New World Marketing: SL Corporate Site As Non-SL Soundstage

Aleister Kronos of Ambling in Second Life recently explored 7 Days Magic Bakery, the new SL site for a massive European food conglomerate-- which by way of full disclosure, happens to be an NWN advertiser through the Federated Media network-- and came back with some cool images and very interesting insights.  Given the sim's high level of visual detail, Aleister sees it as a real world marketing effort in which SL is only the platform for non-SL promotion:

Simply promoting within Second Life is largely a waste of effort, as many companies have discovered. But using Second Life as a stage in which to create ads - both movies and stills - that can be pumped into the real world. Now that is something different - hence the need for high quality, essentially non-SL constructions.

That's a fresh perspective, one that fits with some advice I gave at my recent OReilly talk on virtual world marketing: until Second Life becomes truly large (millions of monthly active users, has opposed to the half a million we have now) focus less on the number of avatars who visit your marketing space, and more on the content they create and share while they're there.  Or to cite another example: when cartoonist Scott Adams visited Second Life, about 60 Residents attended his appearance-- but afterward, about 60 thousand people saw the SL machinima of a Dilbert avatar kicking him in the nads.