Branding in Second Life White Paper by combinedstory, a Virtual World Development firm, is a White Paper about Second Life which puts forward that Second Life is a "economy of niches" (a web based version of the White Paper is now online at ADVERSISINGLAB - Study: Virtual Brand Footprint :
"…Rather than “wear” a shoe that every other avatar is wearing, the average participant chooses to wear something more expressive and unique. Second Life can be leveraged by businesses to discover what makes a select niche very happy which is an emerging formula for success".
"..Sublime, a popular restaurant in Second Life, requires avatars to make a reservation at least 24 hours in advance for service with a waiter. They serve its virtual customers Oysters Rockefeller and grilled lamb chops. In a world where an avatar does not need to eat, customers keep coming to Sublime for the experience – to enjoy a conversation over a meal with their virtual date. In Second Life, aesthetics are key."
There's also a chart of the demographics of each of the major Virtual Worlds on pages 8 and 9 of The Benefits of Branding Within Second Life White Paper. One of the things that strikes me as an issue for many companies in Virtual Worlds is letting the visitors/avatars create their own objects and experiences in Virtual Worlds - to structure their experiences themselves. It's the same issue, I feel, with User Generated Content - it is user generated content.
Another issue I find interesting is Market Truth's (a Second Life Market Research firm) Brand Impact Metric (on page 12) that states that Reuters and IBM get the most brand awareness (impact) due to their presence in Second Life:
"….Market Truths calculated an overall Second Life brand impact metric xi. According to their research, “all of the most frequently mentioned brands are receiving a positive impact from their [Second Life] presence, but the impact is greatest for Reuters — largely due to the fact that most of those who have encountered the brand in Second Life say doing so has improved their impression of the company. IBM had the next greatest impact, but its position is more a result of the fact that it received more mentions in the unaided awareness question than any other brand. Toyota, Nissan, and Dell had the next greatest brand impacts. The black bars at the bottom show the metrics for Toyota and Sony when their two separate brand names are combined.”
And what's really the killer here - the White Paper takes examples of companies that understand how Virtual Worlds work with those, it claims, that don't (page 13); here's an example of what works and what doesn't:
COMPANIES DEPLOYING INNOVATIVE STRATEGIES BRANDS SIMPLY IMPORTING “REAL LIFE” TACTICS Nissan: Selling cars from an 8 story vending machine
iVillage: Every two weeks a local resident will host a “girls’ night out” inside Second Life, with a group of avatars that will congregate at the iVillage loft
Toyota: Sells virtual Scions which can be customized and they offer how-to classes for residents wishing to do this. BRANDS SIMPLY IMPORTING “REAL LIFE” TACTICS American Apparel: Created a virtual version of their brick and mortar store, and offering free beer and tacos.
ABN AMRO: Opened a virtual version of their brick and mortar bank to offer financial advice.
Apple: While Apple has not created an official simulation, users have created their own simulation and sell their own Apple branded products. The White Paper does a pretty good job of describing how SEO would be implemented in Second Life and why building a location in Second Life is not the same thing as Marketing in Second Life. However, it could be argued the ABN AMRO presence is Second Life was very successful and went about their goals in the "right way" based on a post I had seen and commented on recently in Second Life Success with Large Banking Institutions where the very things this study says are wrong with the ABN AMRO approach actually were right for them and was written about by the International Herald Tribune in Banking Matters: Real-life lessons about customers learned in virtual worlds "..ABN AMRO - currently the subject of a takeover battle - opened a virtual European branch office six months ago and then created a Young Professional Island where highly educated people ages 25 to 35 can meet. The bank wants to offer them services like training for job interviews and assistance in buying a first house.
The difference, when compared with conventional seminars, is that the avatars (online bodily representations, like Marty Dench) can be walked through the process, leading to a much deeper understanding than just looki Plus, the young professionals can easily do all this from home in the evening, notes Bas van Ulden, new business development manager at ABN AMRO." So…where's the problem with how "brands importing real life tactics" here? I don't think that's what ABN AMRO did - which implies the paper may be confused on what strategy each island, each business is actually using.. I don't know …. but I do have some of this information on hand as I had just written about it. Problem I have with The Benefits of Branding Within Second Life White Paper - it's really more marketing sell than substance; the White Paper puts forward companies in Second Life are more successful that "Sell the Sizzle, Not the Steak", yet, it may be just the opposite. In other words, you want to sell with substance, not sizzle … and therefore, I take issue with the approach. Also, the majority of data cited in the White Paper, such as Figure 4, Impressions after appearing in Second Life - I don't know how the data is gathered. I got feedback on my comment about how the data was gathered for Slide 4 of the study - here it is: "….Update [August 21 '07] : A note on the methodology from Diversified Media Design: "In order to get the numbers for the chart, we counted all of the press hits each company received. We defined the hit as anything that mentioned or discussed the company in relation to SL. We then took the circulation for each outlet (ex: NY Times, USA Today etc.) and added everything together to get the total number of people that the company was exposed to as a result of SL. This is only an estimate since circulation numbers were not available for every outlet. The time frame was January - May." Slide 4 (see below) is more like a "brand lift" chart - it doesnt relate to what happened in Second Life as much as what happens outside of it and is probably the methodology some firms are using now to determine buzz that happened from as Second Life Event: To sum up, as an overall argument to do branding in Second Life, the paper works well, especially for newbies in this space; but readers more familiar with Second Life working will question some of the assumptions and much of the data presented here. I still got interesting information out of the White Paper and it's worth reading The Virtual Brand Footprint - The Marketing Opportunity in Second Life, weather you agree with the White Paper's findings or not.
ng at a piece of paper or listening to a slide show.
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