I’ve been meaning for a while to link to this article I wrote for the Experiential Marketing Forum which I don’t blog about enough. EMF and Swivel Media founder Erik Hauser was kind enough to post the piece, which I think makes a pretty important point.
Takeaway for marketers: Avoid the Ralphie moment.
iMedia Connection posted this interesting article yesterday about the home page and its place in the broader scheme of a Web presence. It’s tasty food for thought for anyone involved in Web marketing or site management.
Takeaway for marketers: Think more holistically about your online presence. Gone are the days when your home page is the first online impression most people have of your company or brand.
On the face of it, Simpsonize Me from those online envelope-pushers over at Burger King seems like a great idea: Upload a photo of yourself and become a Simpsons character.
First you need to find a photo. Make sure it’s a minimum of 640×480 pixels, it can’t be black and white, there needs to be a lot of contrast, it shouldn’t be full-body or profile, and preferably it’s a .jpg or a .png.
I’m pretty handy with Fireworks, so it didn’t take me long to find two or three photo options.
Next you need to upload your photo. Here’s where it’s gets dicey. I tried uploading one of several photos about three dozen times. Sometimes I stared at a rotating donut for minutes. Other times I got an error message telling me the photo was no good. Other times I got an error message telling me the application was too busy, try again later.
About one time out of five, though, I’d wind up at a screen that would be encouraging: I could choose male or female, determine age, choose clothing and hair type and pick a skin color. Then I’d wait about a minute … and see an error message once again.
After dozens of attempts to Simpsonize myself over the course of about a week, I was left with one thing: A bad brand experience.
But I like the Simpsons, and after successfully turning myself into an M&M I wanted to see myself as a Springfield resident, too, so I didn’t give up. Early Sunday morning, I gave it another shot. I thought it would be a good time, since Web traffic would likely be much less than during the week.
I guess the application really was groaning (Groening?) under the weight of too much traffic, because the same photo worked. I Simpsonized myself, sent a postcard, downloaded the image to my hard drive and could have created a screensaver or ordered a mug with my Simpsons self on it, if I wished. Pretty snazzy stuff.
Simpsonize Me really is a terrific online toy (assuming you have the graphics savvy to get the right type of photo to upload in the first place), and I’m sure BK paid a whopper of a fee to have it built. So it shouldn’t have taken me 30something tries to get one successful experience with it.
And ultimately, the cool (but awkward and frustrating) step of uploading a photo really isn’t necessary. All it does is establish a baseline character that you further customize and refine. So why not just avoid all the photo uploading errors and Simpsonize yourself right in the browser, like when you create your own Simpsons avatar over on the official Simpsons Movie Web site?
(Come to think of it, why do we need two separate Simpsonize yourself Web thingamajiggers?)
Simpsonize Me should have been an A+ online experience. I give it a C.
Takeaway for marketers: If you’re gonna push the envelope, watch out for paper cuts.
When you’re a corporate CEO like, say, John Mackey of Whole Foods, you need to be careful about what you say online … no matter what name you use.
Takeaway for marketers: “Markets are conversations” is Cluetrain 101. If you’re going to enter the conversation, be up front about it or stay out.
JULY 17 UPDATE: “I’m very sorry.”
Digital Media Wire reports that Nielsen/NetRatings is shifting away from the standard measurements of page views and unique visitors to a new system that will focus on time spent and total number of sessions.
Let’s consider two Web sites.
Site one has 12,000 unique visitors a week. Let’s say 7,000 visit three times a week for an average of three minutes per visit. The other 5,000 visit twice a week and spend an average of three minutes per visit. That’s 31,000 sessions and a total of 93,000 minutes.
Site two has 15,000 unique visitors a week, each going twice a week and spending an average of two minutes per visit. That’s 30,000 sessions and 60,000 minutes.
It seems like under the new system, site one gets a higher ranking. Yet as an advertiser, audience demographics being equal, I would probably prefer my ads on site two, where I can reach a larger audience.
Takeaway for marketers: Nielsen numbers are one tool, but ultimately the best course of action is to run a small test on both sites, measure ROI, then focus spending on the site that’s delivering the better result. Test and measure. Duh.
