Coca Cola was one of the first companies to get involved in virtual worlds and among very few that seem to have done it right.
In 2002. they launched their own promotional mini virtual world, Coke Studios, at music site MyCoke.com. It was targeted at teens and young adults, enabling them to create their own music mixes in a virtual music studio. Coke Studio avatars were called V-egos, and they had the possibility to socialize in public rooms based on international cities and communicate through an in-world messenger.
Last year, Coca Cola launched a contest for Second Life residents and the general population to design a virtual vending machine that dispenses an experience rather than a can or bottle of Coke, through its “Virtual Thirst” competition. They wanted people to create a portable device for Second Life’s “in-world” digital society that “unleashes a refreshing and attention-grabbing experience, on demand”.
Unlike some companies, Coca Cola didn’t make the mistake of just jumping into SL without considering the needs and expectations of the residents. They started by assembling a virtual advisory board consisted of Second Life residents and designers and collecting feedback on the competition concept.
Michael Donnelly, Coca Cole’s Director of Global Interactive Marketing described this approach to SL community:
“We have been careful to seek the opinion of the Second Life community before bringing it a new experience. Our approach has been to create a program that enhances this exciting virtual environment. We plan to continue conversing with residents throughout this process. “
Instead of just creating an island in SL and waiting for residents to stumble upon it, this creative approach enabled people to express their creativity and communicate the values connected to the brand."
Recently, Coca Cola replaced Coke Studios with CC Metro - a Coke bottle-shaped continent in the virtual realm of There.com. The reason behind it was to create a richer, more lifelike experience for the residents. There.com is a small virtual environment in comparison to SL, but its major advantage is tighter control over intellectual property and resident behaviour (adult content, for example)
Although you can’t beat the real thing, Coca Cola was pretty successful in transferring the values connected to its brand to virtual realities.
Saturday 29 March 2008
Sunday 23 March 2008
Blogging your way out of a crisis: the Dell Hell case
Research shows that people who read organizational blogs during a crisis perceive a lower level of crisis than people who don’t. This is true only if the blog is seen as credible, and not just as the voice of the corporation. The key factors for the success of the blog as a crisis communication tool are the conversational human voice factor and the responsiveness factor.
Using a blog in a crisis in a right way isn’t easy, and good example of some of the things that can go wrong is Dell and its handling of the online discussions about its customer service failings.
Prior to offshoring some of its customer support functions, Dell was a company with an excellent reputation for customer services. Lowering the cost of the customer service seriously damaged that reputation and the blogosphere started buzzing with concerns raised by the unsatisfied customers.
The most influential blogger among those people was Jeff Jarvis, who went hard on Dell on his blog BuzzMachine.
Dell responded by launching an official customer services blog, Direct2Dell, which was used to address the issues raised by customers and explain the steps taken by Dell to improve its service. For them, trying to blog their way out of the crisis was a somewhat rocky ride.
Jeff Jarvis wasn’t exactly impressed by their attempt to deal with the crisis, and Steve Rubel criticized Direct2Dell saying it lacks genuine conversation on the critical issues and looks a bit like a corporate brochure. On top of that, people who were working on the project made some huge mistakes in communicating with Jarvis (see the video below).
However, the analysis of the comments before and after the blog was set up does show the reduction in negative commentary about Dell’s customer service. Even though handling of the crisis was far from perfect, Dell should be commended for making this effort. Just like Shell became the example of a company that learned from their bad handling of Brent Spar crisis, Dell might become the example of a company who did the same thing in the blogosphere.
Using a blog in a crisis in a right way isn’t easy, and good example of some of the things that can go wrong is Dell and its handling of the online discussions about its customer service failings.
Prior to offshoring some of its customer support functions, Dell was a company with an excellent reputation for customer services. Lowering the cost of the customer service seriously damaged that reputation and the blogosphere started buzzing with concerns raised by the unsatisfied customers.
The most influential blogger among those people was Jeff Jarvis, who went hard on Dell on his blog BuzzMachine.
Dell responded by launching an official customer services blog, Direct2Dell, which was used to address the issues raised by customers and explain the steps taken by Dell to improve its service. For them, trying to blog their way out of the crisis was a somewhat rocky ride.
Jeff Jarvis wasn’t exactly impressed by their attempt to deal with the crisis, and Steve Rubel criticized Direct2Dell saying it lacks genuine conversation on the critical issues and looks a bit like a corporate brochure. On top of that, people who were working on the project made some huge mistakes in communicating with Jarvis (see the video below).
However, the analysis of the comments before and after the blog was set up does show the reduction in negative commentary about Dell’s customer service. Even though handling of the crisis was far from perfect, Dell should be commended for making this effort. Just like Shell became the example of a company that learned from their bad handling of Brent Spar crisis, Dell might become the example of a company who did the same thing in the blogosphere.
Sunday 16 March 2008
Mom-fluentials: The most important job in the whole virtual world
Little Girl to her friend: "I'm never having kids. I hear they take nine months to download."
In my book, there is nothing more annoying than those washing detergent commercials. They always show a confused woman whose biggest life problem is a stain on her white shirt. Even worse, some of them feature a MAN. The MAN isn’t there to wash the laundry; he is there to explain to that poor woman which product is the best for her household (sort of like a theoretical support to the practitioner in the trenches).
In cases like this, the practice is mostly left to women. There is still a wide belief that most men do not posses the much needed talent when it comes to things like personal hygiene, cooking, or childcare. So, marketers and PR people target the women when promoting the related products. And to some extent, this does make some sense, I must admit.
But nowadays, thanks to progress and technology, women do not listen to the almighty MAN from the commercial. They listen to each other, or more specifically the more influential among them, the Mom-fluentials. They are the new opinion leaders women turn to when they want to discuss extremely important stuff like nappies or shampoos. (For those of you who resent my sarcasm, let me just remind you that there are millions of children dying of hunger each year).
At Burson-Marsteller they claim they have managed to identify 502 of women with children under 17 who are using the latest online and offline technologies to share their opinions about products and services, and influence the purchase habits of their friends and family. Nine out of ten of those women are often approached by people for advice about brands, products and services.
Burson-Marsteller offers clients help in communicating with this “Mom community”. Reading about this was kind of a wow moment for me personally! There is a Mom community out there? Apparently by giving birth you are initiated into this community and you gain valuable knowledge and respect through which you can potentially exert the influence no childless woman can dare dream of.
To sum things up – we have Dads who are divided into numerous groups by age, income, education, cultural background, etc., and we have Moms. Moms either have two full time jobs and very little time for MySpace (or MyTime in general, for that mater), or they have only one job and plenty of time to read retailer e-mails and forward coupons. In the old days the second group was called housewives; nowadays they are called Mom-fluentials.
Even though I have no idea how they've managed to determine those 502 Mom-fluentials or what motherhood has to do with the influence, if I ever have kids I’m not going to be just a regular booger wiper, I’m going to be a Mom-fluential. With the nappy in one hand and keyboard in the other. And even if I don’t influence my own kid in a positive way, I will influence strangers online and all those PR and marketing people will bow to my Motherhood.
As for Burson-Marsteller, by coining this catchy new word they have secured extensive media coverage and some new clients, no doubt.
To learn about Mom-fluentials look at this slideshow by Idil Cakim, Director of Knowledge Development at Burson-Marsteller:
In my book, there is nothing more annoying than those washing detergent commercials. They always show a confused woman whose biggest life problem is a stain on her white shirt. Even worse, some of them feature a MAN. The MAN isn’t there to wash the laundry; he is there to explain to that poor woman which product is the best for her household (sort of like a theoretical support to the practitioner in the trenches).
In cases like this, the practice is mostly left to women. There is still a wide belief that most men do not posses the much needed talent when it comes to things like personal hygiene, cooking, or childcare. So, marketers and PR people target the women when promoting the related products. And to some extent, this does make some sense, I must admit.
But nowadays, thanks to progress and technology, women do not listen to the almighty MAN from the commercial. They listen to each other, or more specifically the more influential among them, the Mom-fluentials. They are the new opinion leaders women turn to when they want to discuss extremely important stuff like nappies or shampoos. (For those of you who resent my sarcasm, let me just remind you that there are millions of children dying of hunger each year).
At Burson-Marsteller they claim they have managed to identify 502 of women with children under 17 who are using the latest online and offline technologies to share their opinions about products and services, and influence the purchase habits of their friends and family. Nine out of ten of those women are often approached by people for advice about brands, products and services.
Burson-Marsteller offers clients help in communicating with this “Mom community”. Reading about this was kind of a wow moment for me personally! There is a Mom community out there? Apparently by giving birth you are initiated into this community and you gain valuable knowledge and respect through which you can potentially exert the influence no childless woman can dare dream of.
To sum things up – we have Dads who are divided into numerous groups by age, income, education, cultural background, etc., and we have Moms. Moms either have two full time jobs and very little time for MySpace (or MyTime in general, for that mater), or they have only one job and plenty of time to read retailer e-mails and forward coupons. In the old days the second group was called housewives; nowadays they are called Mom-fluentials.
Even though I have no idea how they've managed to determine those 502 Mom-fluentials or what motherhood has to do with the influence, if I ever have kids I’m not going to be just a regular booger wiper, I’m going to be a Mom-fluential. With the nappy in one hand and keyboard in the other. And even if I don’t influence my own kid in a positive way, I will influence strangers online and all those PR and marketing people will bow to my Motherhood.
As for Burson-Marsteller, by coining this catchy new word they have secured extensive media coverage and some new clients, no doubt.
To learn about Mom-fluentials look at this slideshow by Idil Cakim, Director of Knowledge Development at Burson-Marsteller:
Thursday 6 March 2008
Second Life: Back to PR 101?
“Whew! All those virtual, spiky-haired avatars were running, swimming and flying around without any reliable public relations consulting. How did they manage to get anything done?”
Aaron Uhrmacher from Text 100, the first PR consultancy to establish its offices in Second Life, denied that RL companies are establishing the presence in SL just to get coverage in real life media. He claims, instead, that the real value of virtual worlds comes from actual engagement with the virtual communities.
Personally, I’m not convinced. And some of the residents of Second Life also seem to disagree with this view. Interestingly, PR professionals have managed to gain quite negative media coverage in the SL media, especially The Second Life Herald. According to some residents, PR agencies have largely abused SL in several ways.
Apparently, what upsets them the most are the “first claims” in the RL media – claiming they were first to do things that some of the residents did long before. Whether they are purposefully stealing other people’s merits or just displaying poor knowledge of SL history, isn’t the issue. Some of them are just doing a bad job as PR professionals. They obviously failed to understand one of the most important norms in SL community.
Another issue bothering the residents is the phenomenon of channel abandonment, as well as lack of respect in communication.
One blogger who was present at the Intel SL press conference made this comment on his blog:
“So let me get this straight. We can come and listen to a dry monologue about a new Island opening that was news last week, provided we don't actually talk to each other, or the Intel guys, and that we "show some respect" and direct questions through people that clearly need to go back to PR 101? “
In response to such behavior the residents of Dreamland, which constitutes 10% of the land mass and 10% of the active residents in SL, voted to ban dishonest PR and marketing flacks from their region. Such misuse of SL will join the list of bannable offences like theft, violation of intellectual property, sexual harassment, online rape and distribution of child pornography. Nice, ha?
It seems to me that some PRs need to brush up on their professional ethic and basic skills, such as doing research and developing relationships with the communities they are part of. So far, some of them didn’t do a very good job for PR as a profession, or their clients. Whether they want to admit it or not, I think most of them are primarily using SL to achieve certain goals for their clients in RL, and don’t show real interest in the (rather small) SL community.
Andrew McGregor (Text 100) about Second Life
Steve Rubel about Second Life
Aaron Uhrmacher from Text 100, the first PR consultancy to establish its offices in Second Life, denied that RL companies are establishing the presence in SL just to get coverage in real life media. He claims, instead, that the real value of virtual worlds comes from actual engagement with the virtual communities.
Personally, I’m not convinced. And some of the residents of Second Life also seem to disagree with this view. Interestingly, PR professionals have managed to gain quite negative media coverage in the SL media, especially The Second Life Herald. According to some residents, PR agencies have largely abused SL in several ways.
Apparently, what upsets them the most are the “first claims” in the RL media – claiming they were first to do things that some of the residents did long before. Whether they are purposefully stealing other people’s merits or just displaying poor knowledge of SL history, isn’t the issue. Some of them are just doing a bad job as PR professionals. They obviously failed to understand one of the most important norms in SL community.
Another issue bothering the residents is the phenomenon of channel abandonment, as well as lack of respect in communication.
One blogger who was present at the Intel SL press conference made this comment on his blog:
“So let me get this straight. We can come and listen to a dry monologue about a new Island opening that was news last week, provided we don't actually talk to each other, or the Intel guys, and that we "show some respect" and direct questions through people that clearly need to go back to PR 101? “
In response to such behavior the residents of Dreamland, which constitutes 10% of the land mass and 10% of the active residents in SL, voted to ban dishonest PR and marketing flacks from their region. Such misuse of SL will join the list of bannable offences like theft, violation of intellectual property, sexual harassment, online rape and distribution of child pornography. Nice, ha?
It seems to me that some PRs need to brush up on their professional ethic and basic skills, such as doing research and developing relationships with the communities they are part of. So far, some of them didn’t do a very good job for PR as a profession, or their clients. Whether they want to admit it or not, I think most of them are primarily using SL to achieve certain goals for their clients in RL, and don’t show real interest in the (rather small) SL community.
Andrew McGregor (Text 100) about Second Life
Steve Rubel about Second Life
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