Guest Post: Building Stronger Communities: Cause Campaigns In Virtual Worlds
Posted by meredith on 07-27-2010Today's Ypuse Guest Post comes from John Cahill, CEO at Meez who offered to share his insight on the growing number of virtual worlds teaming up with charities and non-profits to hold pro-social campaigns around youth causes and the potential that lies therein.
For more great examples see this Social Times roundup featuring a campaign to raise awareness around substance abuse prevention from WeeWorld and Partnership for a Drug-Free America, fundraising efforts from Gaia Online to help clean up the Gulf Coast and more.
If you work in youth media or marketing and have an idea for a Ypulse Guest Post, feel free to email me.
Building Stronger Communities: Cause Campaigns in Virtual Worlds
Social gaming destinations and virtual worlds have brought millions of people together online, sharing mutual interests within their virtual environment. Early on, developers and advertisers recognized the potential of these online communities as viable markets, leading to the development of brand-driven online societies with self-sustaining virtual economies. These virtual worlds have become popular hubs for entertainment including music and videos, and have served brands well by creating new avenues for consumer engagement.
However, with these positive developments come negative implications. As virtual communities continue to build in complexity, they find themselves dealing with real-world issues, ranging from youth apathy to virtual crime. This “reality” begs the question — How are these communities engaging and influencing our youth? Do they have the power to affect users both online and offline? How can we leverage these communities to enact positive change in the real world beyond just influencing their purchase behaviors?
These questions are at the forefront of virtual world development. By taking a broader perspective on the influence of virtual worlds, many are now looking for ways to make a difference by raising awareness about social issues, supporting non-profits and helping users tackle real-world problems. Meez, for example, has taken a leading role in creating positive change through its own virtual communities, creating teen-oriented cause campaigns that provide users an engaging and socially rewarding way to take positive action in the real world. These cause campaigns have not only provided benefit for users and their communities, but are also highly effective for building support for participating non-profits organizations.
In recent months, our Cause Campaign series has aimed to educate its users on health, fitness, the environment and other causes that make a positive impact on users’ lives and communities, and have found huge success. Our users are extremely passionate about campaigns they support. When users are enthusiastic about a cause, they enroll their friends and other users. They’re eager to engage, share, and take action.
For instance, in Meez’s March Blood Drive Campaign, users learned about donating blood from the Red Cross by visiting Nurse LucyMeez & the Blood Drive Van, placed in popular hangouts across Meez Nation. 75,000 users donned free virtual t-shirts boasting that they had “given blood,” effectively cross-promoting the cause to other users. Other successful campaigns have encouraged users to ride their bikes to school, write poetry, or learn more about Black History month. Currently, Meez is teamed up with Staples and DoSomething.org in their latest Cause Campaign – the Do Something 101 School Supply Drive. With minimal integration time and resources, thousands upon thousands of users have been inspired to get active, be creative, and take action, engaging with non-profits they may otherwise have never thought to support.
There is a huge opportunity for causes to follow in the footsteps of brands and use virtual communities to raise awareness through interactive online advertising, while creating a long-standing positive impact on both virtual and real-world communities alike. From a business standpoint, these causes have improved our online world in countless ways. It’s about looking at the long-term development of a community, and helping that community develop into something greater. It’s about giving back, helping non-profits make the world a better place, and encouraging our users to live better lives. It’s not about preaching – it’s about giving users options of how they want to interact in-world, and their engagement shows that they want to be involved. If we can make a difference in even the slightest way, it’s all worth it.
More on John
John Cahill is President & CEO of Meez, an online social entertainment community for teens that combines a social virtual world with social gaming, rich multimedia sharing and MMO mechanics. With over 14 years in the gaming space, Cahill has held executive roles with ReeRaa Inc, Yahoo! Games, Stadeon, Inc., the Trintech Group, Shockwave.com, and SegaSoft Networks, Inc.
Categorized under: Web
July 27th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Educating, engaging and empowering youth where they are comfortable – a great idea and will serve us all well.
July 27th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Ah, another place for ads. What is it about gaming that companies feel they must ram their 'messages' down the throats of gamers? We have ads on tv so the shows are supposedly free (they're not unless you're using an over-the-air antenna to watch 'em). The problem with ads on tv these days is that there are too bloody many of them. Every piece of information has to come with an official sponsor. Not good. I am so fed up with ads that I can't even stomach the 60-second ads that are shown during the online version of a show.
Advertising on shows (or for that matter, anywhere else) should be a question of not getting lost in the crowd. When there's 5 minutes of ads during a break, do you think I am going to remember what the first one was? Nope. And if I played video games, do you really think I care about seeing ads in the game? No. The game is not reality, so why should the ads be real?
You want people to donate blood, fine, get out there and spread your message in the real world. For the record, I donate every 4 months (I give red blood cells, so you have to wait twice as long before donating again, but they would need 8 pints of whole blood to get the red blood cells they get from my one donation – everybody wins).
So, remember this, if you want me to remember your message don't surround it with hundreds of others. And, never, never, never become an 'official' whatever of anything nor pay money for the naming rights to a stadium or event or team (a la soccer).
July 29th, 2010 at 8:31 am
A partnering of corporations and non profits certainly has promise; however, the ground rules must be made clear from the onset. When done VERY well, it has the potential to grow into the dream of Muhammad Yunus′ vision of Social Business – http://bit.ly/91wItl – where both the corporate and non profit sector benefit.
Too often, however, companies are taking advantage of non profits′ shortfall these days and engaging in ″partnerships″ where the non profits do a lion′s share of the work, publicity, etc., in exchange for a pittance of a contribution…and the corporation gets to look ″benevolent″ in return – http://bit.ly/d2uR65
August 2nd, 2010 at 12:15 pm
[...] but also to gain some more perspective on virtual worlds in the pro-social space. After our recent guest post inspired mixed responses in comments, I thought Ypulse readers would feel the [...]
August 6th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Smart marketing. I haven't delved into the Meez alliances yet, so thanks for the heads up…
Agree w/Valerie on the goodwashing propensity which is almost as irksome to me as the philanthropic "popularity pleas" (er, 'contests') to try to 'earn' a pittance.
At first glance it looks like a logical tie-in (e.g. Staples/B2S for kids in NEED) as it DOES empower kids to "Do Something" help out, empathize, and perhaps even seed early philanthropy.
Cause campaigns in VW CAN certainly raise awareness AND even springboard into action (I'd love to hear how 'virtually' giving blood played out IRL, what were the objectives of the campaign, etc) as we're testing some behavioral change components and researching some best practices in the health realm, too…
When seamlessly integrated into the game concept itself (e.g. When Dizzywood 'seeded' the concept of planting virtual trees and partnered with ArborDay Fnd to fund real trees as the payoff, or when Polar Bears Int'l teamed for edutainment re: climate chg/eco GoodQuest on Elf Island/now Xeko, etc.) it made sense, and helped kids via informal/participatory learning as well. (agree w/the author that preach-n-teach are the kiss of death)
Even learning via awareness, e.g. Habbo's Greenpeace eco-UN signatures was no small feat w/50K sigs; and their Matthew Shepard InfoBus leveraged anonymity to teach tolerance and express diversity…so I think there's plenty of room for growth in this segment if handled well.
Whether corp coffers have kicked in enough $$$ to merit a nonprofit's declaration of "resounding success" is rarely ever revealed, since there's a 'better than nothing' money game in play.
To me, THAT kind of thinking needs to change on ALL sides in order to make this concept an AUTHENTIC branding win/win "IRL" rather than just a 'virtual' goodwashing one. ;-)
@ShapingYouth