Tall Kids in the Back

I owe myself a post and a day or so prior to another Fourth of July celebration seems appropriate. Growing up in and around Boston gives me an extra sense of appreciation for this holiday in particular. Outside of my window is where the British landed prior to the Battle of Bunker Hill. I’m surrounded by history, but also see how modern day society functions around these daily reminders of what unique decisions were made that allowed this country to form and take it’s first steps. Like the soldiers who fought on that hill as we fight our current and far less important battles we rely on what we’ve got within our reach to maximize our chances for success. For the soldiers who ran out of ammunition it was broken glass and nails. For us it’s WordPress, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, etc. Thankfully, for many of us this is our most stressful daily concern. I’ve highlighted many examples of this in previous posts, but as we move on through the latter part of the year it’s certainly time to think about how we make this all work as a cohesive unit. So many industries are still playing catch up or create their own online outlets that will allow them to continue with the status quo, because for them change equals death. We’ve got a plan to pro-actively take advantage of all of the tools being tossed on our directoin and it’s sitting on the proverbial table waiting to be sold, but easily could be modified and sold to the highest bidder. See those soldiers fought for us to be the capitalists that we are.

I wanted to share an update on our relationship with Playboy. As of last week we went from having a traditional agency/client relationship to being the brand license holder for Playboy within virtual worlds. What does this mean? We dictate strategy. We expand their presence by spreading the bunnies across the virtual world food chain (A new presence is in the works). We bring partners and sponsors along for the ride. We now have a deeper relationship with Playboy as we work towards streamlining a revenue model that will impact the bottom line. All of this will afford us the opportunity to provide an even deeper experience for our fan base as we grow and forge ahead. It’s our goal to take Playboy’s lifestyle strategy and make them the most successful brand to take advantage of virtual worlds, which is definitely within reach. In the meantime our efforts recently grabbed some attention in Newsweek and statistically Playboy is closing in on the number one traffic spot in Second Life. If that occurs it will be significant, because it will prove without a doubt that we can do it better, more efficiently and less expensive than the more well-known agencies in the game. If we fail at becoming the number one agency in this space there will be no other direction to point our fingers, but ourselves and ultimately me.

That makes for a nice segue into some exciting news that will help us get there. GGS has partnered with a couple of firms who spend a lot of time in the virtual gaming, AI and mobile spaces. First and foremost Canada’s finest Red Diva’s have agreed to focus on business development opportunities, on our behalf, which has led to many well qualified leads pouring in from all over North America. Fearless is an understatement as to how they approach these opportunities. will allow us to focus on what we do best; generating amazing, yet useful, ideas and strategies to help our clients succeed in this space.

Burying this down low to give the impression of modesty. I just got a call from Chris Redgrave of Bonneville Radio Salt Lake, who is charing the NAB Radio Show this year. She asked me to sit on a panel during the conference based on the great feedback she received from the CSS show I went to in May. It’s kind of neat to get calls out of the blue like that.

Have a great weekend everyone. As always, don’t ever look down a tube that you just dropped a rocket-style firework in.

I cannot believe it’s officially the one year anniversary of Playboy’s launch within Second Life. So many lessons have been learned and having an open and adaptive attitude has really allowed us to take chances to advance our cause. Twelve months ago Second Life was still a great unknown to us and our strategy was based on what we confidently thought would work and not what we absolutely knew would work. Luckily it paid off and most importantly it was the belief that letting the community of players get involved with the day to day operations was more important than anything else. If you look at that from the professional side of things it can be labeled “active participatory market research” where you analyze the results in real-time. As a result, for those of you who love traditional web metrics this one sim operation has an e-marketing database that is nearly the size of one percent of the active monthly population and our unique visitor traffic is a shade over 4% of the active total monthly log-ins. Scale that up and compare to the total unique traffic on the Internet and the numbers are huge. This is the first time I’ve publicly shared this data, but I think it’s truly important for people to have proof that a long-term and sustainable existence within virtual worlds is quite possible.

For those of you who are looking to stop by and check out what we have up the sleeves for our anniversary party today, please stop by from 8am-11pm PT. We’re even auctioning off dates with Playboy Bunnies for charity. Of course the charity has to do with animals; hopefully bunny rescue.

Thanks to the Playboy team for their support from the top down. Without your trust and confidence in us this would never have been possible. We are looking forward to taking this opportunity to an entirely new level over the next twelve months and we’re glad to have you along for the ride.

While scanning the Boston Globe today (online of course) I came across this doozy that Dunkin Donuts has kowtowed to pressure from Fox News and removed an ad starring Rachel Ray, because she is wearing a scarf that obviously alerts the nation that she is dressing up as Yasser Arafat this Halloween. Shame on you Rachel for jumping the gun and spoiling the fun. Hopefully the “Today Show” crew can contain their excitement until October. In all seriousness Dunkin Donuts, the worlds largest coffee and bagel chain, is backing down because Fox News reporter Michelle Malkin accused them of being irresponsible for basically not fact checking the design of the scarf. This wouldn’t be the first time this has happened, but what I’m most upset about is that the Double D didn’t just go into full on research mode and stand their ground before coming to the decision to remove the spot.

To help soothe my tension I’m going to fantasize a bit and pretend I’m the CEO of Dunkies and resolve this in 3 easy steps.

Step 1
The first question out of my mouth is “Who the heck is Michelle Malkin?” which immediately leads me to YouTube and this piece that oozes with the confidence of backing up what you say and a fine tidbit on her questionable journalistic tactics. You can look at some more to further drive home the point that she is Fox material, which means it’s ignorant sensationalist ranting which lacks any intelligence and semblance of truth. Now I could easily conclude that I have seen enough and tell my PR staff to issue a two word release saying “Michelle Who?”, but I’m the CEO of a multi-billion dollar organization so I need to be a bit more cautious and move on to step two.

Step 2
Let’s take a look at the pictures. I’ll label them so you know who is who. It’s tough to decipher.

Rachel

Yasser

Based on fact here is what a keffiyeh is. It’s a traditional garment and worn across all arab countries. So by making these accusations Malkin can also use the same logic and say all gun owners are murderers. I’m sure the NRA would love that. Based on sheer design I’m not seeing it. If you look to your right, at Ray’s left shoulder, you’ll see a botched attempt at pulling off paisley and various other patterns. The keffiyeh that Arafat is most notorious for wearing looks like a chain linked fence crossed with stick figures of seagulls. That’s not meant to be insulting. It’s just what it looks like. Do some more digging and you can see that Urban Outfitters sells this scarf which you can get in green. Look more closely at the UO version, which I believe Ray may be wearing, and it looks like a mating experiment between sea turtles and a Burberry scarf. I can see how the “clueless” could quickly jump to conclusions, but when you want to be taken seriously as a journalist and accuse a major corporation of supporting terrorist organizations you better damn well know you have a dead on replica at hand. However one shame badge for the agency and production company that worked on the ad. It’s the damn black and white version that jumps out at you. Didn’t anybody notice this and make the proverbial Arafat joke, which would have triggered the “Ummm maybe we should change it up or at least use the green one” executive decision?

Step 3
This is the most important one. Ask yourself “Do my customers really care?”. Have you heard the term “Dunkie Junkie”? I have and it’s a funny play on the fact that Dunkin Donuts sells us our favorite and most addicting drug; coffee. Go to any Duece at 8am each day, especially in the Boston area, and you’ll see lines formed outside the door of people who want their fix. Do I really think I’m going to lose customers over this? I once lived in an apartment where I had nine DD’s within a 2 mile radius. Are they really going to lose some serious market share over this? Absolutely not and that’s my point. So much time, energy, effort and money got wasted on this and over what? Nothing.

I’m sensitive to issues as much as anybody, but this acceptable culture of backing down and not standing for what you believe in is so disconcerting. You draw more attention to yourself by giving up, which makes things worse. Jon Luther, you have millions of people who love your brand and if they saw that their sweet nectar was being picked on by a bully they would have rushed to your defense and quashed “Malkin and the Malcontents” before they could have made another Fratalian joke. That’s how social media works today and if you actually had a serious strategy opposed to “the agency thinks we should have a YouTube site” you would leverage this powerful medium (You have 1092 subscribers to tap who are obviously true loyalists) and feed it with your defense of this issue (preferably your own video repeating exactly what I wrote here…make sure you credit me.) you could stir the proverbial cup of joe and come out extra sweet.