Shareholder Meetings in Second Life?

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An article in the Wall Street Journal reported that ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s largest steel makers, hosted its shareholder meeting in the virtual world of Second Life this week.

The goal, according to the article, was to attract, “a younger generation of investors.” I suspect the actual goal was to generate media coverage around an event that traditionally receives little to no attention. And to that end, I guess it worked.

Or did it?

Participating in a virtual community, whether we’re talking about blogs, social networks or virtual worlds, requires that we ask many of the same questions we ask when developing a more traditional PR plan, such as determining the audience and objectives.

The results, though, can’t be measured with a print or broadcast story. They are seen over time, as new relationships are forged with online communities and conversations are ignited that would otherwise never happen.

My guess is that ArcelorMittal wanted to do something “totally unique,” and in this case, might have tried to run before they were walking.

The shareholder meeting was yesterday, and I haven’t found one reference to it in the blogosphere or anywhere else online. No mention on the virtual world or financial blogs. No Flickr photos from the event. No follow-up communications from the company. No Twitter references.

If I were evaluating the success of this event, here are some of the questions I would consider:

• Did the participants learn something about our company or our culture that they couldn’t have found elsewhere?
• Were we able to interact with our audience and discover things about them that we weren’t able to do by other means?
• Are we now part of conversations that would otherwise have excluded us, and are these conversations that we want to be a part of?
• Was the return appropriate to the size of our investment, both in time and budget?

This post isn’t intended to bash ArcelorMittal’s efforts, but to help other companies considering similar events to think strategically about how they approach peer media rather than just jumping on the bandwagon.

I hope someone from the company reads this post and responds – not to prove me wrong or to defend themselves -  but simply to participate in a conversation that they started.

- Aaron Uhrmacher, NYC