Vending to Flashmobs....

Yesterday saw the first field-test of my new viral-marketing device - the MobVend - which ...after a few teething troubles... all went rather nicely :)

Like the Lucky Chairs, the MobVend works on a fairly simple dynamic. It's a vending machine that gradually lowers its selling price, depending on how many people it can detect in close proximity. The more people there are in the store, the further the price falls... and - just to drive the point home - the MobVend whispers messages to those who are gathered around it, encouraging them to teleport friends to the store to make the price drop even further.

Eventually - assuming enough people gather - a special "best price" gets unlocked, and everybody is given 60 seconds (AKA "the mad minute") to get their orders in... after which the price shoots back up to maximum, and the whole process begins again.

Neat concept... but would it work in practice?

For the first "live" test, I dropped my MobVendor into LapGirl, next to the existing Lucky Chair, and put word out amongst my customers that I was testing out a new promotion. Then I lurked in the building next door, and started watching... 

The Mobvend, plus random lurker :)

 

The first couple of hours were disappointingly underwhelming. Every now and then a lone customer would come in, read the instructions on the vendor, and then just stand around doing nothing. I don't know if these people were running through their friends lists looking for people to come and help them push the price down, or were just lurking in the store on the offchance that somebody else would happen along and do the hard work for them. But, all said and done, not much was happening. 

Slightly disheartened, I was starting to wonder if I needed to change the instruction posters to make the big savings a little more obvious... when -  finally - somebody came into the store who finally grokked the mechanics of the game... and started porting in her friends... and her friends of friends... and within moments -- just as I'd hoped -- the whole thing went viral...

 

A crowd starts to form...

Within about 20 minutes, it looked like the sim was at risk of grinding to a halt due to over-capacity... I've never seen the store so full - result!!! :)

However, to my lesser delight, the MobVend broke down shortly before the machine hit the promised "bottom price" ... and I had to (stealthily) hack in a quick temporary fix before the massed crowd turned ugly! (oops). I let the machine run on a manually-overriden "bottom price" mode for a minute or two, and then turned the whole thing off. The crowd dispersed. 

So... partial success; the concept certainly worked well, even if the vendor itself wasn't quite up to the task. 

Yet. 

I went back to work on the script. Clearly, the preliminary testing I'd done on the device had missed something important... and I started to suspect that this was a fault that was only going to show up when the machine was running in an environment *stuffed* full of avatars - not an easy thing to simulate! 

Fortunately, I had a brainwave! I made a hud-size copy of the machine, fixed all the communications to use llOwnerSay (so nobody else would hear its messages), dropped this "test" version into my HUD, and scanned the popular places list for a nice, overloaded, laggy sim. 

 

Scripting in comfort... and getting paid too!

 

As an unexpected bonus, the casino I subsequently found myself in even had a vacant camping chair(!)... so I sat myself down, and worked on fixing the MobVend. To anybody watching, I guess I probably looked like any other AFK camping zombie - but all the while I was feverishly fixing up my MobVend, entirely within the HUD environment... with enough avatars gathered around me to totally stress the script to its limits. Nice one! :) 

(It turned out my problem was down to a _really_ obvious integer rounding error. I could've kicked myself!) 

So, the fixed script went back into the "live" MobVend... I tweaked the configuration file a little, so that the vendor would hit the bottom price a bit more rapidly (fearing complaints from the neighbours if I ended up pumping the sim to maximum capacity all night!) and I waited to see if I got a similar result to earlier... 

 

And.... another crowd... :)

 

I didn't have to wait for long. Word had evidently got out after the first session, and the second test soon attracted a steady flow of avatars, which seemed to be sustained for the next hour or two. The vendor ran fine throughout :) 

So, things are looking pretty good for the MobVend; it seems to have provoked several surges of customers in its 24 hour test period, and sales throughout the store were up by about 50% above a "regular" sunday. I'm not sure how long it'll sustain that traffic pattern (without a regular prize change) but - if people manage to organize themselves into flash-mob groups in the same way that they've already organized themselves into chair-hopping groups, I can easily see the MobVend becoming the focus of a new shopping craze. 

I'm probably going to do an initial roll-out of the MobVend machines to members of the Lucky Chair Owners group ... on the basis that this gives me an easy-to-contact set of people, should any other short-term problems arise. It'll probably be priced extra-low for early-adopters... so, if you're interested in having the first MobVend on your block, at a reduced price, join today! :)

Comments

[Dolus Naumova]

Oh, that is ridiculously clever. I love it!

[HeatherDawn Cohen]

ohohohh I want one!

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Interesting. I believe the device would be most useful for small to medium size designers, in concert with new releases. One problem is that a some regions start getting laggy if you get more than 10 avatars in them at once. And it might offend neighbors if you don't own your own sim. One solution might be short term use. Could the device be altered to start in "regular vendor mode" and then go into "mobvend mode" for a period of time and then return to "regular vendor mode?

[callie cline]

i love this idea, i know my group would as well,

i do a "5 minute" free outfit event every so often where anyone in my store gets a free outfit of their choice, we had one last week and over 40 ppl showed up...

this would be a blast, if not to use all the time, for certain events.

please get me one!!!

or tell me how.

thanks!

caLLie cLine

[Kris Ming]

Wow, what a great idea. Good job!

[Nex Brannan]

I've got to get one of these. Gimme Gimme Gimme

[Iris Mirabeau]

Oh so THIS is what you were talking about a few days ago. That's ace, Shep. Great idea!