{"id":38,"date":"2008-07-17T12:53:58","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T17:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/2008\/07\/17\/real_life_disappointment_with_second_life\/"},"modified":"2010-03-17T03:04:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T08:04:51","slug":"real_life_disappointment_with_second_life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yupingliu.com\/wordpress\/2008\/07\/17\/real_life_disappointment_with_second_life\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Life Disappointment with Second Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent real-life encounter with Second Life turned out to be a big disappointment. For an academic research project, my co-author and I were looking for a list of real-life brands that have a presence in SL. The natural point of contact seemed to be SL’s press inquiries: Lewis PR<\/a>. Being a geek, I tried email first. More than a week (or a year by Internet standard) went by, and no response. So I digressed to the more traditional way of telephone. Luckily, I reached a lady named Christen from Lewis PR. After explaining the situation to her, she said she would send me something related to what we were looking for. I was reaching the point of happiness and almost convinced myself that telephone is the tool to use when you really want to get things done. But not so fast! A few days later, I still did not receive anything from Christen. I called again, afraid that she might have written down the wrong email address. I only got her voicemail and left her a message with my email address and multiple phone numbers. After another few days, it’s still dead silence from the other end. Repeated calls to the contact number resulted in nothing but her voicemail (this is the curse of Caller ID technology).<\/p>\n

It makes me wonder: is an academic project too ivory-towerish to deserve proper attention from SL or Linden Lab<\/a> (the company behind SL) or Lewis PR? I did mention to the lady that the project will eventually turn into a journal publication. Is that not worth the same efforts as compared to, say, a prominent article in New York Times? I teach Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). One of the main principles of IMC is that no matter whom a firm is communicating with, whether it is customers, internal employees, or the general public, the firm should always keep a consistent brand image. The fun and cutting-edge image of SL in my mind certainly does not match up with the disappointment and ill-will I felt during the recent encounter.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the following quote from the SL marketing team was featured prominently on Lewis PR’s front page<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“It really does feel like our marketing team has four more members — I sometimes almost forgot that the LEWIS team isn’t actually part of the Linden Lab.” — Catherine smith, director of marketing and brand strategy, Linden Lab<\/p>\n

Maybe that is the reason why we did not hear anything from Lewis PR. They are spending too much time functioning as Linden Lab internal employees and not giving enough attention to real-life external audiences…PUBLIC relations. Alas!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent real-life encounter with Second Life turned out to be a big disappointment. 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