I actually love the concept of Grid Hunts, which may come as a surprise considering most see me as being “Anti-Freebies”.
It’s to do with the collaborative aspect of Second Life – designers coming together and working with one another to set up a scheme which encourages shoppers to visit all their stores. The best Grid-wide Hunt would include a mix of larger retailers and smaller stores, so the brand names would attract consumers to participate and allow the smaller retailers to get coverage.
All in all, it’s a great idea which benefits smaller retailers, and boosts traffic and business for larger stores too.
But it’s fallen flat on its face.
And it’s easy to see why – when you have a good idea, a bandwagon develops and everyone tries to climb on. Put too many people on and the whole thing collapses.
There’s a Grid Hunt pretty much every week now, and it’s ruining what was a good concept for finding talented stores and visiting popular SL merchants.
Also, some of the Hunts have far too many participating stores – they can take several days to complete and it seems a tad harsh on those at the later stages of the hunt who draw the short straws.
Longer hunts also lead to circumstances where shoppers simply teleport in, cam around for the freebie, grab and run off again. I’ve heard instances where hunters have hassled storeowners/customer service representatives for the location of their gifts, and upon being refused, have kicked up a fuss. Entitlement issues, much?
A retailer would assume that the visitor will open the gift later and hopefully return, but the size of some of these Hunts will mean that some grid-hoppers won’t get around to opening all the gifts up.
A recent resolution has been to create “elitist hunts” which vet through stores and gives approval to selected merchants to participate in the hunt. Well, that raised confusion amongst people who thought it amusing that they had to be selected to provide a freebie. And then those who were rejected created rival hunts – and hence there was more hunts than time.
There is too much of a good thing, and it does feel that the original spirit of the Grid Hunts is being tainted – it’s not about collecting as many free gifts as you can lay your hands on, but visiting, exploring and discovering new retailers who would like you to purchase from them in the future.
Ana Lutetia on April 4, 2009
I used to love hunts. Actually, in my early SL™ days I used to do all the hunts in MIA island and I did it not for the items itself but for the fun of the treasure hunt. Nowadays, I have the same opinions of hunts that I have about freebies…
Amanda Shinji on April 4, 2009
I couldn’t agree more Praddles… The grid is currently awash with hunts, they seem to be popping up every few days, meaning that you can literally spend your entire time logged in, hunting around for freebies.
I used to see them as being a good promotion tool for your business, but now I think they’re just creating workload for designers who need to provide exclusive content just for the hunt.
Hunters poof in, cam around for the item, grab it and poof out, spending no time admiring your shop or you stock, yet alone purchasing any of it. If someone doesn’t take the time to look at your clothes, furniture etc. then they’re not going to return later when they have some free time away from this nanosecond’s hunt to actually want to purchase something…
Having said that, I am participating in a hunt as a designer. It’s an exclusive invitational hunt, all the participating designers will in theory be paid some money for their efforts, so there is an incentive to create a worthwhile item too.
Having been married inworld to a fashion designer, I’ve seen the amount of work she’s been putting in after being invited to partake in this, that and the other hunt recently. It’s wiped her out almost and I just don’t think the business (which I’m still involved in) will see little or any benefit.
Elsbeth Writer on April 4, 2009
First off, I agree about the number and size of the current rash of hunts. I’ve seen stores participating in 2 0r 3 three hunts simoultaneously. Perhaps the idea of one grid wide hunt every couple of months would be something to promote.
I do look around the stores and occasionally buy something. But my main reason for joning in is that I am a landscape photographer so I look around the sim to scout locations for photoshoots. I find it’s great way to get to places I haven’t seen yet.
The freebies are nice, but everyone has their own motives for joning in a hunt. Just saying.
Sinjin Cooperstone on April 4, 2009
I enjoy the hunts, but completely agree with your conclusions based on my own spending habits.
But I also participated in the The Armoire hunt recently and have to say the concept was brilliant for both hunters and designers… small enough that it didn’t take a hunter a SL lifetime to complete and to get the best freebies, the hunter had to purchase an item from the designer (which was no hardship at all). I hope others will take notice, and we’ll have more hunts like this!
Lilly Lalonde on April 4, 2009
I do think that the hunts have gotten out of hand. They are way too big and too frequent. I used to enjoy going on them meeting other people who were hunting and helping each other find the treasure. But now it is pop in find the item and pop out.
I will say that in the past I found some great stores this way that I would have never found on my own. I usually would open up the gifts check them out and if I liked the stuff save the LM to check out the store after the hunt and lag was over.
So I think for some the hunts are a good way to find new stores and interesting designers but for others it will always just be a freebie goldmine.
Alicia Chenaux on April 4, 2009
Oh, I absolutely agree. I’ve been saying this for quite some time, but these hunts have GOT to stop overlapping so badly. I don’t know if I’m hunting eggs, flowers, or hobos at this point. A friend of mine participating in the Bunny Hop said last night that the hunters aren’t even buying her $1L items. I told her they simply don’t have time. It’s get in and get out. Doesn’t sound like a good thing to me. I’ve been spending more money lately at stores that don’t participate in hunts at all. At least then I know what I’m getting rather than wasting time finding an object with something that may or may not be any good at all.
Skinkie Winkler on April 4, 2009
I agree that it’s madness, but it’s also not surprising that everyone wants in on a good thing.
I absolutely love hunts, always have, and like Ana, did the MIA and then the Ohana Hunts religiously. These days I pick and choose according to how much time I have. And I love that I find new shops, new designers, or old designers I’d not come across. I almost always take time to look around – if I like what I see I’ll often take a break from the hunt and browse.
However, something I’ve noticed with this batch of Easter hunts, which takes overkill to a whole new level, is stores that are in every single hunt that is on/planned/not even thought of yet. While doing the Bunny Hop, the only one of the Easter hunts my own store is involved in, I’ve come across stores that are in three or four right now, and have posters up for more they are joining next month and the month after! Now, I absolutely understand the need to promote your brand, but come on guys, give some other poor bugger a chance won’t yay?!? If I’m going to spend time doing three big hunts I REALLY don’t want to just go around the same 200-300 stores three times. Give me 600 different stores, PLEASE.
Hunts aren’t the only way to get your brand out there, and to be frank, at worst it can come across as desperate. Give one really good prize that is indicative of your best work, hoping it will hit the freebie blogs, even drop it to the freebie bloggers with a little note about your store, and then follow the hunt up with some good releases, announce to the right fashion groups, send out review copies, get involved in relevant expo’s, and if your work is good it will stand up for itself. Doing 16 million hunts, producing mediocre gifts as your time is used up with them all, leaving no time for regular releases, is doing yourself no favours and attracting mainly the freebie-hunters (who apparently don’t spend money anyway).
Just my twopenneth-worth, and to be taken with a pinch of white powder as apparently I’m crap at promotion
Take it or leave it.
Banana Vella on April 4, 2009
Ahh hunts. I must say – I’m a converted sceptic of the hunt in general, but I still agree with all the things you say here Prad.
Hunts have become a land’n'grab and impatient hunters are a reflection of this – the things they say when they cant find a hidden gift is shocking. Store owners get abused and I dont blame them for pulling out of future hunts.
Gift/freebie quality is a subject you didnt touch on – some of the gifts are very freebie-esque and arent worth the time you spent looking. However, some recent hunts have revealed some exceptionally good items and those are the stores I’ll be returning to.
The biggest point you said was about the metaverse been saturated with hunts, and I totally agree. This can only be controlled by the participating vendors ‘just saying no’ – but then, who wants to say no when the next hunt could be ‘the next big thing’.
I for one, thank all the people who get involved in setting up hunts and supporting them, but less is more in terms of frequency.
Ben Vanguard on April 4, 2009
I’m so sick of always reading the same kind of memes:
mean hunters have schocking behavior, feel entitled to get freebies, when poor generous content creators are abused blah blah blah…
I have acquaintances who enter hunts to raise their traffic without paying campers or bot farms, it’s a cheaper (and less shameful at first sight) way to game the ranking system from LL based on traffic in “search>>>places”. They exploit the “bad-mean-greedy” hunters making them roaming around for hours. Some are even vicious enough to hide the “gifts” so carefully that their places are totally packed, YAY for the traffic!
I won’t forget to mention “Generous gifts” are most of the time not worth it at all (I try to stay polite on Prad’s blog!)
I used to think that hunts were a nice way to discover new places and new content creators, now they have just become one more marketing trick.
I followed a hunt a few weeks ago, I needed to go out of my workshop for a while and was hoping for some newness. On more than 200 places I didn’t know, I just found 4 that were nice ones, 2 where I went back to shop (the two other were selling only girls’ fashions, that’s why I didn’t go back there, but they were really cool). I couldn’t count the amount of “content creators” selling goods done with the same pre-made stuff that are sold full perms on slx…
I opened the 30 first freebie boxes, plus these from the nice places I happily discovered. Guess what? the sole valuable freebies were those from the nice places…
Besides, I wonder how much LL resources are wasted in these hunts, with the constant calls to the asset servers loading textures for thousands of people, the series of TPs etc.
You know what? good content creators don’t need these grid wide hunts…
Bad ones will keep whining and blaming hunters not buying mediocre stuff in their ugly places instead of catching up the best with high quality work. Too bad for them.
Terry Toland on April 5, 2009
I’m tired, so I’ll keep it brief: I have no time to sort items that I get form hunts. So, I don’t like them.
Viola Bentham on April 5, 2009
While I agree with Prad and all the commenters here, I want to raise a point: Have the Hunts seem to have gotten out of hand? Yes. BUT, I do sing the praises of the concept because, from the perspective of a consumer, a Hunt is a good way to learn about stores I might never have heard of before, or, that I haven’t visited in a while, and forgotten about. And yes, I do check my RSS feeds and FashCon notices daily, but I can’t solely and reliably use those 2 resources to learn about EVERY designer on the grid.
Speaking as a consumer, Hunts are FUN. If I come across one that doesn’t look like fun to me, I skip it.
In order to cut back on the overwhelming number of hunts, someone, (or someones lol), needs to come up with an idea that accomplishes the same marketing purposes. IMHO, the hunts need to be more focused. For example, I saw an announcement the other day about the Gorean RFL Hunts. Not being a gorean, I’m probably going to skip that hunt. But then, I’m not the target market for the participating designers. Most hunts should do similar targeting to specific market segments.
Renee Harvy on April 5, 2009
I’ve done many of these now as a consumer, and a few as a retailer, and I agree with your comments. Gridwide hunts bring traffic to my store and get my product in the hands of future customers. I personally don’t care if they spend time in my store during the actual hunt, because I know that as a hunter, I rarely paid attetnion to merchandize in the store no matter how long they forced me to hunt for a ridiculously well hidden item. Ultimately, it was the quality of the item that determined if I’d go back.
That is, if I ever saw it, which was often directly related to the size of the hunt. And thus, I also agree that too much and too many is killing the purpose and potential benefit of these hunts.
When the first 10 or 20 itmes my friends and I received in a hunt were poor quality and destined for the trash, we rarely finished it. Or if we waited to finish the hunt before opening the gifts, we often didn’t bother to even open the rest.
As a hunter, there is one mall with a current mallwide hunt going on that I love. (I am not a retailer in this mall) The hunts at this mall are consistantly amongst the most difficult to complete, and yet, because the quality of the gifts are routinely high, I’ll make the effort every time. I think that’s the way a hunt should be conducted. Make me work for the gifts (if you must *grins*) but make the participants reward the often considerable time and effort I expend with gifts I actually recognize as quality items from the sales floor, instead of mistakes or quick toss-offs that should never have seen the light of day.
Bluegum Lunasea on April 6, 2009
There are too many hunts agreed.
There are also way too many stores treating their customers with contempt (and hunt participants are potential customers).
Rika Watanabe shows what it’s like from the participants side and it’s very interesting reading – especially for store owners:
http://rikawatanabe.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/the-art-and-science-of-promotional-events/
There is also this story (also linked to in the above) about a store that set fake eggs out for sale:
http://aliciachenaux.blogspot.com/2009/03/not-cool-coull.html