Linden Lab is conducting a review of its Public Relations Agency. Currently with Lewis Global Public Relations, the account is up for review.
Now, I don’t really know a lot about the PR world. Most of the agency types I meet are incredibly perky and have incredible hair – not unlike avatars in Second Life. And while I’m sure that Lewis has done heroic work dealing with everything from Sky TV sex scandals to managing the explosion and implosion of major brands in Second Life, perhaps a shake-up is in order as Linden Lab continues its ambitious plans to ramp up into becoming a, well, a virtual goods slash social media slash enterprise slash game-changing platform of the future and all that.
Whether the Lab continues to work with Lewis after the review is pure speculation, but I can’t help wondering whether, regardless of the outcome, they can refocus their PR efforts to include a few other elements of the PR/marketing mix:
- Pivot away from the business press into consumer media.
- Do a few focused PR efforts to consumer verticals – why doesn’t Vogue cover fashion in Second Life? Why not do outreach to the architecture magazines and get a spread in Architecture Digest? How about pitching a special spread in a major art magazine?
- Get some new ‘blood’ on the streets. Stop sending Mark and Philip out to do all the press (or if you do send them out, get them to talk about Second Life instead of Linden Lab). Cultivate a speaker’s bureau and in-world content creators who can do press interviews, whether in person or virtually.
- Provide services to the in-world content creators. Give Resident creators kits that provide them with the tools they need to do their OWN press. Set up a “Second Life Press Bureau” and hot line where residents can access resources or, if they have the chance to do PR, can get some quick thoughts or media training from folks at the PR firm (especially if the media is high profile enough).
- Provide a transparent clipping service to Residents. I know there’s a Wiki hidden away somewhere, but it would be good if the PR agency recognized that there’s a whole world of people who create content and rely on coverage of Second Life. They should start treating in-world content creators as part of their clients. Create a special “SL in the news” update e-mail or something, and provide rudimentary metrics on number of views, mentions, and breakdown by territory.
- Execute my brilliant “Bring Your Avatar to Work Day” idea. HAHA.
What would you have Linden Lab’s PR firm focus on? What would you like to see them do?
After my experince last week, one that replies to email promptly might help
Huh Mal? What happened?
Nice points Dusan!
I would like to see a professional presentation of various subjects from their website.
Take music or whatever on their site. It’s very clear most of subjects or to say “cool stuff going on inworld” are promoted/covered by Linden Lab geeks and system engineers.
All other successfull media companies hire specialists for such. It’s about time LL do the same if they really want to hit big. I’m so sure it would help!
I’d like to see them acknowledge that there’s already a sophisticated media embedded in, or centered around their own world
I’d like them to showcase the amazing content creation that is going on – within resident and corporate communities. Examples of what is possible is infinitely better to give people and business the spur to see what they themselves can achieve.
Culturally, LL need to have a much better dialogue with their customers ( I use the word customer rather than resident in this case, as I want to imprint the importance of resident fiscal contributions to the company). By doing this they will set a precedent for their PR firm to follow.
Even the best PR firm can only take their lead from the company that they are contracted to work for. If LL fail on the cultural shift they need to make in order to better interface and engage with their customers/residents, then their PR agency won’t be able to do any better.
Second Life has some interesting parallels to a university. We have PR folks whose job is partly to cover university-level news, and partly to arrange for faculty to get into the news. They interview faculty, identify research and consulting interests, and then link up faculty with press who would be interested in covering particular topics.
I would think Linden Lab could do something similar….just replace ‘faculty’ with ‘residents’.
I’m with Mal. Six-to-eight months isn’t a good response time, and I’ve had worse than that from them.
I don’t know how to word this…
PR that gets across when I mention Second Life to a friend they don’t think I am… a freak? I connect with fellow vets, with people around the world, people who disagree with me, people who enlighten me, etc… It’s not WoW and I so want people to see that.
The big thing I have taken from SL is I am ignorant on a lot of things (most) around the world and all I needed was to talk to someone in a different place to get that…. My good friend in Sweden has so opened my eyes to things I was thinking about from the USA view that I know were a bit off (now).
Now, as for AO (area of operation you civie dirt bags), when I pay 23 a quarter + 8 a month I don’t expect someone to drop to their knees, but three+ days for a support ticket is not working. JIRA is broken as well. I never post there because (and I hate to sound like a pussy) there are bullies I don’t want to risk a ban over because I will go off something awful.
Pull Mark back. I’ve got videos of Mark and Papa Phil speaking. It’s sad, but Marky Mark can not get anything across and Phil is like talking to my stoned nephew and his dreams. Let’s see a residents counsel (like that toothless body we saw in that film Hamlet pushed in Metaplace – EVO?? — someone please correct me).
I don’t why Linden doesn’t make use of the pretty smart blogs like… (Ugh this hurts) this one at times.
Okay, no more… I’ve already watched Degrassi:TNG this week and Dusan is overloading my great white north fund.
great suggestions! Clear words, lets entertain hopes for a major changing
My advice would be to move more PR functions back inhouse. I think in the days when they had Catherine Smith and other actual Lindens do more of the press placement they got better pieces. In fact Catherine used to do far more placement of media interviews with various residents than Lewis ever has — especialy once she was freed up to move out the wellworn FIC rolladex.
Lewis’ idea of fun seems to be to organize a lot of articles on…religion in SL…to counteract what they see as too much hype about sex in SL.
I’m trying to think of any major story for which Lewis could take credit, and I’m not getting any.
LL has a huge liability in Google news readers, because the phrase “second life” is almost always about a second life taken in a car accident or a double amputee getting a second life with donated limbs. There’s a lot to overcome there and they often supply their own copy of an accident going somewhere to happen with their policies like the homesteads stuff and Zindra.
But you can’t supplant good working and knowledgeable press contacts with hype off prefabricated press releases.
LL needs to get out of San Francisco and California where the mass media isn’t, and away from the tech media, which is both cruel and sometimes overly adulatory. They have a lot of their positive coverage coming out of the New York Times, which is a miracle and one they can’t even take credit for. So they should work with a New York or Washington (or both) firm that puts them into the East Coast and international media with more thinky stories and art and culture stories. Education is a dead horse now and should just be left to be covered by the educational sims themselves in their local media.
And the thinky pieces I mean are just the predictable stories about how fabulous it is that they raised money for relay-for-life or Beth Noveck appeared in SL again (ugh) but more about the social and psychological and political dynamics of virtual worlds as prototypers, incubators, etc.
On the other hand, to be honest, I think the gap between their culture and the rest of the world (especially here in NYC) is so great that they can’t paper it over with PR.
The Lindens also need to make up their minds about why they aren’t advertising in magazines, gaming blogs, TV, etc. Is this a concurrency problem or what? I mean, do they want new customers or not? They need to bite down on that one hard and not let the coders’ predilections for holding up progress on stability with ever-new not-wanted features (like bulk permissions) stop them from upping concurrency if they can.
@Adric – can there really be an upper limit to how much of Canada one person can handle? Wow.
@Prok – couldn’t agree more. I’m tired of reading about SL in the Standard and the Guardian (which, sure, is UK and so on….and it’s great to have a few advocates at these kinds of outlets, but we really need to get out of the techy box).
As for advertising – yes, yes, yes. I wonder if they’re waiting for the new viewer? And why don’t they have SL kits in Best Buy yet?