Coke's Virtual Thirst campaign in Second Life was applauded by many, including me, as being innovative, and remarkable among so many corporate missteps in the virtual world. They promised to reward the imagination of Second Lifer's by providing fame and glory to the inventor of a 'virtual vending machine' that embodied the spirit of Coke. Creative hopefuls could submit their ideas though YouTube, MySpace, in Second Life and Flickr -- it was a big wet sloppy kiss for social media marketing, and the firm behind it, Crayon, along with the marketing digerati echo chamber, were quite beside themselves with glee over the sheer cleverness of this user generated media play by the fizzy drinks giant.
What they didn't count on though, was the fact that Second Life isn't full of the same echo chamber web2.0 commentators that wave and cheer and throw their knickers at mere mention of user generated media. No, it's made up of ordinary folks interested in their own stuff -- their own shops, groups, businesses and friends. And when you realize that, is it any wonder that the figures cited by Joel Greenberg are less than stellar?
- 300 blog posts about the contest
- 33,000 links
- 150+ photos in Flicker
- 31,000 Youtube views with 160,000+ comments.
Now at first glance, you might be wondering why I find this unimpressive. Think of it in the context of a company like Coke though, and in the context of the millions of residents in Second Life. Is 300 blog posts really a good result for a campaign from Coca Cola?
Let's look at some other figures, courtesty of Tony Walsh's excellent additional analysis:
- 175 MySpace friends with 13 comments
- 26 subscribers to the Virtual Thirst YouTube video channel with 12 videos and 2,589 channel views. Most of the videos appear to be created by Crayon, not contestants.
- How many entries were received?
Tony also notes the desperate sounding blog posts coming out of Crayon and the unmentioned 1month delay in judging -- from what I can see, it looks like entries for this competition were less than expected, by quite a mark.
Whereas it would appear that the Virtual Thirst campaign was not a great success, and the Second Life community may need a less valley-centric approach with such efforts, I do still think the general idea was sound. They probably would have been better off using groups in Second Life, events and other less 2.0 ways of reaching the audience, or gasp, not have used Second Life at all, if the point was a marketing 2.0 showcase..
We can learn a lot from observing this effort I think. It will certainly be interesting to see the next virtual world campaign from Crayon, to see what they felt were the lessons here.
I totally agree with your analysis. As a SL content creator, I'm shocked by the lack of emphasis on the actual 'content' that should be emerging from this thing. Ok, they say they'll 'get to that... But shouldn't that be on the front-line of what's being communicating? Something is real wrong about the way this thing has unfolded. The neglectful treatment of those that participated in this thing makes it stink as just another 'marketing ploy,' and not a true 'call for ideas' that it was supposed to be. Even in a place (SL) where a certain level of amateurism is acceptable (we're all learning...), when major corporations engage the masses, the organizers must assume a certain level of responsibility not only to their holy clients, but also to those that participate. This just reeks of incompetence on all levels.
I blog in response. I think we're all in danger of getting caught up in the fashionable anti-SL hysteria in the press right now without either adequately considering the goals of projects or the ripeness of the markets.
If one is a build-and-bolt developer, one wants to sell a company on the biggest project, promising the biggest results.
If one is a company entering a new marketing channel, one accepts the cost of experimentation.
We should support that, not dis it. Of course these folks are hoping for better results, but Coke firmly asserted at SLCC that they are satisfied with their results and moving forward.
Whether that is backscrabbling or not, it's still brave talk. Good on them!
I really don't think we can say there are millions of people using SL. There's half a million active users, which is a pretty small pond. There aren't a lot of results numbers that are going to turn heads yet; this is still about education and experimentation.
I also don't think you can judge "300 blog posts" unless you know the readership of those blogs. I'm not saying it's better or worse than your assumptions, just saying you do not really know.
You can look at the Bantam Dell book readings we did and say that 300-400 participants in each of the events is meaningless, but Bantam Dell doesn't look at it that way (http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/giff/?p=437), especially for the very affordable amount invested.
As Joel noted in his blog, just as in the Web field, it is hard to get corporations to switch budget and focus from site building to community building, and we've been grappling with the psychology for well over a year in SL now. Coke tried to do something different, and for the money they invested clearly thinks this project was worth it (and of course, it is still ongoing... we need to wait for phase 2)
It's easy to back-seat drive and throw stones at the numbers. You have to ask yourself, do you want to sit back and wait until the numbers are real, or do you view this as an important trend and want to start learning how to engage now. There is no right or wrong answer that applies to everyone.
Personally I give the innovators credit for trying, even if execution isn't always what it could be. Inevitably they come away with some arrows in their backs, but I think long term it is worth it.
I'll agree the path to success or even adequacy is paved with the graves of pioneers. The risk takers often sacrifice their efforts so the armchair quarterbacks can come in later and make corrections and grab the bounty for being better received.
I was curious to see what Coke would have to say. I felt the Crayon campaign was one of the more interesting ones I know of in SL, and one of the better suited to SL executions as well. The comments I read from Mike Donnelly from Coke seemed to indicate that his company wasn't aiming to get each person to buy a Coke right off, or to be more aware of the brand(as if anyone with a computer and internet connection doesn't already know them) but be impacted and interact with the brand in a deeper way.
If that i the case, well "cool" and would guess it was pretty successful then.
I agree entirely. I hope we see more innovation in this area, as i hinted at in the closing paragraphs.
A lot of defensiveness in the responses here, which isn't entirely surprising. I'd urge you to re read though, im not entirely knocking coke here, just questioning the "success" of the campaign. Coke are big players, they can take a little criticism :)
Odd question here, but if the client's happy (Coke), isn't that what matters?