EINSTEIN -- SL resident Marissa Bergbahn has developed a clever way to bring prospective clients to her real life media and marketing company in Germany. Bergbahn offers free tours of the campuses of Fortune 500 companies in Second Life.

Her firm, Bokowsky + Laymann, Marketing in Computer-Mediated Environments, lists its locations on its company stationary: Munich, Berlin, and Second Life.

"We hope to get new customers, bring cool stuff to SL, and some money to our purse," Bergbahn said. Bergbahn won't disclose her real identity at the company, but said, "I'm a very influential person."

The company is owned by Markus Bokowsky and Markus Laymann. It was Bokowsky's idea to create an office in Second Life.

Much of Bokowsky + Laymann's work here is secretive, at least until their new clients can be revealed. In the firm's ten-year history, Bokowsky + Laymann's focus has been on creating Web sites, intranets, e-commerce applications, and more. In 2006, the firm moved into Second Life and have since taken on two clients.

"We offer them concepts that will work in SL for a longer time and will not only create a short-term media effect," Bergbahn explained. However, she can't yet share the names of the companies or exactly what she is doing for them.

"I promise you it will be very cool stuff," she said.

Those interested in viewing projects the German company has worked on outside of Second Life may go to www.bokowsky.net. The site is in German, but the firm's

SL build is bilingual. Bokowsky + Laymann is using Second Life to reach out to a wider clientele, and at the same time, teaching business owners about the power of the online world.

"We think that you can't just copy existing RL strategies for SL; you have to do something that fits into SL, that respects the community, and at the end makes it fun to use or visit," Bergbahn said.

A business owner interested in creating a Second Life location can come to Bokowsky + Laymann's online office and follow Bergbahn through her free Early Adopters Tour, which is offered every Monday at 7 a.m. SLT.

The tour lasts for about two hours as participants (Bergbahn estimated about five people a week) use categorized teleports to visit some of the most successful business presences in Second Life. On a recent tour, visitors included Deliope Kish, an American who wants to develop an SL business involving Ebooks centered on self-improvement. "SL is a great format to hold book discussions and other events in. I'm soaking up all the marketing I can," Kish said.

At the Bokowsky +Laymann build, a wall labeled "Information Technology" offers teleports to places such as AOL and IBM. "Consumer Goods" points avatars to Addidas and Reebok. "Media" shows Sony BMG and MTV's Laguna Beach. And the Automotive wall teleports to BMW, Toyota, and others.

The move to Second Life was a logical one because many of the staff already had avatars themselves.