Second Life – What value does it add?

At a sold-out session at Adtech London, half the audience admitted they were cynical about virtual worlds. Despite that, big brands like Adidas, Reebok, Toyota and Vodafone have invested thousands to create an enticing presence in worlds like Second Life. What benefits are they seeing, beyond the PR value of grabbing the headlines?

Craig Hepburn, Global Webmaster for STA Travel, told the audience how the student travel brand is using Second Life to build a social sales channel, around a community of people who enjoy travelling and talking to each other about where they have been. The virtual environment that they’ve created allows users to place bookings through an avatar (they employ a real person in Second Life to take bookings and give advice) and on the Second Life STA island which incorporates dorms for students, Lonely Planet travel guides, video footage and posters of recommended destinations. STA’s customers love it, and they are already making money through a multitude of round the world bookings made in Second Life. That’s a good return on their initial investment of ‘only tens of thousands of pounds’, a fraction of what some brands have spent.
RBS, the world’s fourth largest financial services group, was also on the Adtech panel, represented by Sion Mooney, Channel Development Manager in the resourcing division of RBS Group HR. He talked about RBS launching the world’s first Virtual Careers Event in Second Life. Why do that? Because beyond the PR value, Second Life is allowing RBS’s careers team to connect with people in geographic locations that they would otherwise have had to reach by more traditional and expensive means, such going on the road with a recruitment fair.

In the Second Life environment, candidates can pose questions to the virtual careers advisers, meet current RBS employees, and see a mocked-up version of where they would be working, without having to leave their homes. Recruitment is incredibly expensive, and Sion revealed that just one successful hire would more than pay for the whole Second Life project.

The session demonstrated that Second Life is not the money pit that some brands have reportedly experienced, as long as a sales strategy is applied at the early conception phase. While Second Life remains in the early adoption phase, it won’t work for everyone, but the platform is ripe for brands wishing to attract a youthful and experimental audience.