EDELMAN ISLAND -- A SL study has found that companies that extend their brand in Second Life helps, rather than hurts, their brands' Real Life reputation.

Pebbles Hannya (a.k.a Mary Ellen Gordon), President of Market Truths revealed the results of her study and described the study's methodology at a meeting Friday, hosted by G24khamr Goodfellow (aka Gary Goldhammer) of Edelman Interactive Solutions.

At the meeting, arranged by SL Business Communicators, Hannya began by speaking of RL brands' concern about their presence in SL having a negative effect on their image. The results reached by the brand perception study however suggests that, contrary to those concerns, being present in SL is helping to improve RL-brands reputation rather than hurting them.
The study states that 49 percent of the surveyed SL residents regard the presence of those brands in-world as being more positive overall, while 17 percent have a negative opinion.

Many hope that by entering SL, RL brands will bring along publicity, resources, and credibility, and perhaps cause in-world infrastructure to improve with a more realistic look and feel. On the other side, fear exists that Linden Lab will give those brands preferential treatment, causing SL to become more regulated. Special concern is raised by many residents about possible harm to small content creators' business.

The study shows that Reuters scored highest both in terms of residents' positive impressions and the benefit their SL initiative has had on its RL-brand. Accordingly, the brands receiving the most benefit from their SL presence are those that are perceived to be making a contribution to SL, and doing that in a way that links to their RL product or service.

The attendees were shown a graph displaying the methods used by RL companies in SL which resulted in most attitude improvement/deterioration. The conclusion was that methods that link RL and SL and also create opportunities for interaction between the company in question and the customer are those most well regarded by in-world citizens. Tactics such as advertising using notecards, billboards or IM (variants of traditional one-way communication) are seen as the equivalent of spam and as such -- not viewed favorably.

Reaffirming the conclusions of Market Truths' study, Goldhammer said he believes that SL has a great potential for brands, but only if those brands integrate with the community as well as with their RL strategies and focus.

"SL represents a shift, a trend towards where the Web is going to in general," Goldhammer said. "It will be more community minded with immersive environments, so being in a world like SL has great impact and importance for how interaction will occur on the internet as a whole."

Market Truths won the Edelman/Electric Sheep Company business plan competition, originally announced last November.