There was a post last week on the blog Metaversed about the role of press relations in Second Life, which was inspired by the author's experience at a virtual world press event. From the resulting discussion (in which I expressed some of my opinions), it's evident that there remains a lot of confusion about what role public relations practitioners can play in virtual worlds.
When we launched Text 100 Island in Second Life, many of us here imagined the different ways immersive environments could be used to foster communication between communities, employees, the media and brand enthusiasts, but it was largely hypothetical.
We maintained that the ultimate value of virtual worlds was not just the initial wave of coverage from establishing a presence, but rather from the sustained engagement of the community. My colleague, Dr. Georg Kolb, presented to a group called the Kuurian Expedition in Second Life earlier this year emphasizing the benefits of this strategy.
Now, 10 months on, we’ve learned a tremendous amount by being a part of the SL community. We’ve held internal company meetings with Texties worldwide, our employees have participated in over a hundred different SL community events, we’ve made virtual presentations to universities all over the world and we have facilitated trade shows and other events in partnership with our clients.
But unlike the development firms and the marketing companies that have laid claim to Second Life’s growth, the role that public relations companies can play remains more nebulous. So to learn more about public relations and communications in this space, it’s important to first explore the evolution of the corporate presence in Second Life:
Phase One: similar to the first days of the Internet when having a website was more important than whether it was used, it was more important to have land in Second Life than to actually develop it. So, many large corporations simply built an island with basic features and relied on their PR firms to leverage the general hype surrounding Second Life to generate mainstream media coverage. Most of these companies had a launch event to celebrate their arrival and then quietly disappeared, leaving their island untended and deserted. Not surprisingly, this approach often drew the ire of the existing SL community, resulting in a backlash against some of those companies, which took the form of in-world griefing and negative discussions in the blogosphere.
Phase Two: companies that launched as part of the second wave learned from their predecessors and the resulting media attention. Many relied on their developers or hired greeters to staff the island and host events on an ongoing basis. It was more challenging to secure national media for the story, but companies that came up with innovative uses for virtual worlds still had a storyline that PR companies could use to pique the interest of reporters. The resulting press attention often focused more on industry trade and regional news sources, and the coverage was overwhelmingly positive.
Phase three: The hype of entering Second Life subsided, but that hasn’t stopped more companies, cities and even governments from entering with gusto. Today, cross-world publicity is still possible and still interesting. But the newcomers are held to a higher standard than the first entrants, as are the development firms with which they work. The bar has been raised, and the story is about what these companies are doing as part of a sustained effort to engage the growing SL user base. To generate media interest, companies can't just replicate real life. They have to provide a unique new experience for individuals, allowing them to engage with the brands in a different way.
The other thing we're seeing in this third phase is the interest in using virtual worlds for internal collaboration, as evidenced by Fidelity Investments and IBM, a client of Text 100.
In real life (RL), public relations professionals facilitate the relationships between our clients and their core constituencies, including shareholders, customers, the media and other influencers. We hold press conferences, we help organize live events and we provide opportunities for clients to further engage the communities that matter most to them. This is what we excel at, and this is the same role we can play in virtual worlds.
What I’ve witnessed is that virtual worlds allow us to inject more creativity in to our work, and to infuse the mundane with the extraordinary. Imagine holding an event on your client’s island inside a gigantic replica of the product you’re announcing, inviting both the media and customers. For a moment, think about what would happen if you could literally walk someone through the inner workings of your company’s new consumer electronics device illustrating the unique properties of your offering. Much of this has already happened, and this is just the beginning. But what this does is give avatars a new experience with your company, which goes a long way in shaping its perception in a new way.
As virtual worlds mature and the features become more robust (for example, the much anticipated introduction of VOIP in SL), the tactics companies will employ to foster their communities using a place like Second Life becomes more plausible. Whether we’re talking about hosting events, international gatherings, virtual trade shows, user group meetings or product demonstrations, public relations will be key to that success.
This is a very exciting time to be in public relations, and with the dynamic growth of social networking and virtual worlds over the last year or so, burgeoning online communities are more vital than ever to a company’s communications strategy.
So what do you think: What role will public relations play in the development of virtual world communities?
- Aaron Uhrmacher, Text 100
