Robert Gourley is creative director of Mojave, an ad agency that has created experiences for brands in Second Life and other social online spaces. He says Maple Grove is an interesting attempt, but it doesn’t take advantage of the virtual world’s potential.

“Brands in Second Life have the freedom to move away from real world metaphors and engage customers in more interesting ways,” he said. “I don’t see users being excited about logging onto Second Life and walking around a replica of a mall, live music or not. Overall, I think it’s best to look at Second Life as a marketing strategy rather than retail channel. The exception to this is digital purchase like music, apps and games, which is a much easier sell to an already connected audience.”

If nothing else, Gourley says it’s certainly a PR win for Canada Post. “But I wonder if the mall will just be a virtual ghost town this time next year.”

You can read the full article at Retail Customer Experience Magazine

At Mojave, we played off this universal truth to create a series of fun, interactive characters for CafePress. From the Emo Nephew (played by Jake Bern) to the Critical Mother-in-Law (Kelly Hazen), the site lets you interact with video and sort through CafePress’s 150 million gift ideas to find a perfect gift. Mojave wrote, cast, shot and built the entire flash application.

Check it out, you might just find the pefect gift for your own ‘ungiftable’.

 The Ungiftables

Title: The Ungiftables
Client: CafePress
Agency: Mojave Interactive
Creative Director: Robert Gourley
Art Director: Andrew Betlyon
Copywriters: Jeremy De Forge, Daniel Mandel, Robert Gourley
Agency Producers: Joseph Braswell, Steven Barry
Field Producer: Naomi Kasa
Lead Editor: David Holechek
Camera Operator: Manuel Quintanilla
Flash Development: Larry Legue
Performers: Jake Bern (emo nephew), Cindy Clark (nosy neighbor), David Powledge (conspiracy uncle), Annie Mackay (vege-liberal activist), Joe Sanfelippo, Natalie Avital (annoying cutesy couple), Kelley Hazen (critical mother-in-law)

A typical day for creative director Robert Gourley is filled with client meetings, consumer research, presentations, art directing — you name it. Here, typical almost sounds overwhelming, hectic. But not to this online advertising savant. No, to Gourley typical means a challenge. Typical means excitement. Typical means life at Gourley’s own ad agency, Mojave Interactive.

Read more here.

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XH A1 Website

The problem lies not with Second Life, but in the real-world [tag]marketing[/tag] approach to a world without rules. People in Second Life want to escape the boundaries of life, not duplicate them. Brands that ape real-world strategies like billboards and showrooms filled with [tag]3d[/tag] products all suffer from lack of interest and tepid response to their marketing efforts.

A better way to engage users in Second Life is to empower them to play. Instead of rendering your product as in its in real life, play off the fantastic, fun elements that will entertain and engage the user. Work from your [tag]brand promise[/tag], not just the attributes of your product. What ONE idea do you want the customer walking away with after interacting with your [tag]brand online[/tag]? That’s where you [tag]Second Life marketing[/tag] should start, not showcasing the color your widgets come in.

An easy example of this would be for Red Bull. Instead of distributing cans of product (yawn) in Second Life, allow users to sprout large wings to fly around and share with friends. Instead of Nike recreating a specific running shoe, they could give out rocket shoes in that re-enforce a promise (speed). Sunkist Soda could run a big-wave surf contest with live bands playing and beach bonfires to capture the spirit of summer, 24 hours a day.

I might not be interested in driving a virtual Austin Martin, but I might want to try living a James Bond lifestyle online, complete with expensive suits, moonbases and sharks with lasers. This is where marketers need to stretch their creative wings, forget gravity and the leave real world behind.

Sell the virtual sizzle, not the virtual steak.

From a design perspective, I found the end credits interesting as they were inspired by a design technique called “glitch art”. [tag]Glitch art [/tag] explores unplanned errors created by computer or electronic devices that are captured and manipulated by the artist. I started experimenting with glitch [tag]art[/tag] several years ago when I was working on a temperamental mac. I found some of the frozen screens to be absolutely fascinating – layers of geometric shapes and lines overlapping my current desktop and work.

I can’t find any examples from the Cloverfield credits, but here are a few links to examples of Glitch art:

• Art from Code
• Flick: Glitch Art
• Perfect Imperfection

Hasbro and Mattel, the makers of Scrabble, have slapped Facebook with a copyright infringement lawsuit over the wildly popular “Scrabulous”. Scrabulous is an multi-player, online clone to the 70-year old Scrabble word game.

Hasbro has gone after Facebook and the creators of Scrabulous in a misguided attempt to “control the brand”.

In my opinion, this is because Hasbro doesn’t understand the true seismic shift that has happened as a result of interactive media. You no longer “control” your brand via one-way, authoritative communication. Your customers now discuss, remix and share your brand with each other in today’s interactive marketplace. You can try to sue them all (like the failed record industry) or you can embrace this new reality and create a strategic platform that allows customers to share within a framework of your choosing.

Hasbro’s outdated thinking will only backfire as it faces waves of angry customers, bad press, and a shift in brand perception.

Scrabulous already has more than 500,000 daily players – that’s 500,000 people who now think Hasbro is a bully. An unofficial “Save Scrabulous” group has sprung up in response, with at last count over 8,000 31,000 53,594 members. One rabid fan posted “I’ve burnt my Scrabble board in protest!” another, more pointedly: “Do these greedy fools not realize that they should be paying the creators of Scrabulous for all the damn fans of the game they created?” Is this the kind of conversation you want about your brand?

Of course, Hasbro deserves it full share for creating Scrabble, but instead of suing the developers that created the new media clone, it should thank them for innovating when the company couldn’t. By striking a deal or buying out the creators of Scrabulous, Hasbro could ride a wave of online popularity and reach new customers without risk. Hasbro could then use the online version to market the offline game or add premium features that would allow them to charge micro-payments (How about $1.99 a month for customized tiles, or personalized leaderboards). The platform is there, the customers are there, so why not plug in, instead of shutting it all down?

My Advice to Hasbro:

1. Negotiate a fair deal with the developers of Scrabulous, understanding that they took a risk when you wouldn’t.

2. Honestly explain Hasbro position via the “Save Scrabulous” group and other online communities, not through a press release or legal brief.

3. Develop guidelines of how your brand should be presented online, with enough flexibility to allow innovation and growth.

4. Create the internal structure for innovators to contact you and work with your products to develop new ideas.

5. Datamine your online version to find your most loyal players. Treat them as heroes and empower them to spread the word for you. Offer them insider information and special offers that they can disseminate to their network.

“Business-as-usual doesn’t realize this because it continues to conceptualize markets as distant abstractions — battlefields, targets, demographics — and the Net as simply another conduit down which companies can broadcast messages. But the Net isn’t a conduit, a pipeline, or another television channel. The Net invites your customers in to talk, to laugh with each other, and to learn from each other. Connected, they reclaim their voice in the market, but this time with more reach and wider influence than ever.”
– The Clutetrain Manifesto

Photo: Ella’s Dad from Flickr

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