One of the most interesting new challenges must be how brands, consumer and b2b, should use virtual worlds and immersive environments.

It's interesting, because a younger generation of consumers partly "lives" already in 3D immersive environments, multi-role player games with millions of users like "World of Warcraft", or social, non-game worlds like "Second Life" or 2.5D places like "Club Penguin", "Habbo Hotel" or "Star Dolls".

It's interesting also because of the communication potential that has been explored initially by some of the b2b brands, like IBM or Cisco, but that is still vastly underexploited.
Interesting also, because a large number of brands have, with much hype but without much plan, entered the virtual space, particularly around "Second Life" in 2006 and 2007 only to leave it frustrated after some time.

At the MIPtv conference in Cannes in April, where broadcasters were trying to come to grips with how to live in the new world of reduced broadcast consumption and increased usage of "participatory" media (social media, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, games, and the aforementioned 3D environments) I explored the following questions:

- How can brands use virtual worlds successfully?
- Can you really engage with an audience in a virtual world?
- Which are some of the less and more successful examples and what can we learn from them?

The first wave of brands entered this new medium rather naively, without really understanding what is different about the new channel. Many of the early wave companies simply transferred existing ways they used to communicate, like the web, or an outdoor billboard, or retail architecture. This reminds me of the status of the web ca 1993-1995. At that point you had many companies that set up a "home page" with static information that was usually a company brochure or ways to find the company in other ways, like a directory. Just looking at a few examples (and these are documented in a short video available soon on Method's website) of early examples from Second Life and other environments makes for an interesting journey. Starting in 2006, and leading to an initial media hype, brands from a variety of industries, from retail, to mobile, financial services and media & entertainment started to "set up a presence" in virtual worlds. That very expression already illustrates the initial confusion and lack of purpose.

One of the early, and much publicized, examples of brands in virtual worlds included the retail brands Adidas and Reebok. These virtual worlds build replicas of real-world shoe stores. Beautiful architecture, probably brand compliant graphical and architectural expressions of their brands. Nice artistic expressions in 3D.

A compelling user experience? No. Addressing any needs of consumers? No. An entertaining experience at least? Not really.

The result, in hindsight predictable, were empty 3D spaces, void of any people, causing justified criticism. The retailer American Apparel, selling "virtual clothes" is a similar example. Nowadays, these brands have left the virtual space, embarrassed, and are probably shying away from similar experiments for a while. You can now only find them documented on Youtube.

Let's take a look at the next wave of attempts to extend brands into virtual worlds. What do we find?

A colorful and playful experience is the Vodafone "island" in Second Life. Beautiful, moving colors, musical experiences. Poetic performance art more than telling anything about the mobile operator. Probably all perfectly compliant with the advertising campaign's color scheme. Addressing any user needs? Compelling user experience? Truly engaging and entertaining? Not obvious.

Going from bad to worse: entering the Dell Computer brand experience in Second Life, we are offered a free "eSeminar" about the value of Windows Vista in the business environment, but not being able to locate it, our avatar decides instead to visit the "giant computer". Some complicated and time consuming "teleporting" experience later, our avatar arrives at the promised "giant computer". Not sure where to go, the decision is taken away, by falling through an unexpected hole in the floor. This is not a very positive brand experience with Dell Computers. After trying to make his way back into the giant computer again, our avatar follows a long and confusing flight of stairs that lead to nowhere, occasionally confronted by misleading (and misspelled) signs leading to no-where. Our avatar is just trying to get out. The Dell logo occasionally flashes up in front of him, further reinforcing the negative brand experience. Nothing learned, no purpose, a waste of time. Getting back to the lovingly designed replicas of coffee shops and "souvenir" stores, any desire to try to find the "virtual dorm room" of founder Michael Dell has rather vanished at this point.

While the next post looks a more successful example of brands in virtual worlds, let's try to summarize what makes these examples so bad:

- Some are just an attempt to put media that comes from, and is better suited to, existing, familiar space, like web, or architecture, into a 3D space. Without doing much more.
- Others explore, often in an elaborate and expensive way, what can be done and build something because it can be done.
- Most don't seem to have any consumer perspective in mind, or try to address shortcomings of other communication channels.

In summary, they leave you with the question "what's the point?"