Merging Virtual Activities with Real World Activities

This document presents the discussion guide for the “Merging
Virtual Activities with Real World Activities” panel at Virtual
Worlds 2007 [proprietary content presented during the panel has been omitted]
April 29th, 2007
New York, NY
Distributed by Greg Verdino
gregverdino.typepad.com

Joel Greenberg
Vice President/Marketing Innovation
The Electric Sheep Company
Roger Holzberg
Vice President/Creative Director
Walt Disney Parks & Resorts Online
Randal Moss
Manager/Futuring and Innovation Center
American Cancer Society
Paul Hemp
Senior Editor
Harvard Business Review
Greg Verdino
Vice President/Director of Emerging Channels
Digitas, a Publicis company

Discussion Guide

At this stage we know very little about the real people
behind the avatars (particularly true for Second Life)
and not much more (maybe even less) about how a
person’s in-world activities impact their real world
activities, brand preferences and buying behaviors. Is it
realistic for organizations to expect real world results
from their virtual world efforts?

Where do virtual worlds fit within the broader context of
cross-channel communications plans? What are some
of the best ways to integrate virtual world experiences
with other online and offline channels?

You “meet” a consumer in the metaverse – what are the
appropriate and effective ways to bridge that
relationship into the real world? Conversely, you have
built a relationship with a consumer in the real world –
how can you take advantage of your virtual world
presence to deepen that relationship?

How can companies integrate v-commerce with e-commerce
and/or traditional retail? What are the challenges?

How do you measure the success of your virtual world
initiatives? What specific business goals have you set?
What are the benchmarks and how is your program
performing against those benchmarks?

How can we – as an industry or as individual companies
– bridge the gap between the real and the virtual? What
data will we need in order to do that?

Many companies are still skittish about 2D social media;
using your own experience how did you convince your
management to make the investment in virtual worlds?
What were the key internal selling points and where did
you turn inside your organization for support? What
were the key hurdles and which internal gatekeepers
were the most formidable challengers?

There has been so much hype about Second Life that it
is easy to lose sight of the fact that there are a variety of
virtual world platforms for companies to choose from,
and that no single metaverse is right for everyone. What
factors should a company consider when deciding
which platform is right for them?

A number of companies have chosen the private label
route – Disney with VMK, vMTV, Warner will be rolling
out artist-specific worlds on the Doppelganger platform,
Wells Fargo pulled out of SL and how has its own
private metaverse offering, etc. When is private the
right decision and how does a company weigh the pros
and cons?

It’s still early days, but if you had to pick one virtual
world implementation that you would consider best-in-
class (the sim you wish you had built, the one
experience that you would show your co-workers to get
them excited about the possibilities), which would you
pick and why?

When do you think 3D internet will reach critical mass and
what has to happen (in technology, consumer adoption
and usage, corporate adoption, etc.) to get us there?

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