This week PR Week reported that Civic and New Media Corp has become the first PR agency to develop an "integrated online PR and digital marketing offering" solely in Second Life - Civic New Media. Interestingly, at the beginning of August Text 100 also seemed to be claiming this same thing (Text 100 Opens First Public Relations Office in Second Life), but that's by-the-by.
We certainly know the importance of practicing what we preach, and other agencies and consultancies clearly feel the same. However, the usefulness of an online PR office is not yet entirely clear to me. Face-to-face contact and real human interaction are key to building effective client-consultant relationships and, in a virtual world where everybody bears a virtual identity that can be, if they choose, so far removed from their own that they may as well be from another planet, how can that relationship really develop? I'm going to make it a mission to pay a visit, though and see what I can find. Visiting their offices with my own Second Life virtual identity feels like the ultimate in spying on consultancy competitors! Wonderful!
Tuesday 2 October 2007
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Just a quick follow-up. I visited one of these agencies the other day in Second Life and there was very little there to be seen, or to learn from them. I'm sure it's just in development at the moment but perhaps they should have held off the press announcements until there was something worth looking at?
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