Just a second ago, we mentioned that GSD&M has partnered with Metaversatility to begin taking survey and acquiring data in virtual worlds. See it here. We decided to take our own suggestion and ask Greg Verdino, CEO of crayon, what he thought about this new journey for Idea City.
“Strange indeed.
Virtual ethnography isn’t a terrible idea – there are other companies walking down the same path and I think it’s a path worth walking — but I’m not clear on what any of this has to do with GSD&M. I know they’ve done some work in Second Life but they hardly seem to be at the epicenter of the virtual worlds movement. In theory, I’d think Metaversatility could have done this on their own – no?
AdvertisementPlus, I wonder if “lack of data” isn’t a red herring. I’ve never had a client tell me that they won’t experiment with virtual worlds due to lack of data;; lots of them shy away due to lack of scale, especially with worlds like Second Life and There.com. The real virtual world action seems to have shifted to youth-oriented worlds like Webkinz and Club Penguin and into worlds that seem to be more marketer-friendly like virtualMTV or inherently brand-focused like Virtual Magic Kingdom.”
Full disclosure: GSD&M was a crayon client – but hasn’t been for a while now.