IMV40: Advertising in Virtual Communities

The following is a transcript for IMV40: Advertising in Virtual Communities. The original podcast is located here.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast, brought to you by MindComet. And now, here’s your host, Paul Lewis.

Paul Lewis:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo. Today’s subject is ‘Virtual World Advertising’, and this is something that’s been hot in the news and on the press about companies like Coke and Adidas and McDonald’s all jumping into virtual worlds and beginning to promote their brands in these online cyber-communities.

Our guest today is Dr. Jim Bower, who is the CEO of Numedeon. Jim, can you tell us a little bit about your background, as well as a little bit about Whyville?

Dr. Jim Bower:

My background is actually, you might think initially, a little odd for what I’m doing with Numedeon and Whyville. I’m actually a computational neurobiologist, so what that means is that I build models – simulations – of the brain, of neurons and networks, and try to figure out how the brain works based on those models. That’s what I do in the sort of professional science world.

As part of that, I’ve also always been involved in infrastructure issues; that is, designing software systems that allow people – in this case, scientists – to collaborate and interact with models, with simulations, and with each other to learn about the brain, and to advance research.

So that’s actually where there’s a crossover between my professional life as a scientist and Numedeon, ‘cause at the same time – well, at Cal Tech as a professor building computational neuroscience program – I also, from the outset, was engaged in a 17-year project to try to improve science education in public schools in California. It was actually a fairly substantial $22 million sort of project, and one aspect of that project from the beginning, given my interest in how computers and networks can be used to support education, learning, and collaboration, was to actually see if we could use computers – computer simulations and networks – in the context of kids and education in the same way that I was interested in having scientists use computers, simulations, and networks in scientific research.

So that’s sort of the origin of Numedeon. What we did in 1999 was lay out a basis design spec, if you want, for an engine to support virtual worlds with three principal objectives. One was to actually have zero, or as close as possible to zero, barriers to use – so in other words, browser-based – and no downloads, no expectation as far as graphic cards or anything like that.

Second, we really wanted to have an engine that could support simulations and the kinds of dynamic interactions that I play with in science and that I think are really important to engage humans in inquiry.

And the third objective was to build an engine which would allow users to customize and personalize and, if you want, own the virtual world. This now goes according to the title user-contributed content. We’re actually interested in what’s more broad than that, that is really how you get users to feel like they own the world and, in fact, to manage the world; to control its further development; contribute to it; etcetera.

Paul Lewis:

And that’s a big part of getting the user audience engaged is that feeling of ownership and participation in the development of the world.

Dr. Jim Bower:

No, it’s absolutely right. And, I mean, in our own experiences in the real worlds that we occupy, it’s our ability to differentiate ourselves, and also our ability to contribute individually that really determines – you know – whether you decide to become part of the model railroading club, or whether you decide to become a podcast reporter. I mean, it’s really the same human motivation that operates in the real world that also operates in a virtual world, and that is the source of the stickiness, if you want.

And Whyville, which was the first thing that we built on top of this engine, was specifically aimed to attract and engage middle school-age kids – that is, kids age 8 to 14 – with a purpose of sort of an underlying educational objective. And so since we launched in 1999, the site has grown with basically no marketing – so truly virally, that is no money spent on marketing – it has grown to about 2 million registered users; and at three and a half hours per unique user per month contact time, we’re actually one of the stickiest sites on the Internet.

Paul Lewis:

Is that some of the reasons – I mean, obviously, virtual worlds have come to the attention of marketers, and brands have showed renewed interest in virtual worlds. Is that part of the reason is the stickiness, the amount of time that people are spending in those areas?

Dr. Jim Bower:

It could be. I mean, you know, the interesting thing about any new technology, and especially anything that’s sort of radically new technology – of course, every time someone proposes a new technology or brings one up, they claim it’s radical. I really think that the Internet is, fundamentally, it’s the first media that we have had that sort of is universally broadcast; that is fundamentally interactive, rather than broadcast. Okay?

And that’s a huge change in media and structure. Anytime you introduce some new technology, it takes a while before people – marketers, everybody – understands the appropriate way to use it, the most powerful way to use it. Typically what happens with any new technology is the first thing that anybody does is try to do things the same way they did them in the old technology.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

So a classic example of that – an obvious one – in the Internet is banner ads, and banner ads are basically just like newspaper copy, except they’re animated and they are more annoying.

The other thing that’s absolutely classic, old technology is the website itself, sort of the classic website. It’s basically just the front page of a newspaper, and you can click, you can search, you can do that cool stuff, but there isn’t really a fundamental change in the structure of a web page or a banner ad from what publishers have been doing since the book press was invented.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

And I apologize for saying the obvious here, but the reason the virtual worlds are interesting is because they really, I think, represent the first case where the interactivity of the Internet is really being used. The social networking spaces like MySpace or Facebook – those sites are kind of, if you want, intermediate between a web page. So basically, they just allow you to build your own web page with some asynchronous capacity for linking to people. They’re kind of an intermediate step between just a basic web page and virtual worlds. They include a social component, although it’s an asynchronous social component, but basically they’re just a small step away from a website.

Virtual worlds are truly the kind of thing you can only do with Internet technology. In their best form, they’re not broadcast at all; a large amount of user-generated content; and very importantly, the opportunity for synchronous social interactions. We are a social animal. A lot of what we do in our lives is determined by its contribution to our social success. Social interaction in its natural form, you know, up till the phone was invented – most social interaction was face-to-face. In virtual worlds, it’s face-to-face again. In some ways, virtual worlds are sort of recreating on the Internet the kind of environment that we, as a species, were originally evolved to operate in, with – of course – additional features and capacities.

By the way, I’m sorry to be so academic, but I warned you at the head of time, I’m an academic.

Paul Lewis:

(Laughter) Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Jim Bower:

All right.

Paul Lewis:

One of the things that you mentioned earlier was the engagement of allowing users to add and create their own content within the virtual world, participate in that manner. For advertisers, they have some hesitancy of giving up control, or sharing control, with the members of this virtual world and the user community at large. What are some of the rules, or guidelines or thoughts, that advertisers should keep in mind as they begin to participate in these virtual worlds that are springing up all over?

Dr. Jim Bower:

Well, you’re exactly right, and in the conversations we have with both marketing organizations within companies or separate agencies, this control issue is huge. But what you have to realize is that control of brand is extremely important if all you have is a 30-second broadcast commercial. It’s the only interaction that your customer can have with your product is in broadcast mode, compared to interactive mode, then control of brand is everything.

Paul Lewis:

Sure.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Because there’s nothing deeper for the customer to engage with than kind of the superficial brand control.

However, in virtual worlds – and anywhere where there’s an interactivity, and the Internet virtual worlds are, you know, that’s what they are, fundamentally – you now have a completely different way to engage the customer that doesn’t depend as much on making sure that your brand is very tight and clear, and gets across.

So for example, we were approached by Toyota – or Toyota Scion – six, seven, eight months ago, and of course, Scion was charged with Toyota to do things that were unusual in the marketing domain.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

So they looked around and said here’s something unusual, let’s do that; and they contacted us and said what can we do in a virtual world? What they wanted to do was open a car dealership. Okay?

What we told ‘em was that’s fine, but what you really need to do is open it in such a way that our users get to interact with and own the product. We need to build a decal shop so that kids can actually customize the exterior of their Scions, that that is really what will engage them. It isn’t obvious that a nine-year-old is gonna care very much about a Scion, or certainly, they’re gonna care much more if the Scion actually represents their personality. Okay?

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

By the way, the first time you actually see a Scion out on the real road, it looks like the person driving it has completely customized it? You can blame us.

Paul Lewis:

Okay. (Laughter)

Dr. Jim Bower:

And I’m not really looking forward to that. It’s gonna be a little bit like open mike poetry night.

Paul Lewis:

Right. (Laughter)

Dr. Jim Bower:

But in fact, that’s a level of ownership and engagement of the product which there’s no way you can do in a sort of standard broadcast mode where some bunch of designers decide what are the colors this year that we think will attract attention to our car. It’s a very different situation if you ask a bunch of 12-year-olds what are the designs that – given the culture you live in, given your interest – that you want on the car. Okay? It’s a completely different thing.

Now, Toyota might not be completely happy about what people end up painting on their cars, on the one hand. On the other hand, Toyota would be thrilled if the reason that people went out and bought their cars was because they could actually put their personalities all over them. That’s sort of the twist from brand control to interaction.

But let me tell you, the next stage of what we’re doing with Toyota – what we’re doing is actually opening a car engineering shop within Whyville where kids will be able to actually dig around in the Toyota, and understand how the Toyota is engineered, and they’ll be able to make design choices themselves. For example, do I want a greener car? Do I want a faster car? Do I want a car that carries more? Things like that.

What’s gonna happen – and it’ll happen in fairly short order, ‘cause 12-year-olds turn out to have a lot of time, whereas most of the rest of us don’t – and when we introduce these kinds of things, they spend hours and hours and hours doing them. What is gonna happen – and we’ve already warned the Toyota execs about this – is that you’re gonna start having 12-year-olds walking into Scion dealerships with their parents where the 12-year-old understands the design, the engineering, of the car better than anybody in the dealership; certainly better than the salesmen.

Paul Lewis:

What an exciting opportunity for the brand to have consumers understand – I mean, brand education and product education is a huge barrier for many companies to get people to understand the significant advantages of their product or service.

Dr. Jim Bower:

That’s right, and think about what this really does. With this kind of feedback, if you can bear the scrutiny, you have a huge advantage. If you’re selling a really high quality product, you have an enormous advantage.

Paul Lewis:

Absolutely, and I think that what we’re seeing more and more today in this hyper-connected world that we live in is that transparency is a fore drawn conclusion. You can no longer get by with shoddy products and with poor customer service, because that is going to pop up on a blog or somewhere on the Internet, and probably multiple places on the Internet. So it’s just kind of a fore drawn conclusion that you have to provide an excellent value for the price points that you’re charging.

Dr. Jim Bower:

hat’s exactly right, and if it shows up in a blog, it’s a reactive thing.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

f you are actually within a virtual world, you are actually designing an activity that’s gonna engage kids around your product. It’s not reactive; it’s proactive. It’s not sort of parasitic or negative; it’s kind of symbiotic.

And I’m not talking about straight market research. We’re really talking about you differentiating your product based on its qualities. Right now, the way you differentiate your product is by getting a bunch of designers in a room, and trying to come up with some way to capture people’s attention. Basically, with a 60-second broadcast commercial – to use, you know, as sort of a straw man – but anyway, what that commercial is doing is just trying to get you to attend.

Humans, it turns out – and here I’ll become a neurobiologist for a minute – humans have multiple different forms of attention. The kind of attention you’re trying to induce with a flashy 60-second commercial is the attentional mechanism that, in the real natural world, is reserved for should I bite it; should I run from it? Okay? Or should I just sit here scared to death? In other words, it’s orienting attention.

What the marketer is hoping is that, when you orient and pay attention, that something about the product will sink in. Right?

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

In the virtual world, where you can actually get deep engagement of your users with the product, you’re now talking about the kind of attention that you spend on your kids, or that you spend on your hobbies, or that you spend on your work, or you spend on your interest in the major battles of World War II. That is a much deeper, much more significant, much more profound and influential form of engagement and attention.

Paul Lewis:

Right. Yeah, that’s the typical terms that in marketing speak we use is awareness, which is like the 60-second spot, and then engagement. Engagement is obviously so much more powerful, having people engage and actively exploring and understanding your brand, your product, or your service.

Dr. Jim Bower:

It’s your whole brain instead of just your superior colliculus, if you want. (Laughter)

Paul Lewis:

That’s exactly what I tell everyone. It’s not just my superior colliculus. (Laughter)

Dr. Jim Bower:

That’s right. You don’t really care. The superior colliculus – frogs have that, you know.

Paul Lewis:

(Laughter)

Dr. Jim Bower:

The superior colliculus is designed so that if there’s a brown dot sort of flying at the right velocity across your eye, you stick your tongue out and eat it – that’s what the superior colliculus does.

Paul Lewis:

I haven’t done that yet, but there’s always hope. (Laughter)

Dr. Jim Bower:

Why don’t you try it sometime? (Laughter)

Paul Lewis:

Well, so let’s say that I’m a brand or marketing executive at a company, and I’m toying with the idea of maybe getting involved with virtual worlds, and I go to my manager – keeper of the funds – and say I wanna take out an investment in this. How do I justify it? How do I go back and explain that in a dollars and cents terms to people at my company of why this is a good idea for my company, or for our brand, to do?

Dr. Jim Bower:

Okay, I can give you several answers. The first is it’s a lot cheaper.

Paul Lewis:

Cheap is good.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Cheap is good. So if the amount of money that it costs to build something like this in a virtual world is the amount of money that people generally spend on the Perrier and sandwiches at 30-second car commercial shoots. Okay?

So net, it’s much cheaper to build something in a virtual world than it is to build it in the real world, and that turns out to be related to physics. So that’s the first thing.

The second thing, which is probably more important – and I think a profound difference – the way that broadcast media is metered is based on eyeballs.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Okay? These are orienting eyeballs. This is the frog, you know, looking at the brown spot.

You would like to believe – and the firms that meter things this way are gonna try to convince you – that for N number, N million eyeballs, there are going to be some number less than a million, but more than zero, who’ve had the effect that you want. But you just have to believe that.

Paul Lewis:

Right. You don’t know how many people made the jump from casual awareness to active engagement.

Dr. Jim Bower:

That’s right, and you don’t know what the nature of the jump is either. Okay? It could be the jump is boy, that’s an ugly car; I don’t wanna deal with that car. There are all kinds of jumps they could make that you don’t want. So you don’t know anything about the nature of the jump, and you don’t know how many of them made the jump, really, ‘cause you only have one measure, and that is how many eyeballs are looking; and of course, again, in the television domain – and I realize this is sort of a straw man, although a tremendous amount of money is spent on television advertising, as you know, still – you know, with TIVO, it’s you’re dead in the water.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

‘Cause now they’re jumping in a completely different way, they’re simply jumping over your commercial. So there’s a big problem there.

We meter everything, and the metrics that we pull out of kids who are engaged with activities on our site – and by the way, these metrics apply whether it’s Toyota or whether it’s NASA, which also supports activities in Whyville, or the Getty Museum. We have a virtual Getty in Whyville. Or the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, or the Center for Disease Control.

So whether it’s Toyota, it’s Disney, or it’s the Center for Disease Control in Whyville, we meter everything and we can measure everything. The really interesting thing about that is that we can give metrics back to the marketer – to the company – which are metrics they understand.

So for example, Toyota – how many test drives of Scions have there been in Whyville? In the six months since we launched this, there have been more test drives of Scions in Whyville than there have been in the entire world, real world, combined.

Paul Lewis:

Fascinating.

Dr. Jim Bower:

How many kids have purchased based on test drives? Okay? 5,000.

Paul Lewis:

Wow. Now, how did you tie that number back? Like, you ‘re saying actual purchases?

Dr. Jim Bower:

Virtual purchases.

Paul Lewis:

Virtual purchases. So they test drove it, and then they decided, in the virtual world –

Dr. Jim Bower:

To buy it.

Paul Lewis:

That they wanted to purchase it. And I assume that in your virtual world, there is limitations just like in the real world, where you can’t choose one of everything. So there actually is a choice.

Dr. Jim Bower:

The way that Whyville works is that there’s a currency – it’s actually called a clam – and kids receive a salary in Whyville based on the activities they do on the site, and how engaged they are in the site.

Paul Lewis:

I see.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Okay. So by the way, we can also tell Toyota whether it’s our high salary – and by the way, buying a Scion is expensive in Whyville. It’s the most expensive thing you can buy. In fact, when we first launched this Scion dealership, all you could do is buy with cash, and Scion came back to us and said this is really cool. You sold a lot of cars. What can we do next that’s even kind of more engaging and more interesting?

We said well, let’s set up a branch of Toyota Financial Services, which we did. So now kids can actually take out loans to buy Scions in Whyville. However, they can only do that if they have a good credit rating, so Toyota Financial Services in Whyville actually has credit counselors that work with 12-year-old kids, that show them how we measure their credit rating based on their salary; based on whether they own a house in Whyville; based on whether they’ve been good citizens – that is, if they’ve engaged in behavior that’s inappropriate in Whyville, that hurts their credit rating, stuff like that. So they’re learning a lot about how credit works, and if they learn how to increase their credit rating to the level they need to buy a car, they get to buy a car on loan.

Of course, they have to make weekly loan payments. If they don’t make their weekly loan payments, then the car gets repossessed.

Paul Lewis:

So they’re learning a lot about the real world, and real life, and what it is to be a car owner. At the same time, it’s having an experience of what that would be like with Toyota.

Dr. Jim Bower:

That’s exactly right, and not only that – from Toyota’s point of view, the more educated the public is about credit, the better for their company.

Paul Lewis:

Sure.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Okay? For example, our kids – we have eight and nine-year-olds that now understand what compound interest is. If you are a company that, a lot like Toyota does, and you offer a very good financial product that is reasonable term for the loan, relatively low interest rate, etcetera – we’re teaching kids how to calculate that. We’re protecting the kids in some sense; I mean, we’re doing a financial educational service which is associated with Toyota.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Okay? So you grow up, you go to Toyota, you trust Toyota Financial Services because they taught you how to do this. We haven’t talked about this yet: five, six, eight years from now, does a kid that walks into a Toyota Financial Service – a real dealership, real branch of Toyota Financial Services – and has a Whyville certification, that they were actually able to manage their income, manage their whatever, you know, make payments, etcetera, and had a very high credit rating in Whyville, meaning they understand what it means to maintain a credit rating – does that kid get a break in interest at Toyota ten years from now, when he goes in to buy a car?

Paul Lewis:

The virtual world sort of traversing over into the real world, and vice versa.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Exactly.

Paul Lewis:

Well, one of the things that markers are thinking, if they’re able to get approval to do some exploration with virtual worlds, is how do I get started? Where should I focus? What should be my objectives? How can companies pursue a successful virtual world strategy?

Dr. Jim Bower:

Okay, so let me a little self-promotional. Okay?

Paul Lewis:

Sure.

Dr. Jim Bower:

And I apologize to my academic colleagues for this, but anyway.

So virtual worlds are not virtual worlds are not virtual worlds. Making a virtual world that you can just go in and build whatever you want – whatever you want – with very little design input from the people that run the world, or even no one who runs the world paying attention to the way in which you do virtual world design, what will happen is you will go in and build the thing you know. In fact, there are fairly prominent virtual worlds at the moment – one in particular – which really makes no bones about this. I mean, they – I’m talking about Second Life.

Paul Lewis:

Sure.

Dr. Jim Bower:

They establish a space that you can go in and do your thing, and they don’t manage it, they don’t meter it, and what’s happening is that people go in and do what they know in the real world.

But virtual worlds are not the real world. At a minimum, a virtual world should have the kind of interactivity engagement, etcetera, that the real world has. But virtual worlds are not real worlds; there are many cooler things you can do in virtual worlds if you understand something about how to do them.

So let me give you an example. Last Saturday, EMI sponsored a concert – a pop concert – from a pop artist named Stacie Orrico in Whyville. We had about 10,000 kids attend. But any one of those kids attending actually, to them, it looked like they were basically in a coffeehouse setting with the artist, with 39 of their friends.

Paul Lewis:

Oh, interesting. So even though there were 10,000 people, their awareness in the virtual world was a much smaller subset, and that that subset was primarily associates that they had.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Exactly. So they were having an intimate, personal, with-your-friends interaction, or they were at a concert – okay? – with someone that they value highly, and realize this is a big star, but it looked like it was in your living room; except it was in the Greek Theater in Whyville, which isn’t a living room, but anyway. But there were really 10,000 kids there.

So that’s the kind of thing that you can do in the virtual world you cannot ever do in the real world, of course. But it’s an example of sort of understanding or knowing something about the capabilities. The first thing is it’s knowing about the capabilities and the unique sort of capacities of virtual worlds and this kind of technology, and this is something that Numedeon has been focusing on really for 25 years, if you go back into the research that we were doing in the Eighties, actually about virtual worlds and how it can be used for education. So we have a design team that invents things, and we have tools that we’ve built within the engine itself that allow this sort of thing.

So I would say – and again, it’s a little bit, you know, blowing our own horn – but I would say that a really important thing to determine is, first, is the engine – very important – is the engine on which the virtual world built flexible enough to be creative and imaginative about how you actually work in that virtual world?

And second, are you working with a team that gets it? And I would claim, at this point in time, that there are very few teams that get it, that really understand or have taken the opportunity to really learn what is both the same and different about virtual worlds.

Paul Lewis:

Yeah, it does sound like there are some very specific knowledge sets that are important to understand and employ to be successful.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Yeah, and here’s the cool thing. Okay? I mean, nobody in industry, and certainly nobody in advertising and marketing, would believe that somebody off the street could do as good a job of marketing something as someone that’s been trained to do it and understands the tools and the domain and all of that. So it’s not a hard sell, the idea that expertise matters in the marketing world. Okay?

The expertise in virtual worlds is different from the expertise, the classic, broadcast-based expertise, and here’s the difference – goes back to what we talked about before. In the marketing broadcast world, the expertise really has to do with brand control, and field presentation; at least that’s my impression, you know, watching it happen to me. I’ve never been in a marketing company or whatever. Well, I guess I am now, but in the virtual worlds, the expertise is process. How do you engage? How do you maximize the effectiveness of that engagement? How do you meter that engagement? What measures do you take – much richer set of measures you can take – what ones do you take that you want that tell you the most? It’s almost a research problem if you want.

But it’s the process that matters, because what you’re really doing is building some – you wanna build something which will fully engage the brain, not just the eyes, but the brain of the user; and to do that, you have to know a lot about process.

And here’s the part that kinda stretches all this, and people start to raise their eyebrows. I told you at the very beginning that the primary objective of Whyville is educational.

Paul Lewis:

Right.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Well, I would claim – and of course, I’m a professor, so sort of a natural kinda claim. There’s a thing that engages human beings the most, and the richest form of engagement, is one in which they’re learning. If you’re just sitting there rotely, you know, sticking Bolt A into Slot B – right? Sort of traditional industry. You know, you’re not learning anything, and you don’t care unless they pay you a lot, and then you don’t really care about what you’re doing. You just care about the pay. Okay?

But it’s this huge brain we have – I mean, the more we engage the brain, the more interested and intrigued we are by it, the more important we think it is. Education then, done properly – it often isn’t – but done properly is really just the equivalent of engaging the brain.

So the cool thing about this, with respect to marketing, is if you watch the transition in the Toyota project, for example – from straight sales of cars, you add on customization. We add a social component, which is kids can drive around Whyville with their friends in their car, that’s very important. We had a safety learning component; when you invite your friends into your car, you can’t take off until – the car won’t drive – until everyone buckles their seat belts. Okay?

But then we went from there to this credit thing, which is another sort of deeper level of kind of complexity and education of kids; and now what we’re talking about is engineering. Toyota’s marketing effort is moving closer and closer and closer to automotive engineering.

So the point is this – I think when you really know you’ve optimized your marketing opportunity in a virtual world is when the kids are engaged in something which they recognize as being as engaging as education, and therefore is actually education. So there’s very cool convergence, I think.

And by the way, on the other side of this, this is exactly the same thing that the Internet and computers will eventually do to true education, and there’s a crossover. Whyville now has a number of projects from work force commissions – in Texas for example, and we’re talkin’ to people in California – to actually build, within Whyville, a whole series of activities that, in fact, will expose kids to and have them engaged at the age of 12 in engineering, in biomedical research, in aerospace stuff, in petroleum stuff, and they cross over.

So we’re gonna be having kids understanding mechanical engineering in this Texas work force activity, and then they’re gonna be applying that – what they basically learned in school in Whyville, except it’s a very strange school – to working with the Toyota engineering facility.

Paul Lewis:

Wow. Just a broad spectrum of possibilities, and I know that you have really given everyone on the show today a lot to think about.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Great.

Paul Lewis:

We appreciate you spending some time with us, Jim.

Dr. Jim Bower:

Sure.

Paul Lewis:

Our guest today, again, was Dr. Jim Bower, and he’s the CEO of Numedeon, and they are the creators of Whyville. You can learn more about that at www.whyville.com; and if you’d like more information on advertising in virtual worlds, and what virtual worlds are all about, I invite you to go to internetmarketingvoodoo.com, where we’ll have additional information for you to download.

Again, thanks everyone.

Announcer:

For more information on this week’s topic, visit internetmarketingvoodoo.com. This podcast has been brought to you by MindComet, The Relationship Agency.

[End of Audio]

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