cruel to be kind

Sometimes you have to wonder if marketing and PR of a company are so out of touch with the rest of the world … okay they usually are but then again, you always hope someday they would get more clever.

As I read on techcrunch, Dell wants to make a move in Second Life but as a closed off, invite only event:

This new trend of announcing news in Second Life is generally pissing off journalists, who don’t have a lot of time to waste. But Dell is apparently going ahead with plans to host an invite-only press event inside of Second Life on Tuesday morning at 10:15 AM PST to announce that they’ll have an ongoing presence within the virtual world.

The virtual event is under heavy embargo with a select few journalists (we weren’t invited), but one journalist, annoyed that he is being forced to create a Second Life account and log in to see what the announcement is, decided to just pass it on to us to break the news.

First of all – I am getting tired of companies just hopping into SL as a mee too!!! and expect me to be excited about it. This is just as lame as all those companies and media organisations popping out telling the world “we are the first!!”

(A tip: As most of the people dealing in this space seem to be male, remember sex? This is even lamer than “being first” at sex.)

Some disagree, like Paul Short writes in the comments:

Lame? I think not.

Imagine 2 years from now when Second Life is one of the largest internet commerce enablers on the planet.

Imagine the SL client preloaded on Dell and Alienware computers in the near future.

They will already be packed with Windows Vista which leaves not enough space at these margins they have to include even more RAM and speed for a ressource sucking system as Second Life. But more to the point: What sense does having an invite only, SL only event make now, today?

None at all – except reducing the possible coverage. In two years this may be a viable option, but today?

How many journalists – mind you those are the text base crowd – actually have computers at their hands which can even start Second Life?

How many global IT departments have already cleared SL as an allowed installation?

How are journalists supposed to get the information there out of the system easily?

In two years when the setups are much better – yes absolutly. But today? That is just screaming “how to reduce exposure”. Especially with text loving journalists. Is that what somebody really wants? A reduced exposure of their own event?

I use the word office as I do not see any real news at the moment out there – guess what, you reading this could have been informed about what Dell is planning to do but you will have to wait for some journalists to attend and report back on it. You know in the paper magazines you do not read anyway.

[What would be interesting and actually would make it newsworthy is if they would have a setup like a store where I can order a in game Dell and watch how it gets assembled or something like it. But then again it is a PR/marketing move so probably nothing new there …]

Technorati Tags: second life, sl, dell, event organisation

Tags: second life