VIRTUALLY HERMAN MILLER

Words :: Richard Rene // Illustration :: Tyler Jenkins, Blacksheep Studios

Logon…
It’s been a long day. As I sink, exhausted, into my genuine Herman Miller Eames lounge chair and prop up my feet on the classic black leather ottoman, I wonder: Is this real? Am I really here? And who am I today, anyway? A thirty-year-old stud, a twenty-year-old temptress, or some rabbit-like creature of indeterminate sex and age? And is that really a genuine Eames Chaise Lounge chair I’m sitting in? No, to all the above.

The truth is, I’m “relaxing” in a piece of virtual reality furniture that costs between $350 and $850 in “Linden dollars” – the equivalent of US$1.40 to $3.50. And my so-called “experience”? Simply a figment of someone else’s brilliant imagination, a product of furniture design giant Herman Miller’s new foray into Second Life, one of a number of emerging web-based community worlds.
Every month, hundreds of thousands of people in North America log in to their Second Life client program. Once they are in-world, they assume the identity of their “avatar,” a self-created persona that can take almost any humanoid form. These “residents” of Second Life experience exactly that – a second virtual life where they can do the same things as in they can “off-world”: buy and sell property and products, get an education, find entertainment, create works of art. They can even find that special someone… and we’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
The difference is that nothing in Second Life happens in real life. Or does it? According to Mark Schurman, Director of External Communications at Herman Miller, Second Life and other online communities possess a massive potential to showcase and market design products of virtually any kind (pardon the pun). Schurman says the R&D arm of the company has always been interested in emerging technologies and social phenomena that could impact their business both directly and indirectly. With the advent of web-based social networking communities like Second Life, the Herman Miller research team believed that they saw an opportunity to collaborate with customers and other businesses in new ways. Specifically, HM heightened the visibility of its brand by opening a Second Life in-world store to interact with their end users directly (rather than through licensed distributors, as they do off-world).
Why Second Life, and not some other Web 2.0 community? “Because of it’s very dramatic and rapid growth, firstly, and also because it was appealing both to consumers and institutions, and even companies,” says Schurman. Second Life currently boasts 9.8 million registered avatars. Although many users are inactive and some residents have multiple accounts, these numbers still represent a significantly untapped market, and Herman Miller is taking them very seriously.
They’re not the only ones. Schurman says a number of internationally recognized brands have an in-world presence – including Adidas (enjoy a nice sedentary jog in a brand new pair of A3 “bouncy” Microrides), Toyota (test drive the Scion xB in your mind) and American Apparel, where you can mentally undress yourself before trying on that black jersey polo dress you’ve had your eye on, but could never afford (or fit into) off-world.
Apart from opening up new marketing horizons, Herman Miller’s further research into Second Life opened up a whole new can of sim-worms. “As we began to poke around a little bit,” Schurman says, “lo and behold, there was a fair amount of Herman Miller design that was already being knocked off in Second Life.” Herman Miller knock-offs had already been an issue in the real world, which resulted in the company’s “Get Real” campaign back in 2003. Consumers were advised to “check the product, check the source and check your conscience” before purchasing furniture products not manufactured to the letter and spirit of the designer’s specification. Now, in a weird twist to an already bizarre set of events, the Herman Miller R&D team found Second Life furniture dealers selling inferior virtual imitations of their real-world designs!
It might have been laughable, the stuff mockumentaries are made of, if it hadn’t raised the larger issue of intellectual property rights in the virtual world. Schurman notes that a number of iconic Herman Miller designs – such as my avatar’s Eames lounge chair and ottoman – have been deemed legally synonymous with the Herman Miller brand itself. As such, their images – like the shape of the Coca-Cola bottle or the classic Ferrari – are trade dress protected. And since trade dress protection rights are determined by appearance, not performance, simply identifying the distinctive look of, say, a Noguchi coffee table, is sufficient to brand and protect it as a Herman Miller product – significant for the virtual world, where image really is everything.
Schurman says violations of trade dress protection have already resulted in HM knock-offs being deleted from Second Life by Linden Labs, the creators of the virtual world. Schurman sees this success as having wider implications for other industry seeking to promote or sell their designs in-world. If Herman Miller could successfully defend its designs through trade dress protection, so could anyone else. Anyone, that is, whose designs are as distinctive as Herman Millers.
Given that the amount of real money involved in design piracy is literally pennies, arguments over virtual trade dress protection seem little more than territorialism taken to an absurdly abstract conclusion. Yet such debates do raise an interesting question: what does it mean to own a design, anyway? Schurman says the presence of Herman Miller designs in Second Life can only benefit the manufacturer’s image – marketing-speak for an IV branding drip wired directly into the brains of an immense demographic.
The ultimate business goal here is the same as it’s always been: first, to inspire new customers to actually buy a physical Herman Miller product for thousands of dollars, rather than its identical virtual image for mere pennies; and second, to bolster the loyalties of existing Herman Miller customers by reinforcing their ownership of real products through in-world purchases of the same brand. And through the whole process, the company extends its ownership claim beyond the mere physical, into that mysterious realm of line, shape and colour known as design.
What about reversing the flow of creativity and ownership, so that in-world consumers could inspire new real-world designs? Actually, Puma set a precedent for just such a project. At its Mongolian Shoe BBQ, residents could design their own shoes out of a variety of fabrics, parts and styles. As a result of that “natural focus group,” Schurman says, “[Puma] found they were getting some cues as to where to take that design.” This was a natural and beneficial extension of what takes place in Second Life already: gatherings of artists and designers who build objects that would be impossible in real space and time, or else just too expensive.
Could Second Life residents inspire Herman Miller designers in a similar way? “It’s conceivable,” Schurman says. “And we’ve certainly talked about that as a possibility. But in terms of pushing the bounds of furniture materials and performance like we do, it’s difficult to capture that in [the Second Life] environment.” Schurman does concede that Second Life aesthetics could potentially affect real-world designs, not to mention the possibility of launching new Herman Miller products in-world and off-world simultaneously (à la the Toyota Scion xB).
All this is very cool and mind-blowing, but what does that leave my avatar? Does he/she/it own his/her/its genuine Herman Miller Eames lounge chair and ottoman in Second Life, or not? And, ultimately, does anyone care but me? For Mark Schurman, it comes down to individual pleasure. He cites an instance in which a resident already owned an Aeron chair off-world and then purchased another one in-world to duplicate his lifestyle. Another resident could not afford an Eames lounge chair off-world, but was able to purchase and enjoy one in Second Life. “Clearly,” Schurman concludes, “they derive some pleasure from this, and as a result, we’re happy to be there to provide the solution.”
Maybe it’s my esoteric mind in overdrive, but I’m left with more than a few nagging questions. A virtual world filled with brand name items smacks of a mercantile invasion of the imagination, as if Big Brother worked for IBM. This thought brought to you by Zellers, this fantasy brought to you by Playboy, this scheme for owning Avalon Island brought to you by Donald Trump. Frankly, I shudder at the thought. And as for purchasing Herman Miller branded items in Second Life, I don’t know. It’s been said that discontent drives the economy. If I don’t already own anything by Herman Miller in real life, I’d rather express my unhappiness about it the good old-fashioned way: by pressing my drool-covered face against a showroom window. If, on the other hand, I’m already the lucky owner of a real-world Herman Miller piece, perhaps its time for me to get a little wild and crazy with my in-world consumer choices. That’s why it’s called imagination, after all.
Toying with these thoughts in my virtual Eames chair, I become aware that it’s almost midnight. There won’t be any easy answers to the issues around virtual design and marketing, at least not tonight. So, reluctantly, I decide to log off. For a moment I look around my real-world home, in its usual state of IKEA-flavoured disarray. With a sigh, I push back my $20 Wal-Mart imitation of Herman’s Miller’s Aeron office chair, and go hunting in the fridge for a bedtime snack of day-old pizza and flat beer. Perhaps it’s not so bad to get back to reality after all.

(end program)...

Visit Herman Miller’s virtual world at www.hermanmiller.com/virtualworld

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