Thursday, June 24, 2021

News and Commentary: Second Life Commercial


In the middle of the SL18B Lab Gab on June 21, between when Oberwolf Linden was interviewed and when the leadership team was (more on that later), an advertisement appeared about here. This was the commercial that's been talked about since a still image appeared on the Second Life home page about two months ago two months ago, and there was more discussion a month ago when a video could (sometimes) be seen on the home page. It would first appear on it's own at Torric Rodas Newswire on June 22 before appearing on the Second Life Youtube yesterday June 23. It would also appear on the Viemo page of Levitate Media, the people Linden Lab worked with to do the commercial. 

If you're traveling beyond this life, where the weight of tradition cannot follow, do not fear re-invention. The design is your liberation. Between the planes where our dreams are built, where the mind reigns  and the light bends, and the children of creation dance in time. If you're traveling beyond this life, you are not alone. We are waiting.

Levitate would say the commercial won four Telly awards, two gold, People's Telly Award and Visual Effects, and two silver, Directing and Music Score. Evan Scott of Levitate Media was listed as the producer and Kanin Guntzleman the director. 

I have yet to see a thread in the Second Life forums about "Children of Creation" as the ad has been called. Hamlet Au would say of it, "Overall, it's quite a bit better than I originally feared from the homepage imagery." But, "with its use of real world models, heavy post-production effects, and only a smattering of actual SL-based 3D content, it feels like something of a bait-and-switch: Anyone who excitedly creates an SL account after watching this is bound to be disappointed! Even more off, it doesn't actually show any of the actual creative building tools of Second Life, leaving the random viewer to wonder if the creation referred to is only about customizing avatars." 

Inara Pey would have some comments about it as well, " ... I think the advert as shown works pretty well; the images are well-matched to the narration, and the overall impact is the idea of liberation and freedom of expression. The intercuts of changing avatar appearances particularly underscores this, as do more subtle elements ... " On the other hand, she called "If you're traveling beyond this life" a poor choice of words, comparing it to someone dying, "perhaps 'beyond this world' might have been a better choice of words."

Personally, I feel an ad campaign of some kind by Linden Lab is necessary if it wants to retain the numbers it gained during the Pandemic. I've also been hearing that young adults these days with an interest in virtual worlds are more likely to head to other places such as VRChat. But could the ad have been done better? As mentioned before, there's not much actual SL content used in the ad. It could have a similar effect that the CSI television show episode that took place in Second Life had in which TV viewers were given an idealized description: everyone talking in Voice and no lag. While it encourages users to check out the virtual world, it may be setting them up for a small disappointment.

How it will ultimately work? So far it has yet to appear on television or elsewhere on the Internet other than Youtube or Viemo. So we'll have to wait a while, days, weeks, perhaps months, before we find out.

Addition: Levitate Media (https://levitatemedia.com/) would later thank the Newser for it's coverage

Bixyl Shuftan
  

1 comment:

  1. Overall, I think this advertising film is a success, as the awards prove. It is of course always different how the audience perceives it, especially the people you want to win as new customers. Does it make you curious about Second Life, or does someone see a new sect behind it? The future will tell us. In any case, we are waiting for new residents of and receive them warmly.

    Niki

    ReplyDelete