Business’s Eye of Mordor is on your Children

Although virtual environments are still at an early stage in development and adoption, many companies are already dabbling in one or more virtual worlds or closely observing them prior to getting their feet wet.

Auto maker Toyota is already using virtual worlds as a way to get preteens and teenagers interested in its Scion entry-level car brand, which is targeted at younger buyers.

“We’ve made a fairly significant six-figure investment in virtual communities across different worlds,” said Adrian Si, interactive marketing manager for Scion at Toyota. For instance, Toyota is the exclusive supplier of virtual Scion cars in Numedeon’s Whyville educational virtual world for children aged 8 to 15 and provides them with information about car financing.

Tweens are already thinking about what car they might buy, and Toyota hopes that giving them a positive experience with its cars in virtual worlds might translate into them or their parents buying vehicles from the vendor down the road. Good buzz about a product can go a long way, Si believes.

Only a few years old, Toyota’s Scion brand is one with which the company can afford to take risks that the auto maker couldn’t with its other much more established brands, Si said. Toyota got interested in virtual worlds at the same time that the companies behind such communities were coming to the auto maker to see if it was interested in funding them.
As well as Whyville, Toyota is promoting its Scion brand in Linden Research’s Second Life and is about to do the same in Gaia Interactive’s Gaia Online teen virtual world.

PepsiCo has yet to experiment with virtual worlds, but is keeping an eye on the space.  “We’re intrigued by it and are actively monitoring it,” said Julius Akinyemi, director of emerging technologies at the beverage and snack vendor. Like Toyota, PepsiCo is particularly attracted by how much input users have in creating their virtual environments and the ability to directly interface with and influence those individuals.

One area where PepsiCo thinks it might look to engage with the residents of virtual worlds is in soliciting their input on new products, according to Akinyemi. The vendor would hope to do more codevelopment of new beverages and snacks as well as create quick marketing buzz on new offerings, he said. There need to be more tools available in virtual worlds to make such development and marketing efforts easier, Akinyemi noted, along with a general move to simplify the process for anyone to enter any virtual environment.

Building bridges between the real world and virtual environments will become increasingly important in guaranteeing a successful virtual presence for a company, IBM’s Kearney said. She pointed to what the Ganz gift company has done with its popular Webkinz plush toys. Children who own one of the toys receive a code to enter the Webkinz virtual world where they can play with a virtual version of the real-world toy.

Businesses experimenting with virtual worlds | InfoWorld | News | 2007-06-18 | By China Martens, IDG News Service

Wow. Hmm. I can’t decide if it’s creepy they’re looking to make your children more interested in consumerism (children: you must start NOW in preparing to buy that first car… ingore the fact you’re only 9! Buy Buy Buy! All the cool kids are doing it), or if it’s genius that they’re educating the youth about responsible future spending & economic tips to success.

But do you really want biased education in regards to your child’s finances? Seems like it could be a quick slope to that kind of interaction.

Those web-playgrounds (communities, virtual worlds, networking platforms) MUST make money some how to stay afloat (U13 is a difficult age group to scale in terms of moderation & protection, therefore need some overhead to get the proper staff/facilities, etc). So I understand the need to integrate branding & licensing into the system (heck, I work for a branded site, I know all of this far too well).

Again, perhaps it’s just the article & the way it was presented which makes me feel like the wolves are circling. “We’re watching…” Yikes. Gives me the creeps to be quite honest.

There’s this split I see forming in Social Networks/Communities/worlds (I’m not saying it’s happened yet… but it could be on the horizon):

Side a) Branding of a community for the sake of community. Let the community tell you what they want. Listen to the people who support your brand. Let the audience interact with your product and show you the light. Build an army/following/society around your brand, and support them as they support you. It’s kind of what Threadless (t-shirt/design social network) did. I think flip.com’s technique for advertising works too (letting the flip.com kids choose what they’d like to have advertised– and the advertisements are provided in such a way as they’re interesting and effective).

side b) Branding of a community for the sake of business. Provide certain “benefits” or “treats” to lure the population to your brand within a social network, gain their trust, then slyly encourage “social pressures” to get a pop culture-like feel (buying for the sake of buying, not because you want it, but because everyone already has it), and thus world domination for a secret dicatorship. Like, if you pile a bunch of goodies in the middle of a clearing, the vultures can sit on the tree tops, watch what the critters like to eat, which bits & pieces the critters like the most– which brings in the plumper/more eager critters, and devise a plan of attack– letting the vultures reap the benefits of their little trap. Ooo, that sounds harsh doesn’t it? Well… yes, it does. Again– Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” rears it’s bald head.

(recap: the witches want the children, but how do you get children? Well, children like chocolate. Witches stick a potion in the chocolate. Lure the children to the chocolate. Children digest chocolate, and thus take the potion. Witches get what they want. Children think they’re getting what they want, but in the end– end up mice. And what happens to mice? They get destroyed)

Mmmm.

I’m probably just over-reacting again. Could happen. Regardless, my yellow flag is momentarily raised, so I decided to ramble about it. What dost thou think?

Darn Straight: Fear of the Future with Kids Online

Our current culture is stuck on the underlying fear of the dangers surrounding our kids online. While there may be dangers, they are greatly outnumbered by the potential wonders and great experiences that are possible now because of the web and technology in general. To take a knee jerk reaction and prohibit or limit use of the web is not only a pedantic reaction, but potentially a detrimental one for your kid’s development.
The future (and the present) is wired and will continue to be. Parents need to step up and become educated in the net and what their kids are doing online - both good and bad. But how? And by whom? We can’t rely on them to just do it on their own over night. Even if they have the desire, they may not have the resources or be too overwhelmed to even know where to begin.
There is a sea change coming soon on how people view the net. Gen X’rs and beyond have more knowledge and have less fear of the net and will pass this thinking onto their kids (whom they are already having). In the interim time though, until the change is here, we, as community professionals, have to prepare to help out…

Kids and the Web/Technology - let’s talk about the future « Joi Podgorny

I recommend you check out Joi’s continuing response to “the future” in the link above.  She’s exactly the person to be talking to if you have questions about strategy, youth online, and how the future can be changed in regards to parents knowledge & kid safety online.