Final Project Guidelines

Overview

The final project in the course is to develop a campaign around a particular product, service, brand, or idea. This may be a new product in Second Life, it may be a new product or brand available both inside and outside Second Life, or you may partner with a company or organization outside of second life who is interested in marketing themselves in-world. Because Second Life combines communication with virtual objects, the variety of paths through which you publicize this brand is fairly open. In practice, you should plan on using all the tools at your disposal. There are a wide range of possibilities: word-of-mouth marketing, promotional communications, promotional items, promotional events, games, building brand culture, contests, in world video and audio, and “crossover” events and objects that are related to both the real world and the virtual world.

Your product need not have a real-world analogue. If you prefer to create a product that is only available in the world itself, that is fine.

The success of your project is related to how it is received by non-classmembers in Second Life. From the very beginning, you should be thinking about how to recruit testers, and how to publicize your brand or project. Ultimately, my evaluation of the success of your project will be closely tied to (a) how well you meet your own objectives spelled out in your proposal, and (b) the buzz generated by your final product.

I am flexible and open to ideas that may test the boundaries of this broad aim, but be sure to talk to me early and often about the nature of such projects, to make sure you do not hit a dead end.

You should work in teams of 1-10 (note that this is a departure from the syllabus that required–at a minimum–pairs). You should make sure everyone in your group has a substantial piece of the work. Divorces are especially messy, so take time to maintain esprit de corps.

Important Dates

10/25 – Presentation of proposal

12/6 – Presentation of final project

Evaluation

As noted above, I will judge the project on a number of criteria. First, about a quarter of the grade on the project will be based on the proposal and its presentation and defense on 10/25. The degree to which this proposal is complete, realistic, and well-researched will have the greatest influence on the success of your final project, and so it is important that it is as solid as possible at this stage. A description of what is expected in that proposal follows.

When the project is complete, I will be looking to see how well you have accomplished what you set out to do in the proposal. In all, I am looking for a level of professionalism in the design work, whether that is building, preparations for an event, or other materials. Keep it simple, clean, and make sure it all works to the benefit of your brand.

I will want to see that you have tested your material against a set of outside “users” that are part of the target audience. You should plan to record these tests in some way, and make any necessary adjustments to your project.

Finally, by the end of the semester, your project should be opened to the public in Second Life. The degree to which you attract an audience, and that audience takes a favorable attitude toward your brand/idea/etc. will influence the evaluation of your work. You should have in place a plan for measuring this impact.

Proposal

The proposal is, in essence, both a planning document and a sales document. Your proposal should make the compelling case that you have an idea of how to increase the recognition of your brand, and positive affect toward it. If you have a client, this should be the plan you present to the client. Otherwise, assume that I am your client, along with your classmates. You need make me willing to trust you with the image of the brand, and provide me with assurances that you can accomplish something impressive in the short amount of time we have.

At a minimum, your proposal should include:

A clear description of what you hope to accomplish through the project. For example, if you are selling a new energy drink, Blue Bill, you might want to increase name recognition of the product among young drinkers of similar products, and associate it with mellow coolness and confidence.

Who is your audience? What are they like? Are you talking about a psychographic in Second Life, or the people behind the avatars?

An outline of the tools used to communicate your message. For example, you might want to create a Blue Bill can in-world that, when held, causes avatars to glow a bit blue, and walk in a much cooler way. You might skin a motorcycle with the Blue Bill logo, and have Tom Waits do an in-world concert for Blue Bill. At the event, you would have a Blue Bill stage, with free Blue Bill leather jackets (blue, of course) as prizes for those who create the best Blue Bill dance moves. Do not over-promise at this stage–If Tom Waits isn’t going to show, don’t promise him. You might want to do a “conservative” plan, and leave room for more exciting features.

You should provide some form of benchmarking. What are your competitors doing? It turns out Red Bull is participating in an extreme sports Drop Zone, which meshes well with their intended image. Assuming you are targeting a similar demo, would your approach draw well? Are there others who have done scripted cans? Dance contests? How have these worked.

There should be a rough schedule with weekly milestones. You need not go over the top with a PERK chart or anything–unless you think it is appropriate. Simply providing a set of milestones that need to be completed each week, and a rough indication of who will be responsible for these, is enough.

A project is not finished until you have tested how an audience might react to it. Present a plan for how you will test it. How will you recruit subjects? What will the protocol be? Will you walk people through your stage, let them try out your scripted can, and then do a focus group? If so, you need to remember to work the recruitment into your schedule, as well as the development of a more complete set of questions for the focus group.

Of course, the entire project is publicity-driven, but how will you let the greater public know about what you have done. If you build it, they will not come. There are some obvious things here, like listing it in the classifieds or in the event directory. But you need to think about who can drive attention your way, and how you will influence those people to get you the traffic (of people, of mentions, etc.) that you need. This might not be exclusive to Second Life–a widely viewed video on YouTube, for example, may draw people to your brand.

Finally, how will you measure your impact. You do not (necessarily) need to mount a survey and send avatars out with clip-boards, but you should have some metric in mind for success. For example, you might want at least 100 avatars to be carrying your can by the end of the first week. Or, you might be happy with a mention in some of the online news outlets. In other words: how do you know if your project has succeeded.

The proposal itself should run no longer than about 1400 words (about as long as this blog post). Shorter is fine. It should show up on the project-leader’s blog. If appropriate, make good use of images, hyperlinks, and SLURLs.

You should prepare a 15-minute presentation of your proposal. It should not be extemporaneous–you should have a clear set of points you are attempting to deliver. You are welcome to use visuals. Please do not have bullets on those slides. Think about keeping words to a minimum, and using them to emphasize your ideas, rather than distract from them. Present like Steve, not Bill.

Questions

Ask lots of questions, either below, in person or elsewhere!