Hypertext

I’ve been catching up on the Scobleizer’s recent posts on what’s doing over in Second Life.  The virtual world pioneer has unveiled a new browser and is integrating more with social networks.  Interesting stuff.  But as a PR guy, what fascinated me was when Scoble acknowledged that, from a PR perspective, Second Life of late has been about as visible as a polar bear in a snowstorm.  “…many people are reacting to my early tweets with messages like ‘I thought it was dead,’”  Scoble wrote.  And that apparently was the point.  Linden Lab’s CEO Mark Kingdon ”admitted that they had been pretty quiet and avoided doing more PR work until just recently.”

Odd.  I’m of the opinion that when people wrongly believe you have died, speaking up might actually be a fairly effective means of changing their perceptions.

Here’s the progression as I understand it from Second Life’s birth as the “next big thing,” through to today’s exhumation.

• Second Life launches to great fanfare and hype–>
• Hype starts to fade as (a) companies question the ROI (b) people who loved the game dynamics moved on (c) the press got interested in the next Big Thing –>
• Second Life begins slowly and methodically reinventing itself and sees impressive results in users, time spent on the site, etc….And decides it’s a good idea not to talk about any of this for a long, long time.

The irony for me is in seeing a new media pioneer resort to old-world communications strategies.  When you’ve been in PR long enough, you’ve probably experienced at least a few times working with a white-hot brand.  And you probably rode that wave as far as you possibly could, wringing every ounce of coverage you could out of the attention the media lavished on your client.

But in the age of authenticity, hype is the enemy.  It’s seductive as hell, sure–but 99 times out of a hundred, hype will misrepresent your brand, even while claiming to extol it.

It reminds me of one of my heroes, Bruce Springsteen.  When Springsteen landed on the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week, way back in 1975, the Boss was distraught by the hype because he saw it for what it was: a real threat to building a life-long relationship with his audience. His answer, though, wasn’t to clam up.  It was to go out and bust his butt doing what he did best: play passionate, marathon rock concerts that converted even the most hard-boiled skeptics.  (He did the same thing a decade later when the Born in the USA hype went nuclear.) Eventually, even as the press coverage dropped to “normal” levels, it started to focus more on the music and the concerts, not the phenomenon.

Yes, hype is a dangerous thing.  But so is silence.  The marketplace is littered with companies and brands that couldn’t live up to the original hype. The only real solution is to communicate–consistently, honestly and transparently.  To keep telling your story.

Second Life, welcome back the the land of the living.  Don’t make the mistake of going dark again.

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