discusson on branding

In class we discussed the issue of branding, in particular in relation to the online world. There are brands availble in second life of course, just like in the real world since everything on second life is user created and usually tagged by who did it. So part of this is about recognition but it's also about building a brand, displaying skill and possibly gathering clout within the online community. So in other words it's Exactly like the real world.

So what are the benefits of building a brand? On a business level, in my opinion the most important benefactor of having a brand is gathering consumer loyalty. When you get a name for yourself, projecting qaulity and relaiblitiy onto that name is of unlimited importance, and it has many different levels, think of Nike, Addidas and Puma they may not be the classiest brands, but there is a big difference between wearing a tracksuit with their logo sticthed onto it and wearing one without. So even at the level of leisure wear these names reassure qaulity and a certain style to their wearers. The names Versace, Calvin Klein and Dolce and Gabbana provide the same function just on a different level of percived qaulity to their wearers. They trust the brand, everyone knows what it is and what it represents so this in turn causes consumer loyalty.

In class we also discussed the idea of the " prosumer " a term coined recently to decribe, well, everyone I guess since the global downturn. We can no longer just consume and survive we must produce and consume in eqaul measure in order to move forward. The money people would have dropped on clothes, jewellery, handbags and acessories just a few years ago now seems childish, ignorant and wasteful, while at the time it was viewed as possibly eccentric and amusing. The world has changed, even in the music industry the idea of flashing about and flaunting your wealth has been petering out more and more for mainstream artists so they can build a more accessable, realistic brand for themselves to appeal to the masses that consume their music. So in favour of a more stripped back approach, nowadays people seem valuecentric rather than qaulitycentric.

After studying Richard Gillis' article on personal branding for the irish times I have to a few of my own personal opioinons on the subject, firstly I agree one hundred percent that people control the content that is represented about them on social networking websites such as facebook and twitter. Linking people to certain videos from your page, using certain language in status updates or tweets, untagging yourself from certain pictures that you dont feel represent your " cool" image. All classic symptoms of controling your own personal brand but my second point is how new is that really?

People have been controlling their own personal brands for years, in the clothes they wear, the way they talk, the people they can be seen with, the clothes they don't wear, the way they don't talk, the people they can't be seen with. The online world just seems to be another arena for this sort of behaviour and on some level we all do it but will I admit that this sort of behavoir is amplified by the internet in the cases of the individuals who strenuosly control their image (we all know at least one).

So personal branding in my opinion is really just as annoying and shallow as it's always been, it's just easier to recognise and "unfollow" thanks to the internet.

preconceptions and first impressions of second life

Hello again, I think that now would be a good time to tell you about my preconceptions and first impressions of using second life. I've been aware of second life for some years now but never had the desire to use it for myself of even to check it out. Before using it I was only aware vaguely of what exactly it was through what I had heard from other people here and there and from references from various TV shows in online content.

I was also aware of second life, (as most people are with regards to online environments that they have never experienced or know little about) through shocking stories of abusing the format, such stories of men posing as women online, sexual predators luring their victims through second life, people creating expansion files so their avatars can have sexual relations and the case of a woman who sued a man for using his avatar for raping her avatar.(1)

This seems to be the case with most online communities that we hear the negative things about them rather than the positive and these stories did help shape my preconceptions of second life before entering into it but although I knew of these things I didn't go in completely disgusted or dead set against SL I did keep an open mind.

My first impressions of second life were ones of amusement, when I had initially heard of the virtual environments module it struck me as being something that just wasn't for me but from hearing from my friends who were in the class it started to sound more and more appealing and I decided to try it out if for anything else just to have a laugh with my friends. In keeping with this idea I decided not to make my avatar resemble myself or make it a human being at all for that matter my avatar was and still is a dog. I think this helped me to feel relaxed and enjoy the experience and put to bed any reservations I had about being on SL since my avatar was a dog it kind of showed in some way that I wasn't using SL to forge a " second life" for myself. 

My first impressions of the environment there on were quite positive I went to Dublin and noticed the streaming music and also the near total lack of other avatars other then myself. I will admit that I am impressed by the fact that everything in SL is designed by members and some of the attention to detail is amazing. Dublin in a way struck me as a bit of a ghost town perhaps, possibly there used to be a lot more "life" there than there is now considering the amount of content there compared to the amount of avatars.  So when I did meet up with friends in second life I found the experience very enjoyable and amusing, I did do some traveling on my own to other destinations such as London but found strangers a lot harder to gauge and the sheer amount of avatars out there made it very difficult to hold down a conversation which was not enjoyable.

so to conclude I found the design and idea of SL very impressive and very enjoyable when amongst friends whom I knew from the real world but then again what place isn't enjoyable when you bring enough of your friends...... I think that I want to experience more of what second life has to offer on my own so I can formulate a proper opinion on it.

:) Keith

1. http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/04/24/open-roundtable-allegations-of-virtual-rape-bring-belgian-police-to-second-life/