Tim Collins’ presentation on “Joining Online Communities: Marketing in New Environments” at the Financial Services Club last night was interesting.
Tim is the Senior Vice President for Experiential Marketing at Wells Fargo, and I invited him to talk to the Financial Services Club about virtual worlds, corporate blogging and related matters.
The main subject that attracted interest was Wells Fargo’s use of Second Life, as they were the first bank to be in there using this virtual world for connecting with their targeted student community.
The trial began in September 2005 with a pilot designed to deliver a financial education message in a fun, engaging way. Further to this trial, Wells Fargo committed to taking these virtual world services to a higher level and moved the experiment to their own platform, Stagecoach Island.
It was of particular interest to me to understand the reasoning for Wells Fargo leaving Second Life and creating their own separate platform. Tim explained that this was due to a number of factors including the fact that this gave them:
- increased flexibility;
- increased consumer availability;
- a better brand fit;
- lower cost;
- increased activities, such as Sunday Brunches, Skydiving Clubs and so on; and
- the provision of additional financial education content.
All sounds well and good, although you may wonder about some of the items above so here’s an explanation of increasing activities.
Wells Fargo would arrange social activities, such as everyone getting together for flying lessons – the sort of stuff people do in Second Life – and said that, at the time, if more than 20 people turned up the system slowed down and if over 40 came along then the system would come to a dead stop.
Another more subtle reason for Wells Fargo coming out of Second Life came out of the discussion though when Tim played a video of an interview with Ailin Graef. She’s the girl who made over a $1 million – real US dollars – out of land that doesn’t exist.
She did this by buying and selling virtual land and properties in Second Life using Linden dollars, with around 266 Linden dollars to a US dollar at current exchange rates. Through her ability to buy early on in Second Life’s developments, she’s made a fortune by selling hot properties in the main downtown strips of this other world.
The video Tim played was of an interview in Second Life with her on CNET.com news, who decided to interview Ailin's her online avatar, a character called Anshe Chung. The interview was going to be all about her success and how she had achieved such riches. However, before the interview could start, angry Second Life network terrorists bombed the interview by sending a flock of flying … urrmmm … male genetilia (in cartoon form) into the CNET news room.
For this reason, Wells Fargo determined it would be better to launch their own platform, powered by Second Life, as they would have more control over what content went out.
So, it’s all well and good to use social networks when the form of community is the written word, but when you move to images and live cartoon dialogues then be careful … it could just give you the willies.
Meantime, if anyone's interested, I will be hosting an indepth tour of retail trends in the USA in November, with Wells Fargo participating in a half-day workshop - for International attendees only - on these trends. Other guests will include Washington Mutual and a number of other US Banks. If you would like to know more, just let me know by email.
Equally if you would like a copy of Tim's presentation or the podcast of the highlights ... join the Club!