An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest... Nightclubbiz.com

This purpose of this document is to provide a clearer understanding of the fundamental differences between a .com presence, and a virtual world presence. While all efforts were made to minimize verbosity, providing 'brief' explanations on anything to do with the virtual world is not always possible. It is important that readers are able to obtain a basic understanding of this medium as it relates to a number of potential and advantageous marketing possibilities.

The virtual world should not be confused with a .com infrastructure in any way, shape, or form.

Several years ago, a number of large corporations attempted to establish a presence in the virtual world of Second Life with a .com type of approach. That is… Similar to building a website, it was thought that… You simply build it and they will come. This approach DID not and will NOT work in the virtual world.

Granted, you do interface with the Second Life virtual world through a client interface sort of like a web browser, but the similarity ends there. In a web browser, there's an 'anticipated' response. For example… You click on a link and expect a page to open… You click on an mp3 and expect music to play. This is little more than an interactive process in its most elementary form. All you're doing is accessing files from a web server.

How the website and virtual world concept differ

Unlike the methodology that goes into building a website, you need to engineer an actual environment in the virtual world. Your brand is encompassed "within" the environment. This is where the many corporations that rushed into Second Life several years ago went terribly wrong. They invested sizable amounts of money into mind-blowing builds… People came to look once… Thought nice! But never returned.

This is the .com mentality. In the virtual world, you need to entertain your audience in some way or another and it's generally at the social level. The objective is to keep your property busy and bustling 24X7 with traffic and high retention rates. The longer they stay, the longer you keep them immersed in your brand.

What is the purpose of a presence in Second Life?

We already know this what is from a residence perspective. As a business or service, the next question would be, how could a presence in the virtual world benefit them? In a nutshell: Unlike the static likes of a website, you can "immerse" your audience in your brand, as opposed to simply displaying it to them. From a marketing perspective, the possibilities are endless. The only problem is, most have yet to discover how to unleash this power from the virtual world platform as of yet.

And what is the Nightclubbiz.com approach

The virtual world is a socially driven environment. Our research suggests an exceptionally strong demand for concepts, which stimulate social interaction on a host of different levels. It is our belief that any private, to large corporate entity wanting a high traffic presence in the virtual world will need to integrate a social entertainment component of some sort "if" your objective is high traffic.

Make sure you understand… You cannot simply make it about the entertainment component. Conversely, if the emphasis on the underlying brand is too strong, then the social entertainment value is lost. The two components must seamlessly integrate so that the perfect balance of social atmosphere and external brand function as a pair. Implemented flawlessly, you have a premium entertainment offering, which results in a powerful marketing vehicle.

Sounds pretty easy… How come no ones doing it yet?

It's little like saying… If everyone owns a video camera, how come they're not all producing blockbuster movies? Or if anyone can play an MP3, how come they're not all superstar DJ's? There is a real underlying science in social entertainment concept development. Indeed the tools are available to everyone, but so is the C# (programming language). That does not mean everyone understands how to effectively use it.

Most people do not understand the intellectual engineering that goes into quality social entertainment concepts -they view it as a tangible product, as in… Something that is visually appealing and if you can accomplish that, people will just come. The core underlying concept? From our observation there generally is none, unless you consider wishful thinking and dreamy idealism a concept of sorts.

Look and feel makes up just 20% of the concept, for if this were not the case… Those many hundreds of entertainment related venues in the virtual world would be bustling with traffic, as opposed to what we see now, which is… 2% have captured 95% of the global level recognition, while demand for additional 'quality' social entertainment environments is off the scale. As the social culture evolves in the virtual world, this demand will continue to sear.

So Nightclubbiz.com has a magic recipe for guaranteed and instant success?

Social entertainment does not work this way. You can't template these types of concepts. To gain so much as an elementary understanding of what its fundamental purpose is or how these environments affect people at the 'individual' level, you'd need to begin by pondering the following very simple questions:

What makes a comedian funny? And if one comedian is funny… Why don't we simply create clones of him/her? How come he/she is funny to Group A, but not Group B? If one pop star singer is hot… Why don't we simply create carbon replicates of her? Why is she in demand here in the west, but not in Greece? Avatar was a hot movie; should we all hurry to make 100 more? In almost any sector of entertainment, this methodology is about as useful as putting wooden wheels on a Mack truck.

The nightclub sector of leisure entertainment often prefers to imitate, as opposed to innovate. If one hot nightclub entertainment concept emerges… Like a herd of sheep, everyone wants to copy, duplicate, and imitate, thus why… "Trends" is a term of bliss in the nightclub entertainment sector. More accurately translated…. We can't, or don't know how to develop entertainment product - So we'll wait for someone else to do it and then…. We'll call it a trend!!! At very best, this gimmicky approach or better termed 'low octane fuel', gets them a few miles down the track before the engine begins to sputter and they're out of the race.

There is no such thing as a template for social entertainment concepts

The types of demographics, marketplaces, experiences, and foremost… Understanding the numerous social facets, which are unique to any target audience cannot be addressed with a silver bullet approach. It's been tried… It is still being tried… It does not work… It will never work. The virtual world fosters a similar mentality. Case in point: When one particular venue launched and became successful as a jazz entertainment offering two years ago, numerous others copycat attempts were made to create a similar concept. To date… The only one successful is the original venue, while most others have closed up or yield modest traffic.

Is a virtual world marketing vehicle really possible?

No official verdict yet, but… We've run preliminary mini trials, which consist of introducing a busy virtual world entertainment audience to a brand. Through associating it with a contest and the resources of a highly experienced host MC, whom was able to 'engage the audience' in the brand in a humorous sort of way … The result was most interesting.

The humor and buzz resulting from this approach resulted in the audience running with the brand themselves. That is, they were competing in this case for the best slogan, while 80% of the interactive commentary (of a humorous nature) was centered on the brand. Ultimate result: The audience was 'immersed' in the brand for a total of 3.5 hours.

More interestingly, the brand became a premise of humor (mainly in the form of slogans and open chat gestures) for the following 4-weeks after the initial injection of it into the venue. Without argument, this is a crude and rather limited means of pilot testing, nevertheless did provide a promising and most interesting result.  Nightclubbiz.com will continue with these pilot projects and post its findings here.

It should also be mentioned that the average duration of visit in a popular virtual world entertainment offering is 45 minutes on average, with a sizable number of these guests toping out at 2.5 hours or more. Again the sophistication in engineering that must be invested into this type of concept is substantial, compared to that of a conventional website, but the rewards are potentially groundbreaking.

The future belongs to those who see it coming…

Dave H
http://nightclubbiz.com/