Second Life

When I was taking a tour around second life, I came across a company called Cheil Communications in the middle of Times Square in New York City. It is an advertising agency in Second Life. The building has an interesting feeling, with big open spaces and few signs detailing what the comopany is about. I liked that the company was in Times Square, but I found it hard to navigate once I was there becuase of the lack of information posted. Maybe it is under construction, but either way it was hard to glean much information about the company with the lack of postings on the walls. There was a front desk (though no one was behind it) and some posters on the walls with different sayings. Also, there was a machine in there called the brand wizzard and it kept saying things that popped up on your screen, like "keep them coming back for more" "being in second life is not the sme as being part of second life," and "There's a fine line between creating a buzz and being told to buzz off." I thought these sayings were great because they made the person behind the screen think about advertising and how different campaigns will affect people differently.

There was not much data that could be extracted from this campaign. Except for the few sayings from the brand wizzard, there was not much information that I could gather from this company's site.

I think right now Second life is mostly hype for PR campaigns. I think this because people who are playing around on second life will not be interested in visiting pr firms. I can see them maybe going shopping or going to a club and dancing, but going into a conference room and watching a pr campaign is probubally not very fun for most people exploring second life. I think when second life gets bigger there will be ways to more cleverly disguise pr campaigns within the islands.

If I were conducting this campaign in second life, I would have more information posted, and I would have a person present at the front desk. That way if you were interested in the company, you could have a conversation with the person behind the desk. Also, there would be examples of their work and a way to get in contact with the company in real life. I think that way if people were interested in the work Cheil communications does they can contact them and contract work from them.

I also visited Text 100 in second life. I thouoght their building was interesting but hard to navigate also (or it might just be me). I could see there were several layers of the building, becuase there was a glass floor, but I could not figure out how to get to the different levels. There were also things you could click on to see tips for writing good press releases. I thought that was a very good way to bring the second life world into the real world. Also, I was greeted personally when I teleported to Text 100. I thought that was a nice touch.