KZero

A strong focus on brands sets KZero at ground zero of the most volatile hype cycle in the metaverse. KZero's Nic Mitham examines marketing hits and misfires of the past, and maps out directions for branding as new worlds come on line. We also put ThinkBalm's Erica Driver "On the Spot" to focus on enterprise uses of the immersive internet, a tortoise that is quietly and steadily overtaking the flashy hare of brand management.

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So I think it’s quite important to point out that a lot of the journalists and the media that wrote the stories about the whole kind of negativity of our marketing in Second Life, you kind of actually wonder have they ever even logged in. Do they really understand it? And you kind of saw the way some of these stories were amplified around the internet. Everyone likes a bad story or a negative story. These things tend to snowball. The marketing that’s happening now in Virtual Worlds hasn’t been held back at all by the press backlash, so it’s a storm in a teacup.         Nic Mitham, Founder and CEO, KZero

• KZero
• BBC: Boom Times for Virtual World Playgrounds.
• Business Week: Second Life Marketing Still Strong.
• Order KZero's 7 Point Plan and other Case Studies.
• Erica Driver's ThinkBalm.
• Erica Driver's Innovation Community.
• Erica Driver quoted in Wall Street Journal, Virtual World Gets Another Life.
• CIO Magazine: Using Virtual Worlds to Run your Network Operations and Data Centers.
• Virtual World News: Accenture Recruiting in Second Life Paid for Itself.
• Virtual World News: Virtual Events Cost Microsoft 1/3 of Physical.

Guest Biographies

Nic is the founder and CEO of K Zero, a leading virtual worlds strategic consulting agency. After spending 7 years in the telcoms sector and 5 years in advertising agencies, Nic set-up K Zero in 2006. In addition to intensively studying, analysing and interpreting the marketing dynamics of virtual worlds, Nic has also found the time to be father to four young boys who are now employed as beta testers for the growing number of kids/tween virtual worlds.

Erica Driver is a co-founder and principal at ThinkBalm. She is a leading industry analyst with 14 years of experience in IT. Erica is often quoted in mainstream and industry trade press including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CIO, and Computerworld. Prior to co-founding ThinkBalm, Erica was a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, where she launched the company’s Web3D coverage as part of her enterprise collaboration research. She was also the co-conspirator behind Forrester’s Information Workplace concepts and research.

While at Forrester Erica served as a strategic advisor to a wide range of clients including Alcoa, Bell Canada, Dominion Resources, GlaxoSmithKline, IBM, Marriott, Microsoft, Raytheon, Roche, the United Nations, and the U.S. General Services Administration. Prior to her tenure at Forrester, she was a Director at Giga Information Group (now part of Forrester) and an analyst at Hurwitz Group (now Hurwitz & Associates). She began her career in IT as a system administrator and Lotus Notes developer. Erica is a graduate of Harvard University and is a member of The eLearning Guild and the Association of Virtual Worlds.

Erica’s take on the Immersive Internet is that it’s a perfectly natural extension of the way people already teach and learn, rehearse business activities, network and meet, collaborate and communicate, innovate, and manage real-world systems - and that using the