Transcript for Managing the Gray #36
Transcript for Managing the Gray #36 “Playboy Comes to Second Life”
Originally posted on June 12, 2007
C.C. Chapman: Hey, today, we’ve got a special Managing the Gray. I am on the phone with my good buddy Marc from Green Grotto. How’s it going, man?
Marc Girolimetti: I am doing fantastic, although I need to tell you that by next Tuesday, or actually by the end of this week, Green Grotto will go through a name change.
C.C. Chapman: Yes, so tell me and my listeners about — I mean there is a reason. We first connected at a Second Life event here in Boston. Tell people what, well, I know you’re going through a name change and all that, so tell me who you are and who you’re with and who it’s going to become and all that jazz.
Marc Girolimetti: That’s awesome. Yeah. Let me just back the history up a little, back it up like we’re a dump truck right here, so get the sound effect of the backup beep ready, toot, toot. Green Grotto basically really was founded as almost you could purely say a Flash production studio/interactive strategy firm. So, basically, that interactive strategy, we work with our clients, how do we most effectively slot into their interactive campaigns. We weren’t the company going out searching for the all-encompassing sort of agency of record campaign. We were just trying to get in and do really cool stuff because in reality, we didn’t want to do the boring stuff. We felt like doing websites had become a commodity and since we were experts in Flash, we would try to find solutions for our clients leveraging the technology. Even though we were positioned as an interactive agency, it was interactively Flash. It’s funny because then everyone was like, “Well, what about AJAX?” I’m like, “Well, we know Flash.” We’ll just avoid AJAX for a while and leave that for the hardcore open source folks.
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: But, in reality and all kidding aside, you know it worked out for us where we were able to get into some pretty decent firms and do some really cool stuff with that expertise. We can do everything from like a Flash movie regarding a product presentation to sales. We did a prototype sales tool for the Alienware corporate sales team, which was really neat. It never got off the ground, unfortunately, but it was basically where it was sort of customized for each salesperson and there’s a little CMS on the backend where the salesperson could plug in all the content that they wanted to present to their potential client and the ActionScript, they just go out and call it in, so there might be a custom movie, there might be custom imagery, custom navigable content and whatnot. It was really a neat thing. Then we moving forward have done a few projects. We were subbed for this, but every small agency gets subbed.
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: To build games for FedEx and so we worked with their sort of branding and design agency and then we kind of came in with the expertise to make that thing live and breathe and work and be fun. That’s the stuff that was just so super cool. It was in conjunction with like the NBA and we did a golf game for the PGA and a racing game with NASCAR and FedEx to push their whole Gibbs Racing that they sponsor. That’s a lot of fun stuff, at the same time that’s sort of a growing firm. Even though there is plenty of money in the Flash world, we kind of, I wouldn’t say got bored, we were just looking for a new challenge.
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: It just happened to be in conjunction with a potential client had come to us and they were shopping around a pretty cool idea to build their own sort of 3D virtual environment, but specifically catered to retail and essentially creating virtual malls, really niche, now that’s obviously wide open, a Second Life would-be or Kaneva would-be, which kind of encompasses everything as in a real replica of life. This would just be the part of you that goes to the mall on Saturday and it’s obviously Macy’s or, in your case, the Apple store. What happened was, as the business plan was being shopped around, we were researching sort of costs and timelines and gaming engines and everything that would take to sort of get this at least a working prototype up and off the ground and in that research came across Second Life and all of a sudden… I am personally looking at it almost via the goggles, let’s say goggles, let’s go back to my college days, the beer goggles, the goggles of a competitive analysis. It’s funny just kind of looking at Linden in Second Life as competitors. I signed up for those. If anything, even though I might look at them as competition, it’s pretty cool. Part of the competitive analysis is just to get in and get a feel for it. The other part of it was this is really neat and I kind of started to fall in love with it. I’m playing around and whatnot and then all of a sudden it feels like within a week, American Apparel happened. All of a sudden it just completely put my thinking at a 180-degree turn and so I’m like, “Damn! We could use this. Second Life, even though it’s a sort of gaming-like environment, social network and whatnot, this is really a platform.” Since they have this sort of low barrier to entry building tool, it was kind of a short learning curve. For a firm like us who work with Maya and Max, we understand 3D modeling tools. “We could use this for our clients.” Man, look at American Apparel. Heck, I have an entire drawer dedicated to American Apparel products. I’m like a huge fan actually. You should see my baby’s drawer. She has more American Apparel stuff than I have ever seen in any one life, which is actually good. If you have a kid, get them the good cotton from America.
C.C. Chapman: There you go.
Marc Girolimetti: But, anyway, the bottom line is, it’s just super cool and we just started talking internally like, “Maybe we should approach our clients with this.” The media just took it and ran with it and just made it so easy for us. I’d like to say we really busted our humps and you do have to knock on the doors of these essentially Fortune 1000 companies, but the reality is, they’re smart people, they’re reading the press, they know what is going on, and so you can drop those two magic words, Second and Life. It’s like getting off the plane at Fantasy Island and t.A.T.u. is there, just saying, “Come vir, come meet vi boss.” It’s pretty fantastic and, man, now I really want to create a Roberto Montalban avatar.
C.C. Chapman: You need to work on that, man. Get on that.
Marc Girolimetti: Yeah. God, let me keep that in mind. I won’t tell you what celebrity we recently did because I want to land the gig first.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, okay.
Marc Girolimetti: But it came out pretty well considering we kind of had to whip it up in a flash. It just sort of took off, just took off internally, it took off with sort of enthusiasm, and it took off for who we were talking to and just really opened the doors. The neat thing for us as coming from the sort of interactive strategy background and production background, we were able to approach deals totally differently beyond just being builders and that’s really what got me so excited because we could apply all these theories and lessons learned over the past 10+ years that I’ve been in this space to what we’re offering our clients and so it ends up becoming this really cool service offering where, “Yeah, we can do this build out for you, but guess what, we can do all these other marketing strategies and we can sort of do cross marketing across other channels that you have or currently utilizing whether your corporate MySpace page or if it’s a blog or a podcast or anything,” or if you have, let’s say in the case of Playboy, you have a magazine that goes to a lot of people and say, “Let’s do some cross promotion there.” Being smart enough to leverage all of those channels is just really the way to do it. Of course, now, I’m giving away all the secrets to our competition, but of course…
C.C. Chapman: Yeah. That’s one of the things why I connected with you right away when we first met because we’re both Boston guys. When I saw you give a presentation, you were talking about Second Life and you were saying things that I’m always saying as well, the fact that it’s just an extension. It’s another place for you to be. It’s not the end-all, be-all for your brand no matter what the brand is. We just talked about integrating blogs and podcasts and everything, which is what I’m always preaching and I’m like, “Yeah, I get this. This guy gets it.” I know we’ve had some great conversations over lunch whenever we can actually get it scheduled to work. It’s just been fun. I think there needs to be more people out there and you guys were an interesting mix, the fact that you could build and you did. I also like the fact that you grew out of being Flash and went into Second Life. You still do the Flash stuff but the fact that it wasn’t like, “Oh, let’s do the Second Life stuff and Second Life is the only option for everything.”
Marc Girolimetti: Right, right, exactly. That’s the best part about it is that we sometimes will approach with Second Life and we’ll walk out with, “Maybe this isn’t right for the client, but look at these three other options as far as interactive in general is concerned that we could jump on.” You establish a relationship and as long as they like you and you sort of have proven the quality that you are trying to sell, then they are way more open to discuss it, which is fantastic. It’s really funny like I’ve done enough speaking engagements regarding this stuff, the Boston thing. I actually kind of got invited to a New York event even though I wasn’t on the panel, but I really shut my mouth off. I will keep everyone nameless but there was what’s considered competition there speaking and they were just going down the wrong path and they just didn’t recognize the people in the room. They really kind of came out from the buildings approach and the people in the room are all ad people and ad people don’t want to hear how the heck it’s built. They just want to know how it makes their clients look good.
C.C. Chapman: Exactly.
Marc Girolimetti: I piped up a lot and just started talking to that and afterwards you have a lot of people start just coming up to you and asking for the proverbial business card and just saying, “Man, you really are speaking to us.” To tell you the truth, sometimes we can get indirectly to a client and then sometimes we have to go like do a Crispin if we want to get to a Volkswagen or Burger King or somebody and that’s perfectly fine for us. It’s good to be able to educate the people who are landing the multimillion dollar agency record account. It’s always good to get them on your side and to educate them and have them understand it. I got invited to speak to Disney out in Burbank and same thing. There were 40+ Disney execs in this room and a lot of people were kind of talking just about specific environments. We went across the gamut of virtual space. We even talked about, Disney Toontown, Virtual Magic Kingdom, and even World of Warcraft. I was sort of there to kind of talk Second Life, but I really just kind of talked about how to leverage virtual space and if it’s the right choice for you. Again, afterwards, that’s when everyone came up to me and just said, “You were the one person who spoke to how to actually take advantage of this.” I get what it is. I get that wow of the game, you got a battle and it’s like little Lord of the Rings. I’m sure I probably just insulted a million World of Warcraft people.
C.C. Chapman: You probably did, yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: I really can’t say Lord of the Rings because now they have their own virtual online game now.
C.C. Chapman: That’s right, yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: It’s just that you got to figure it out. You got to look at it as a medium to communicate a message and whatever that message is whether it’s branding or sales or survey, Flash interaction, you just got to figure that out and then how to leverage the platform and discuss with the community. The bottom line is the entire web has been flipped on its head and it’s not at all about content push anymore. It’s all about content creation, which means people feel totally empowered. I mean, literally, since that last presidential election when the bloggers just exploded onto the scene, that’s how bloggers really came to the national attention and became part of our lingo. It really kind of made everyone feel like, “Hey, I actually do have a choice here and I really can influence something and I can really speak intelligently and not have to worry about getting them crying, get out for 10 years gig at the Globe.”
C.C. Chapman: Exactly.
Marc Girolimetti: Doing the local beat until X columnist either plagiarizes or gets fired or gets too old and just die.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah, it’s amazing. I love the fact — it’s weird that it took up political election, but I think you’re totally right that people’s minds have begun to change and they realized people could say things. When you saw bloggers getting quoted on the news and stuff, it was like, “Wait a minute, what just happened?” It’s very cool and it’s going to be interesting to see this next election, I think you’re going to see tons more video content, some bloggers are going to video tape something they are not supposed to and post it and all hell is going to break loose. It’s going to be a blast to watch.
Marc Girolimetti: Right. Actually, I almost lost my mind yesterday. I think it was like something on CNN and they essentially cited a Wikipedia post.
C.C. Chapman: Oh no.
Marc Girolimetti: I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” I was like, “It’s okay to like look at it, but you should never ever in a million years cite it.” All of a sudden I felt like I was watching that episode of The Office.
C.C. Chapman: That is just wrong.
Marc Girolimetti: Yeah. I was like, “Okay, that’s going a little too far, guys,” especially when you have a sister who used to work with Encyclopedia Britannica.
C.C. Chapman: Oh no.
Marc Girolimetti: Talk about investing and making sure the facts are correct.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, no kidding.
Marc Girolimetti: Oh, man, but it’s funny. It was absolutely funny, but it proves, again, that mainstream media, not even America, just mainstream everywhere is sort of understanding the power of the people and really [unintelligible] back to us and it’s really neat that that can happen. It’s funny because you’ll see that the traditionalists get really mad that it’s happening. I know, C.C., you’re not a big sports fan, but I’m sure you know the name Curt Schilling because he lives about two miles from your house.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: He blogs now and he has a pretty good blog.
C.C. Chapman: Wait! I’m a sports fan. What are you talking about? I’m just not a big baseball fan.
Marc Girolimetti: Well, all right. See, you live in Boston, buddy. It’s like a sports fan means you better be a baseball fan.
C.C. Chapman: Sorry. Hey, dude. I grew up rooting for the Orioles, I’m sorry.
Marc Girolimetti: Oh man. That’s okay.
C.C. Chapman: The only New England team I root for — oh, I root for the Red Sox when I’m rooting for baseball sometimes, but I’m a Miami Dolphins football fan die hard. I root for the Bruins when they’re actually playing halfway.
Marc Girolimetti: Oh God. Let’s not talk about hockey. It’s the greatest sport to ever watch on television and it’s horrible now. I can’t even go there. Anyway, Schilling blogs and he is an intelligent dude and he can write some really insightful things. Dan Shaughnessy, old guard from the Boston Globe and his nasty attitude, he hates Schilling, everyone knows it, Schilling hates him back, and then goes and like rips the Blogger community in a column and generalizes it to the point where, “Oh, every guy who reads a blog or everyone who blogs is just some sad, out of work bum living in his parents’ basement.” That’s how out of tune he was in kind of really playing their personal cultural stereotypes. It’s just ridiculous because that whole living in your parents’ basement joke for Internet people is like 10 years old and it’s like, “Okay, buddy. Let’s step up to at least 1999 for me.” That’s the kind of stuff that just amazes me. There will always be some sort of backlash and resistance to things like what we’re involved in, but the bottom line is, it’s here, it’s happening, it’s everywhere.
C.C. Chapman: Exactly.
Marc Girolimetti: The cool thing is you go to ESPN’s website now, they are podcasting, the Boston Globe, Bob Ryan, Jackie MacMullan; they’re some of the old guards. They did a podcast. Bob Ryan is blogging now and one of my favorite podcast in the world, aside from yours of course, is Bill Simmons, the Boston Sports guy who writes for ESPN. I have known Bill since he worked at, what was that, whatever that AOL property, Boston Virtual City or whatever.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah, I remember. City Search? No. I know what you are talking about. I can’t think what it was either.
Marc Girolimetti: Yeah. He had this tiny little column on a small AOL property that he was writing out of his apartment in Charlestown and the guy in a few short years parlays that into a writing gig for ESPN.com, ESPN the magazine, he got a book out of them. Now, he does a podcast and he loves it. The opening line to his podcast is fantastic. He said, “I love this because I don’t have to leave my house.”
C.C. Chapman: Exactly. It’s what it’s all about.
Marc Girolimetti: Right. He talks to some really cool people. He had one with Marv Albert, the great basketball announcer. Last week was one of my personal favorites. Alton from The Real World: Las Vegas was one of his guests. He is buddies with Adam Carolla now. It’s really cool that a kid like that who just loves to write, hated working at The Herald, turned what was essentially blogging before blogging, and has really kind of embraced this technology, which is fantastic. It is nice ABC Properties and Disney eventually are getting involved at this level. It’s encouraging to see because then agencies like us, when we go into those terms trying to sell them on something, they get what we’re talking about and then they have living examples that we can cite.
C.C. Chapman: Now, I want to shift gears. We can talk about this all day, but we’ll never get to — well, the reason I really wanted you on today and you already let it slip a little bit, but I want to go in the direction of you got a very cool client that you’re bringing into Second Life. When this goes live, it will be up and it won’t be a secret anymore. I want to talk about, first off, who is the client that we’re talking about?
Marc Girolimetti: First of all, actually, let’s take it a step back because we’re missing question two; that’s question three. I want to quickly answer the name change.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: Green Grotto has agreed to merge with agency that is often called Sentient Services. We’re actually going to retain the name Sentient. Basically, Sentient is really kind of a knowledge research branding advertising agency, not heavy strength on production and toward new media work and that’s where we really come in. We’ve been talking for a couple of months about trying to figure out a partnership and it just wasn’t clicking and someone finally suggested, “Why don’t we just band together and make this happen?” I sat on it for a while and kind of weighed the pros and cons and then eventually I woke up one day, after like a month load of sort of weighing in all these conversations we’ve had, it just clicked in my head. I really figured that it could benefit both of us, both of our growth plans, better service to our clients, more creative and talented people on staff, and could be a real powerhouse. One of Sentient’s biggest clients that they bring to the table is Dell. Dell is a famous company that kind of made the Second Life explosion so it’s good to work with these firms and so this is the good lead in. Here’s what I think salivated the deal for them is the Big Kahuna client of Playboy. It actually started with — it’s funny because Playboy is Playboy is Playboy. They have a ton of brands and they have corporations under the umbrella and we kind of went in with the dotcom folks and that’s who we sort of really started everything with, but now, even prior to launch… They’ve seen all the progress that we’ve done and we’ve had millions upon millions of conversations. They are already sort of going across the entire corporate umbrella and trying to figure out how we can make this virtual experience work for them and really from next week when it launches to 12 months from next week have it look totally different than what the first impression will be to what the next series of impressions will be because it’s definitely going to be cool, it’s definitely not going to be these one-off splashes, one press release, one event, and see you later, we’re going to let our sim collect some cobwebs. Everyone will find out — by the time this podcast is up, a lot of people will probably see this, the neat thing about it is we really approached it as a way for people to connect with the brand, celebrate the brand, and experience the brand.
C.C. Chapman: I know I can hear people right now who are listening to this going, “Oh, great. Second Life is already deemed as nothing but sex and gambling and now we’re gonna have a whole sim of nothing but bunnies walking around and sex.” I just want to make sure because I know people are thinking that right now. They are going to Playboy and they’re like, “Oh, furries! I got to get a bunny suit, and now I’m like, “No, no. You guys don’t really know the brand of Playboy,” and I know from talking with you guys, I mean that was really important to Playboy that this wasn’t about sex and naked women. The brand is so much more than that.
Marc Girolimetti: You’re absolutely right. Actually, to tell you the truth, that’s how we approached it. We approached them and said, “Look, we can do…” Let me just get on my dirty trucker ranting mouth language, women in a bar kind of thing. We said to them, “We don’t want it to be all tits and ass,” because that’s going to be the expectation and we want to surprise people. To me, as a fan of Playboy, I always envied the — to me, the number one thing that I think of and this is like sort of like how well they’ve done a job of creating some mystery around the brand, is that it’s such an inclusive property that you see these pictures of mansion parties and aside from David Spade and James Caan who are at every single one because they have nothing better to do, you see all these super celebrities, you see all these beautiful people, you see Hef, you just see people having a good time and it’s not just like a giant orgy, it’s not like a scene out of Caligula, it really just is fun, it’s celebration, it’s relaxation, having a good time. It’s kind of hanging out with like-minded people because the one cool thing that they’ve done with the brand is really make — at the end of the day, sex is the most natural thing for any living organism on the face of the planet and somewhere along the line, humans really screwed up the ability to talk about it in a real comfortable setting. They really just kind of throw things out there that are very common, very natural and it just happens to be that they have become absolutely 1 million percent famous for these pictorials. You can’t blame them. They’re some of the world’s most beautiful women and at the same time some of the best photographers who have ever walked the face of this planet are doing these gigs for them and it makes it so much more than hot women over 60 that you see at your local triple X store.
C.C. Chapman: You know what you need too do? It’s funny. You just gave me a dangerous idea when you were talking about the photographer. I’m sorry, this is how my brain works. A while back, I’ll admit, I’m not a Playboy subscriber, but I know that they…
Marc Girolimetti: You really should be.
C.C. Chapman: I know I should be, work on that. They have I know like Kevin Smith did a pictorial. He shot the pictures and other…
Marc Girolimetti: Right. André 3000 from OutKast did one too.
C.C. Chapman: I think they need to do an influencer outreach and get those of us who are Flickr addicts to shoot photography for them. I think that would be a cool idea.
Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, it actually would. That is a great way to kind of reach out to the people and via a new media channel. That’s really everything that we’ve been talking about and, God forbid, think of how many thousands of men and women would kind of kill for that gig.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, that would be amazing to actually have — I would love to shoot in one of their sets with real cameras and stuff. That would be amazing. Never mind the naked women angle.
Marc Girolimetti: Right, right, you know you’re absolutely right. That’s the cool thing about it, but that’s what people think about and that’s how you change some brand perception and, yes, when we did the hype banners three or four weeks ago, the entire blogosphere and all the mainstream media like everyone was a chatter and everyone was so ticked off that they didn’t know what was going on, which let me just tell you it was just genius and I will not pat myself on the back for that one.
C.C. Chapman: I remember. I was actually in New York at Crayon’s offices and all of a sudden, our chief creative officer, Steve Coulson, turns to me, also known as Gideon Television, he’s like, “Dude, have you seen this?” I’m like, “What?” I looked over and it’s one of what you just called the hype banner, which I think is a great name. I looked and I laughed. He goes “What?” I said, “Uh, I know the team behind that.” I didn’t say anything and he was like, “What?” but, yeah, you’re exactly right because all you did was — which I think was a great marketing gimmick or a tactic, if it’s a better word, where you put out all these banners that said Playboy is coming to Second Life. You said nothing, nothing at all, which I thought was genius.
Marc Girolimetti: Right, right. The only thing that we did beyond that was link it to a splash page that collected an email address and we have collected thousands. I don’t know. I’d love to just sort of throw it out there with some of the other agencies that have brought [unintelligible] in and see like what kind of customer gross they’ve done on sort of an email marketing level because that’s what we’re doing, collecting email addresses so you can start communicating with these people on a regular basis. We had within three days, the number kicked 1500. It’s incredible.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: It’s been three weeks and that number just keeps going up and up and up. That means there are real fans out there. There are people who are really interested in it and they really want to participate. Of course, that makes me nervous because when the numbers are in the thousands that means we’re going to crash our sim. Come on, Second Life. Let’s get some technical limitations taken cared of, but actually, no, the neat thing is we’ve got some really great people constructing this and we have some lowdown things on that sim. This is what I’m calling it because this is what it’s like, it’s the virtual velvet rope. We’ve got a virtual velvet rope out and we’re kind of limiting how many people can be on at one time and then as one gets off then you come in. The one way I want to kind of — we have to re-script it and set it up like real life club, so if you’re one dude and then there are five beautiful women who are trying to get in, that one dude goes to the back of the line and the five ladies come in. We got to figure how we pull that off because I’ve been on the short end of that stick before.
C.C. Chapman: I think Managing the Gray listeners would love to hear. Obviously, one of the biggest problems that gets mentioned about Second Life is, “Oh, I can only have 50 people on the sim,” the numbers, how many people, blah, blah, blah. How did you talk to someone like Playboy about that topic? I know it came up at some point. I’m sure it comes up with all your clients.
Marc Girolimetti: Of course it did and you know what? I have been on the soapbox for a while at least until late last year. Because Second Life is delivered over the Internet, a lot of marketers look at it with traditional Internet metrics and this is like sort of compare all your ROI analysis comes into play here, so when someone goes out and drops $100,000 on sort of a 10-site media campaign and has 40 million page views and a CPM rate of $1.25 because they’re serving up 1.2 million ads in this tie-in and another 500,000 over here, everyone looks at it with those mass numbers and the stake it made, you can kind of fault Linden for this and you can fault us too as agencies because we need to use some numbers to get people all fired up, right? It’s that damn total registered user number.
C.C. Chapman: Yup.
Marc Girolimetti: That thing as it pushes higher and higher and higher, people just assume in their heads that 7.5 million people are at my disposal.
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: They think that they’re all going to come and they’re all going to hang out. They’re all going to show up. It’s just not the case. You have to educate them fast or you’re really going to screw the pooch as far as your relationship is concerned and so we completely just tell our clients, “Do not think in terms of numbers. Do think of numbers, but you have to think of them in a different way.” A thousand people is a lot different than a million people on Yahoo! where you ran your banners, but to tell you the truth, people who are on Yahoo! are searching, they’re shopping, they’re using their mails. They’re not 100% dedicated to your banner. This is a dedicated space, which means you have their undivided attention. Your responsibility, once you get their undivided attention, is to lock them in and keep them there and your metrics really need to be measured by how much time is spent with your brand. With all the work we’ve done, we haven’t done nearly as much work as the sheep and the moos and everyone else out there, but the clients that we have brought in to SL or have helped promote in SL, they’re averaging over 30 minutes per user with their brand, and that’s an insane number. I mean that is a sitcom on television and NBC, they only have 20 minutes out of that 30-minute time slot to revolve around their brand on TV and then there is 10 minutes of 30- to 60-second ads that a marketer has to connect to you and that’s television. It’s much less time on the Internet. If you have 30 minutes, in some cases 45 minutes, in some cases an hour, of someone’s undivided attention with your brand, I don’t even know how to put a number on that because it’s so new and it’s unbelievable. I’m about to swear, I’m about to drop the S bomb and I just bit my tongue, but it really is. It blows my mind every time I see it and I absolutely think that is really the key and that’s like what’s going to shift the mindset because once you realize you have people dedicated to that amount of time, you can get in there and you can talk to them. If you just want to push content, you can give the right content to them, but you can also show up and start having a conversation and start getting some real serious input from obvious fans of your brand. To me, those 1000 people that spend so much time with your brand are the 1000 most important people for the rest of your brand for the rest of your life and that’s it because they’re going to help guide it, they’re the ones who love it, they want to be around it, they want to celebrate it. That is how you win. At the end of the day, that’s how you win. At the same time, that’s how a small client of ours, RatePoint, which is a five- to six-person start up just outside the city here, they built a really cool toolbar that kind of ties the best of ratings along with social networking on the web and came in and we built a really cool little avatar to avatar ratings application for them. Instead of building that and just leaving it as is, they asked us like, “Well, how do we get our name up there? We’re not GM. We’re not AOL. We’re not Reebok. We need help. We’re the little guy.” I just figured out there, I said, “It means absolutely nothing to your brand and what you do, but let’s build a little café and let’s have some live music events just for the sake of getting people to hang out with your brand.”
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: All you have the opportunity is you can start delivering your HUD to these people while they are there at the show and then the artists are going to get really fired up for it because they want people to give them real time feedback vis-a-vis the ratings application. The artists start chatting up about it during their live performances saying, “Hey, please give me a rating after the show. I’d love to hear what you think.” All of a sudden, they’ve got live performances six nights a week, every night at 7:00 Eastern Time or 4:00 p.m. SL Time. The smallest crowd I ever saw there was about 30; the largest crowd I ever saw there was about 73. They’re there for an hour, an entire hour to hang out and watch this new addition. It’s really neat. They’re engaging the community. They have given back to the community. The musicians are allowed to build their fan base. They’re allowed to get more gigs out of it. Some of the people who have played at their café were booking for the Playboy launch. It’s a really nice circle of investing in the community. My point being is that RatePoint for a while literally look at the SL traffic numbers and how they have that wacky system and because they had so many people spending so much time with their brand, they were crushing every single corporate sim in Second Life as far as traffic was concerned and it was amazing. GM and Pontiac are considered one of the more successful ones and they were killing them and they were killing AOL right when AOL launched. AOL has a pretty cool content consumption heavy area and they just weren’t getting the traffic. When I was there, they didn’t have nearly as much traffic. It’s just really a cool thing to have like David and Goliath’s story to share with future clients whether they are big ones or small ones. It’s just sort of, here’s an approach, here’s how you engage these folks, and here’s how you grow and sustain.
C.C. Chapman: Back to Playboy for a second. I’m just curious because by the time this goes out, it will be live. What can people expect when they go to Playboy? Is it an island? Is it a location?
Marc Girolimetti: Let’s talk more what’s not to expect. What not to expect is tons of tits and ass and tons of sex and sexual content, anything that the mind instantly goes to when you think Playboy. This is really an opportunity for people to just hang out and connect with the brand and really meet some cool people and have a good time. The first thing we did, and this is actually I think is a really cool, a big cool, for like a company like us bringing in a large corporation in, is we shaped the island in the form of their bunny head logo.
C.C. Chapman: Nice.
Marc Girolimetti: That’s not a pretty little image you see on the map. That is literally how the island is shaped. We made it all white fence because everyone thinks the rabbit head is — you can see the black and white pretty much so. We really played up to the ultimate image in their brand is that rabbit head and there was no way we weren’t doing it. When we figured out a really cool way to make it happen technologically wise, it just made everyone’s life just so much better because just to be able to pull it off was something great. You get there and it just varies experiential. There is a centerpiece to it and the centerpiece really is — this is one of the big things that you may not know about Playboy. They have a huge online store. They actually have two. Thy have Playboy store which is at Playboy.com is really kind of targeted to the men and it’s not necessarily men’s products. It’s products for men who are typically buying for their girlfriends and wives. Then there is a new store that they have that we’re helping the brand is called Shop the Bunny and Shop the Bunny is all Playboy products for women. It’s really deep that they have kind of over the years, especially in the last 10 years or so, there’s just such an acceptance of that brand, especially with females and so let’s target them, let’s give them some products. There is a huge array of products and you think it is obvious it is lingerie. Well, that was the one thing because it’s just been beaten to death inside Second Life. It’s like, what’s the point? At the end of the day, unless there is like some really cool custom design that you can only get at the Playboy store, it all looks like Victoria’s Secret or Frederick’s of Hollywood or a lingerie boutique at your favorite street in any city. It was sort of pointless. At the same time, I was like why compete on that level because then the community is going to complain that we’re just coming in and trying to crush the competition.
C.C. Chapman: Exactly.
Marc Girolimetti: They have all kinds of neat stuff, jeans, they have T-shirts, they have polo shirts, they have really cool cami tops, everything that you can get anywhere at any store and anywhere in the world, but with the bunny head logo on it. They have these Capri pants that have bunny head stitching on the back pocket, so neat little things that are totally exclusive to them and their brand. What we’re doing is we have a virtual version of the product and you can dress up our avatar in some really cool cute outfits.
C.C. Chapman: Can you buy the bunny outfit?
Marc Girolimetti: No. We’re keeping that special.
C.C. Chapman: I thought you would. I wasn’t sure, but I had to ask.
Marc Girolimetti: Let me just answer this and then we’ll go to that. There are accessories like jewelry and belts and all that neat stuff and then there are some shoes and there are even items for men as well. The neat thing is the store has been set up like a boutique. We didn’t base it on any design. Actually, Playboy does have physical stores and one recently launched in London, but we said we do not want to copy the store kind of like American Apparel did their Tokyo store over. We figured it was just, “Why?” We have all of this freedom to do what we want.
C.C. Chapman: Exactly.
Marc Girolimetti: We just kind of put our heads together and just came up with a really neat design. It’s actually an open air store and there are basically sections like if you walk into like cooler Macy’s stores where Ben Sherman has a section and Lacoste has section and Calvin Klein has a section. We set it up almost like that, but it’s really men’s, it’s accessories, it is women’s tops, women’s bottoms, things like that. At the same time, kind of like the American Apparel store, you can link off to their website to the buy product for yourself.
C.C. Chapman: Good, good, good.
Marc Girolimetti: We’re really tying it all together. At the same time, we just didn’t want to stop at the store so what we’re doing in the center of the store is actually this. It’s a bunch kind of lounge couches and there’s a little water fountain, but there is a multi promotion space. One of the cooler things, and I do not know if you remember this and I only know this because my parent were telling me about it, back in the day Hef used to have a TV show called Playboy After Dark. It was filmed in the Playboy clubs that were in a bunch of cities around the country including here in Boston. It was almost like Hef’s version of the Johnny Carson show without all the comedy and variety stuff, but his guests would be Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, classic icons who were part of his network and it was a really cool way to talk about after dark lifestyle, hanging out, going to jazz clubs, listening to cool music, hanging out with beautiful women. They recently re-release a boxed set of that TV show and to me it’s like the coolest thing and it just brings back a ton of memories, not really. I’ve never been to the clubs or seen the show, but older people in my family have spoken about it and they have neat vivid memories they had about it. I can remember my dad telling me once, he was like, “You might think Playboy is all just a bunch of naked women, but there used to be this TV show and I used to watch it and it was really great.” I only knew Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin from Cannonball Run when they were older and washed up.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, my God.
Marc Girolimetti: He kind of explained it all to me. He said, “It was really neat.” We are helping push that boxed set for them and keeping with that open air spirit, and this is actually one of my favorite things, I don’t like to make people wait a long time to sort of maneuver around Second Life, but we built these sort of air tubes that serve as elevators and it takes you to the upstairs lounge and it takes only a few seconds to get up there, but it’s a really neat thing to see because your avatar gets placed in this glass tube and so everyone can see you kind of get risen up and it automatically takes you up. It is just a neat little piece of user experience that really serves no purpose.
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: But to make people say, “Oh, cool!” It just makes them happy and they know it’s like something special and something unique.
C.C. Chapman: Cool.
Marc Girolimetti: Upstairs is really a lounge area. There are sort of floor multi media areas so there are going to be some Girl’s Next Door stuff. Actually, there is one really cool thing that I think a lot of people will be into. There is going to be one video screen dedicated to Ask Hef and it is something that is kind of buried on their website and I’m like, “No way, man. This thing is the coolest.” Basically, we’ll have a link off from the site, it’s basically an email address, and you can ask Hugh Hefner anything.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, cool.
Marc Girolimetti: They basically pick the best of the best and film his answers, so we’re going to stream his answers and so we’re trying to work on, “Hey Hef. Maybe you can do one question that came from Second Life.”
C.C. Chapman: That would be cool, yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: Just to let people know that they are totally included in this process. It’s really neat things like that. Again, Hef is the icon of the Playboy empire.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, by far.
Marc Girolimetti: To have this ability to learn more about him is really important and it is important to me as a fan and it is important to them as an organization because it just puts a different side to what people might think he is.
C.C. Chapman: I’m curious because one of those things, once people get beyond the naked women, one of the things I think of when I think of the Playboy Magazine specifically is they have some of the best interviews on the planet, bar none.
Marc Girolimetti: Absolutely.
C.C. Chapman: Are you guys leveraging that?
Marc Girolimetti: Oh, they are THE best interviews.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah. Are you going to leverage that at all somehow?
Marc Girolimetti: See, this is part of like the phase-in approach. It’s not going to be the “there now,” but we will definitely be kind of taking advantage of that in the future.
C.C. Chapman: Cool. That’s what is interesting too when you and I talked about this before over lunch, I was really happy to hear that this wasn’t a PR thing, this wasn’t a “let’s have a big bang and then hope it all goes well and then we’ll let it fall apart.” You guys were actually up front thinking about phases, thinking about “we’ll do this and then this will happen.” You were thinking long term, which is the way I wish more people thought about this from clients.
Marc Girolimetti: Right. This is the thing. There are going to be two different reactions to this approach because there are going to be people who are going to be pissed that we didn’t blow our wads with it.
C.C. Chapman: Exactly.
Marc Girolimetti: There will probably be another small group that will be pissed because there’s not a lot of porn. Let’s just throw the P word out there for them to consume. Well, there are a million other places in SL where you can enjoy that.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah. If you can’t find that, you’re not looking hard enough.
Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, go buy your XCite HUD and have a good time with it. The bottom line is I think some people will be mad because of that and then some people are going to be so hyped because it’s almost like we’re giving them a taste and instead of the law of diminishing returns of like the more licks you get on an ice cream cone, the less you like it. Well, it’s true.
C.C. Chapman: I guess I’ve never heard that before.
Marc Girolimetti: Hey, you know where I got that from? Babson College, buddy.
C.C. Chapman: I was waiting. I’m like, “He’s going to say Babson. I know he is.”
Marc Girolimetti: I got to plug my alma mater and I got to plug your former employer.
C.C. Chapman: What class were you?
Marc Girolimetti: What was that?
C.C. Chapman: What year were you for all the Babson people listening?
Marc Girolimetti: Oh, man. I’m a 1996 baby. Let’s go mid-1990s, Netscape 1.0, that’s when I became an Internet geek.
C.C. Chapman: Nice.
Marc Girolimetti: What we’re going to do is consistently add flavor to it. The neat thing is and I can’t confirm or deny anything, but we’re going to allow people inside a lot of exclusivity that they’re known for like Halloween parties, Mardi Gras parties, Super Bowl parties, things like that, do a mixed reality event. Who doesn’t want to see what the heck goes on inside maybe at the Mansion or in fact just a party or at The Palms in Vegas where they just reopened the Playboy Club and things like that? People are going to be so fired up to be able to participate. I think the demand is going to be there. We’ll have to make it VIP only and really make it special for people that they’re going to fight and scratch and claw their way into it and try to bribe people to giving them their ticket, you know? It’s really going to be so much fun over the course of the next 12 months. They have made a hard 12-month commitment to this and so they are sort of going [unintelligible] internally to really figure out how we’re going to make this work. The neat thing is we know some things that are coming down the road and some things we don’t because we just want to shift and plan on the fly and figure out what might be working and what might not be working. The other thing is like what is going to be launching next week will be ever changing once a month. We’re going to treat it like a real retail store. We’re going to roll in new products as they come online. We’re going to take things up that aren’t selling well. We might pick things out that are selling well just to add some exclusivity to that product. We’re thinking of having maybe some custom designs made, one month only get this product, and things like that to just get people back into the store, back buying and kind of getting these really cool unique products that otherwise they have no other opportunity to obtain.
C.C. Chapman: I love it, I love it. Just so people know — some people who are listening are going to be like, “Wait a minute. These guys are competitors to Crayon. Why is C.C. having them on here?” I’m just like, “No. We sat down and talked and I’m like ‘I got to get you on Managing the Gray because you get it and it’s obvious Playboy gets it,’ which is great.” I am a firm believer that there is plenty of business for everybody out there, especially for people who get it, who aren’t just out there, “Oh we’re going to build this four-sim huge thing.” Then you are going to abandon it after a month. That’s pointless.
Marc Girolimetti: Well, right. The biggest thing, I actually had a conversation with someone today and like his approach was, “Well, how do we deal with all this backlash?” I’m like, “What backlash?” He’s like, “Well, there’s all these companies complaining about negative experiences.” I go, “The only two people who are to blame for that are their agency who screwed up and them who maybe didn’t ask the right questions.” I go, “No one else is at fault.” I was like, “How does anyone know to show up at Reebok or Adidas when they didn’t even put as much as a press release out?”
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: “What am I going to do? Use a search engine? ‘Oh, I wonder if Reebok is around here?’” No, it doesn’t work that way. It’s totally the agency’s fault for not understanding what they need to do. I’m going to stroke your ego a little, but you guys did a fantastic job at Coca-Cola and you did it because you just came at it from a way that I think caught people off guard with how they thought Coke should interact in Second Life.
C.C. Chapman: Right, right.
Marc Girolimetti: But when you think about it, it’s so freaking logical. It’s like, “Well, what do you think about when you think about Coke?” You think about vending machines. It really is so iconic.
C.C. Chapman: Thank you for that. It was a lot of fun watching the reactions we were ready for the given brand backlash that we prepped Coke for like, “You’re a big brand. You’re gonna have a huge target on your heads coming in.” I got to tell you. It was a lot of fun to see blog posts from people that we expected would slam it. You can see them trying to type and go, “I want to hate this, but I can’t because they’re not being jerks about it.” It was so much fun to watch. Yeah, there were questions and whatnot, but I agree with you that the brand itself should not be blamed for these things, it’s whoever brings it in. It’s not like Coke or Playboy is just going to open up shop in Second Life on their own without talking to anybody. It doesn’t work that way. There’s always somebody in between.
Marc Girolimetti: Right, and we’re supposed to be an expert.
C.C. Chapman: Supposed to be, right or at least fake it pretty good.
Marc Girolimetti: Right. That’s the thing, just so many funny things I see. Microsoft came out. Everyone knows who probably did this and I’m not trying to slam them by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m just trying to make a point here. When Microsoft came out with that Visual Studio event and whatnot and there were some actual ad banners that were posted, at least on New World Notes for that. Thank the Lord because that’s like the first step you should make and that’s really cool and I’m glad that you get it, plus you’re supporting people who are making a living off of the success of Second Life in general. Kind of like the eBay [unintelligible] going on where all this kind of spinoff companies that are like little remoras on the whale shark that is Second Life and they’re just feeding on it and it’s great and that’s what should happen. That’s the beauty of the Internet, but here’s someone who in past agency experience has done over 100 projects with Microsoft Corporation. I know their design guidelines like the back of my head and at the same I always make a joke that Microsoft owns 80% of my house because that’s how much work I’ve done for them. I looked at it and their logo, the Microsoft logo in that ad banner was in violation. The first thing I saw and the first thing I noticed, anyone who has ever worked with Microsoft and their logo knows exactly how that thing has to be placed and how much distance it needs from the top edge and the side edge and the bottom edge, wherever you are placing that damn thing and it was totally in violation. I actually from the kindness of my heart shot a note over to them to let them know that, but to me it’s like I don’t expect you guys because you didn’t really start off with an agency background and so you may not have ever worked on projects where you’re asking for branding and design guidelines because Second Life is almost free and independent of that.
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: It’s not like working with print and the web and whatnot and so you just may not have thought to ask, so I figured I’d try to be helpful. The bottom line is, you got to know this stuff. There are certain levels to like the relationship with these clients that if you really want to get entrenched and you really want to do a lot more work for them, you really have to get them as well and getting them allows you to properly execute on these campaigns, to communicate them and introduce them to this community and then build an audience around it.
C.C. Chapman: Oh yeah, man. Oh yeah. Listen, we’re coming up on an hour. We’ve been yapping.
Marc Girolimetti: I know. This is like the longest podcast ever.
C.C. Chapman: It is going to be by far the longest Managing the Gray ever recorded.
Marc Girolimetti: That’s so awesome.
C.C. Chapman: Is this your first podcast you’ve been on?
Marc Girolimetti: No. Actually, you know what? The first time we ever met at that Boston event?
C.C. Chapman: Yup.
Marc Girolimetti: When Linden showed up, some audience member had a portable recorder on him. He’s like, “Can I interview you for my podcast?” That was actually my first one.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, that’s funny. I wonder if it was Bryan.
Marc Girolimetti: The kid from Monster?
C.C. Chapman: Yeah, Bryan Person, yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, right.
C.C. Chapman: That’s funny. I’m just trying to think what podcasters that I knew were there. Bryan, that’s funny. Bryan’s good like that.
Marc Girolimetti: No, it was good. Being my first one, I was breaking the cherry and I was a little — actually, in your case, let me just say breaking the Cherry Coke. I was totally caught off guard. I had just spoken for an hour so I’m like, “Ah, whatever.” but it was good. It definitely wasn’t my best, but this is definitely — I love this stuff. The bottom line is I just like talking to you. We have a really good rapport.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah, we do. Yeah.
Marc Girolimetti: Really easy and that’s why we can go on for hours when we open our mouth.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah, I know. Well, man, I thank you for coming on today. I have a feeling you’re going to be back because I know you are itching to do this and this was definitely a lot of fun. We got to do next time in person over beers or something.
Marc Girolimetti: Oh, that would be cool, the drunken podcast.
C.C. Chapman: That would be dangerous.
Marc Girolimetti: You know what’s awesome and you probably have the same problem that I do? Ever since we started having children, our [unintelligible] alcohol was like absolutely through the basement.
C.C. Chapman: Yes.
Marc Girolimetti: It’s going to be like a three drink minimum and we’re going to be completely flaming, [unintelligible] people and getting ourselves fired.
C.C. Chapman: But those are kind of fun sometimes.
Marc Girolimetti: That’s true. It would be awesome. It’s recorded history.
C.C. Chapman: All right. Before you go, because I actually don’t know the answer, where can people find out more about you and your company? I’m not sure what the URL is anymore.
Marc Girolimetti: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, the new company name is Sentient Services, so you can go to sentientservices.com. We’re starting to make some changes. I think they’re going to put my bio up there and Eric’s bio, so we’re going to start adding like the Green Grotto client roster to their roster list.
C.C. Chapman: Oh, yeah. What’s your title going to be now?
Marc Girolimetti: I stepped down as CEO, which is fine. It’s kind of a really rough job to tell you the truth, but I’ve been doing it for two years. I mean it’s two years of blood, sweat and tears.
C.C. Chapman: Right.
Marc Girolimetti: As a CEO of a startup, you got to think about everything right down to payroll and finances and banking and credit and all that crap. It can get crazy. I’m going to be the head of creative, so Director of Creative, Creative Director, I like to call myself…
C.C. Chapman: Oh, come on. What you have been putting in your emails?
Marc Girolimetti: Chief Creative Monkey.
C.C. Chapman: Yes, there you go. That’s what I like. I want to see that on a business card. I think that would be great.
Marc Girolimetti: I’m going to push for that. I think maybe they will rename the podcast, C.C. and the Creative Monkey.
C.C. Chapman: Ooh. Uh-oh, there goes the rumors. “They’re starting a new podcast!”
Marc Girolimetti: I know exactly and you know what? That totally brings back, we’re going to be an animated cartoon from the 1970s. We’re going to have our own crazy shaggin wagon.
C.C. Chapman: Nice.
Marc Girolimetti: I’m going to be saying “Doinks!” all the time.
C.C. Chapman: We need a mascot to go with that. Oh wait, we got the monkey. What am I saying?
Marc Girolimetti: Yeah, exactly.
C.C. Chapman: Is it going to be like Great Ape or something?
Marc Girolimetti: As long as I can be like Gleek, I will be totally psyched.
C.C. Chapman: Nice, nice, a little pop culture reference there.
Marc Girolimetti: There you go. I’m full of them. That’s what happens when you’re in your young 30s.
C.C. Chapman: Yeah. I hear you, man. Hey, thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on Managing the Gray. Everybody, definitely go check out these guys. I’ll be honest. As of this recording, I have not seen the Playboy sim yet, so I’m looking forward to it, so check it out in Second Life and thanks for being on the show, man.
Marc Girolimetti: All right. Thank you sir.
C.C. Chapman: All right. I will talk to you later.
Marc Girolimetti: All right, take care.