This is a topic that has produced lots of opinions around the blogosphere and beyond, including from listeners to almost every edition of the FIR podcast over the past few weeks.

The PR Week article has lengthy quotes from four people including me with their opinions on the pros and cons of giving out products for review to bloggers.

Of note – no one mentions the word ‘ethics’ in their views. Of course not – this isn’t an ethics issue, it’s a tactical PR cock-up.

Shel and I did the FIR Ethics Skypecast on Saturday during which this topic was a discussion point. We’ll be posting that podcast during this week.

Related: Edelman’s Rick Murray was interviewed by PR Week US earlier this month in which he defended the ethics of their blogger outreach. As I opined in FIR #202, I didn’t think much of this quote by Rick in the interview: “The reality is, from the standpoint of ethics and disclosure, we did this by the book.”

Ethics I’d agree, but disclosure ‘by the book’? I don’t think so.

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

We at crayon learned the hard way when we claimed a “first” in Second Life, earning the wrath of the metaverse’s residents.

The Second Life Herald reports that Dell Computers seems to have managed to get around the requirements imposed on everyone else in the acquisition of the company’s in-world island. In your SL avatar profile, there is a place that indicates payments made. The owner of the Dell island-an avatar named Pyrrha Dell-shows none, leading the Herald to ponder, “Did Dell get a sweetheart deal from the Lindens? – and how can Pyrrha pay her bills? If you can use an unverified account to own an island is this a way to launder money?”

I don’t know how big a deal this is-I’m sure some SL regulars can tell me-but the point is that (according to the Herald) that “a number of metaverse residents…wonder how Dell makes land tier payments to the Linden Lab game gods.” This kind of attention is a distraction for an organization that is working hard to rehabilitate its image and integrate new channels into its marketing efforts. If this turns out to be nothing, Dell should count its blessings and redouble its efforts to make sure its approach to Second Life-and any other social media endeavor-play by the rules. (They’ve done a good job on their blog.)

In any social media environment, you should learn the rules of the road before you get in your car. Otherwise, you could get a different kind of attention than you bargained for.

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Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.

As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.

Microsoft’s founder and chairman Bill Gates will launch the software giant’s long-awaited Windows Vista operating system to home consumers worldwide on a visit to Scotland, it has emerged. Gates will be in Edinburgh for the fourth Microsoft European government leaders’ two-day forum, the first time the event has been staged in the UK. He will release Vista globally to consumers on January 30 – the first day of the forum at the Scottish Parliament.

The Scotsman | Bill Gates visit to open up a new Vista for promotion of Scotland plc

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Le Web 3 is the successor conference to the two “Les Blogs” events that took place in 2005, all organized by Loic Le Meur.

This third conference has some impressive sponsors and looks like it will be the blockbuster event in this series. There’s an outstanding programme and around 930 people attending from across the world.

If you’d planned to be there and haven’t signed up yet, you’re now too late as it’s sold out and registration closed today.

I’ll be there as a speaker, taking part in a session entitled “When will virtual life be better than our real life?”

Good question

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Nominations are being accepted by the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) for the 2007 Excellence in Communication Leadership (EXCEL) Award where nominees meet these criteria:

• Skills: Demonstration of exceptional leadership, management and communication skills
• Diverse communications audience: Experience and involvement in communication with diverse audiences; some experience in communicating with international or multi-cultural audiences is preferred
• Strategy: Use of a communication strategy that demonstrates creativity and innovation and that contributes to the business success of the organization
• Commitment to communication: Commitment to the communication programs of all audiences of the organization – internal and external at local, national, and international levels
• Personal communication: Effective personal communication with all these audiences; i.e., he or she must be shown to participate in communication, not simply to direct the communication staff in their efforts
• Ethics and professionalism in communication: Commitment to the highest ethical and professional standards

Are you a CEO who can rise to this challenge? If you’re a communicator, does your organization have such a leader?

It’s quite a challenge.

IABC press release: Who’s the Top CEO Communicator of the Year?

Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.

If you’ve not heard of Casecamp before, the concept is simple – it’s a conference where presenters share case studies of their work, with the goal of creating a commons for discussion, learning and networking.

This first Casecamp unconference in the virtual world of Second Life will be hosted by crayon (the new marketing company of which I am a founding principal) in the amphitheatre on crayonville Island. No credit is due to me, though, for this event – that’s the creative work of my colleague CC Chapman together with Bryan Person, Eli Singer and Kate Trgovac.

Here’s the event structure:

1. You have to present a *case* – no theory. Please keep the self-promotion to a dull roar (nobody’s coming to hear you pitch your company).

2. A presention is 10 minutes, then the (virtual) clapping starts.

3. A presentation has 5 slides. For CCSL, all slides will be displayed at once (imagine a series of billboards), so you can’t have crazy builds or reveals.

4. Show – don’t tell. Often, the best slides are images.

5. If you have to use words, keep them to under 10 to a slide.

6. Five (5) minutes of open questions follow each presentation. Q&A will be taken by the moderator via Second Life instant message.

7. Presenters will need to have an SL avatar and Skype; ideally, you will have used them both before CCSL.

The event kicks off at 9pm Eastern time on December 14. As that’s 2am GMT on December 15, I’ll probably not be there, unfortunately. Don’t let that stop you being there, though!

Details on how to participate at Casecamp.

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The latest today:

• Dell launches its Second Life presence today with an invite-only press preview followed by opening up the brand new Dell Island for general access. I’ll be at that preview at 6.15pm GMT.
• Edelman partners with Electric Sheep to offer funding for a new Second Life business venture. It’s a competition and kicks off with a panel event on Friday November 17 on Edelman’s brand new Second Life island (not yet launched). Giff Constable at Electric Sheep has the details. Related development – both firms are starting a machinima news blog called The Grid Review, launching soon.

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a founding principal at crayon which is heavily involved and time-and-attention invested in Second Life. We launched our new company in Second Life last month.

So I’m hardly impartial when it comes to extolling the virtues of Second Life from a business perspective.

Take a look at Avatars at the Office, a feature in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that gives some good examples of what a number of companies think and are doing in Second Life, and why. We’re quoted as one of the examples.

All of this represents the emerging of more of the tip of a very large iceberg.

And if you’d like to know what my crayon colleagues and I think about new marketing and business, check out what we have to say at One Degree where Mitch Joel has posted our answers to 5 Questions For Crayon – A New Marketing Company.

Keep paying attention.

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Crayon Draws MMO Advertising

The mutual exclusivity of the real world and virtual worlds appears to be diminishing like sand on a riverbank — methodically eroding away over time by the ever-present drag of marketing currents and the undertow of e-commerce.

Residents of Second Life in particular are beginning to see the turning of the tide in their virtual society. Companies such as Scion, Coca-Cola, Fox and Time Warner are slowly but surely making their presence felt in in the community.

B.L. Ochman notes the attitude of dissent rising within the community concerning some attempts at crossover marketing:

So echoes the crux of the virtual marketing quandary. How does a company market its products to a virtual audience in a way that is both relevant and effective?

That’s the question that Crayon is trying to help companies answer.

Crayon describes itself as a “new marketing” company, but its approach to relevancy within the virtual community of Second Life is what seems to be generating the most buzz.

Neville Hobson, VP of New Marketing for Second Life, outlines the company’s infrastructure, “We’re real, in the sense that all of us involved are physical, real human beings based in real locations, on the US east and west coasts plus me here in Europe.”

“We’re virtual, in the sense that our primary presence as a company is the three-dimensional online digital world of Second Life where we will conduct our business, our presentations, our brainstorms and our pitches.”

Click for Full Size Image

I had the opportunity to visit Crayonville Island and check out the company’s facilities.

The Crayon campus itself consists of a one-story building, which would seem to serve as a central traffic hub, with two multi-level office towers to the rear.

After all that walking, I was parched. Conveniently, there were Coke machines strategically placed to quench my thirst. The Coca-Cola Company, not suprisingly, is one of Crayon’s clients.

Click for Full Size Image

A little later, I decided to relax a little bit and take in a flick. At first, the choice of Rocky Horror Picture Show and A Clockwork Orange seemed daunting, but then I came to my senses. I mean, who can turn down anything featuring the directing stylings of Stanley Kubrick and an androgynous Malcom McDowell? But I digress…

The company’s marketing strategy seems to be one of total immersion. Crayon aspires to serve as a marketing portal connecting real world clients with virtual consumers.

Click for Full Size Image

“By maintaining real-time operations in the Second Life community, Crayon hopes to bring a sense of relevancy and legitimacy to virtual marketing that has, thus far, eluded companies looking to offer products and services to MMORPGers at large.

Second Life symbolizes the thinning line between the real and virtual worlds,” says Joseph Jaffe, President of Crayon.

Of course, immersion isn’t the only driving factor for the company’s approach of maintaining operations exclusively within the virtual world.

Jaffe elaborates, “With our team located in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, California and England, Second Life emerged as the perfect way for us to complement our dispersed geographic presence to meet and interact, not only with each other but also with our clients, vendors, and partners.”

Second Life, however, isn’t the only MMORPG community experiencing an influx of real world marketing. Sony Online Entertainment has been partnering with Massive Interactive to market products to players of both The Matrix Online and Planetside for some time now.

The concept of direct marking to a plugged-in, virtual audience is not new. Crayon has merely taken an innovative approach, attempting to become a conduit between real world products and virtual world consumers.

Click for Full Size Image

Will the venture prove successful? I can’t really say.

However, I’d be a liar if I said that checking out this Scion in front of the Crayonville Diner didn’t elicit the urge within me to go take one for a test drive.

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My two favourites:

1. This is not a bubble. Hot parties, overheated PR pitches, and five or six dozen social networking sites are just healthy indicators of a new boom.

2. We’re different from all those other sites. But we have a silly name, open APIs, some flashy Ajax technology, and other features just like the rest of them.

What’s your favourite?

(Via Photo Matt)

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The most interesting result to me was how survey respondents saw the opportunities for and from blogs, with the top result showing PR agencies as wanting to “be cool” through their being seen to adopt leading-edge technology.

I wonder what the results would look like a year later.

A good chance to find out as the EuroBlog 2007 survey was launched on Monday:

If you are a Public Relations or Communications practitioner and working in Europe, please take part in this survey and share your opinion on the impact of weblogs and social software on public relations and communication management. This is a non-for-profit research project by EUPRERA, a community of leading researchers in PR from universities and institutions from more than 30 countries.

This survey inlcudes some great questions on other aspects of social computing, not only about blogs.

The survey is online until November 30. Doing it will take ten minutes or less so it’s easy to add your voice.

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