user-growth goes. From mid 2006, growth became exponential for a while, until it suddenly slowed in 2008.
Really? Hm, weird…dunno then why i thought it had peaked around 2006 and started falling apart from that point onwards… 0.o
Yet another moment that makes me fear my brain is turning into a sponge, not in the metaphorical sense… o.o
Ezra is nailing it. I came back two or three years after my first visit and had proper expectations. It was a lot of fun because this time I didn’t care how ugly and complicated it was. Evolving and being stupid was the fun part, neither childish vampires nor games. I never cared about games in SL. The platform is not suitable for it at all. Not yet. Or it’s just the LR-concept lacking essential details from the mindset of a game designer. Apparently, the only reason to aim for a widespread mass, is to impress whomever, with useless statistics. On top of that, their marketing is awful ordinary. Lately, it makes as much sense as doing a Futurama teaser for Nickelodeon, because it’s a cartoon.
@Tigro Peaking in 2006 and then ‘falling apart’ from there is the way the media tells the story – because for the most part, they never did the research, and mostly copy material from each-other. Mainstream media more-or-less measures the success or failure of things in the quantity of positive or negative coverage the mainstream media gives them – so it’s a bit circular.
Hm, i didn’t thought i was following the media (other than SLI, then Massively, then here) all that much; in my head it feels more like my personal experience in SL, till i stopped logging frequently for unrelated personal reasons more than two years after i joined, plus the stuff i’ve read about on the blogs mentioned above, the official SL mailing lists, the LL run forums and the Jira was where i got the impression things mostly went downhill; though it wouldn’t be honest to say that most of my memories don’t feel way too fuzzy…
@Tigro Big media tends to leak back into the collective awareness and colour our memories. Something gets said (by however unreliable a source) and it circulates, passing from person to person (and usually changing in the retelling) until you hear the same basic thing independently from several people whose opinion you trust. At that point, an idea becomes established as fact, however disconnected from reality that it may have started.
Rather than “Marketing Push”, they should rephrase it to “Marketing surge”.
It working for the US military. Oh wait…..
Thinking about the current worldwide economic crisis and recalling the rise of the movie palace during the great depression, I think a subtle campaign showing the luxury aspects of SL might not be a bad idea. The same escapist wishes that took people in droves to the local movie house to watch fabulous movie stars in wonderful sets dancing and having a good time.
When you are working hard just to maintain a minimal standard of living, to be able to log into SL and live as extravagantly or fantastically as you wish for less than the price of a movie could be appealing to many people.
I would stress that it would need to be subtle to avoid just being in bad taste