Word of the Week: Permalink
A permalink is a permanent link to a particular blog posting. Since blogs are organic and grow and grow and grow with multiple postings on a page, a permalink will bring you specificallly to one posting.
Video enhances an experience
This is my favorite site this week...actually, maybe one of the best sites I've seen in a long time. Houlihans is a restaurant with multiple US locations. I really (!!!) enjoy their use of video on the home page. Restaurant websites have 3 primary purposes: 1) What do you have to eat? 2) Give me a sense of the environment 3) How can I find/call you? Houlihans succeeds with an engaging home page video that has life and personality. It shows everything from the artistic details in food prep, a pan or two of the space and a group of girls out for "girls night". The video is not only well produced, but I really enjoy the "through the screen" effect they've applied vs. a simple straight-up video, which, granted, they likely did for pure navigation readability, but it's so well done.
I also really like the content. As the home page loads it says 2 different things to entertain you...1) "Oh look, now you're the waiter" and 2) "Websites are measured in bites. Ahh, the irony". How great is that?
And last but not least, they not only delivered concept, execution and all-out experience on the home page, but they had some fantastic follow-through. The brand voice lives throughout every single stinkin' page. It's awesome. One of the best content-designed sites I've ever seen. Go ahead, surf through and you'll know what I mean. The content is easy, engaging and fun to read. At least fun for a designer who appreciates good creative, copy and food. They've also built in a couple of "engagement areas", like "Coaster Creator", in which your witty coaster message may be chosen to be used in restaurants nationwide.
I've never been to Houlihan's, but I'm going soon. Hopefully their food and service is 1/2 as good as their website.
And more video
This site loads with a video, and it's well executed, as only something from Kermit the Frog would be! The video alone made me stay on the home page longer than I would have on other sites. And while the video played, I looked around at other options I had. Plus, Kermit's impressions are too fun not to watch. Who doesn't want to see Kermit's impression of a screen saver, n' Pac man, n' ahhh, it's endless. If you stay around long enough the "I'm upgrading to iKermit" made me laugh. hahaha. I love the mumpits. Well done Kermit.
Interactive Buzz - April 16 '08
Super short and late (by only a few days!) posting. Sorry about that. Enjoy anyway.
TWITTERING as a Marketing Tool
So I’ve been infatuated by Zappos lately (as Darcy is well aware!). (Zappos is an the #1 online-only shoe retailer). Surprisingly, not because of the shoes. I read an article about how Zappos is using Twitter ( A microblogging tool) successfully to market their brand. Not many companies are doing this so I signed up to follow Zappos Twitter feeds. Turns out the CEO of Zappos is who is Twittering (31 year old Tony Hsieh), which is even more intriguing. Who doesn’t want to know what the CEO of a very successful company does every couple hours of his day. (For those of you who say "not me, what a waste of time," I'd likely guess watches no form of reality TV. The benefit to this is I'm following a really smart entrepreneur and new-age marketer. Maybe I'll learn something.)
He twitters about his wait at the airport, his martini at dinner, his family, the speech he's giving, who he's having dinner with, etc... And of course – throws in a percentage of “marketing pushes” back to his site. But he doesn’t over push. That's the key. He’s a smart guy I’ve discovered. (Like the fact that he took a $500,000 company to a $600+ million company in a few short years doesn’t already qualify him for that.) He’s giving away shoes and trips and other such things to his twitter followers. He’s asking for feedback on his next venture – Zeta (Zappos on steriods). He’s building a ‘face’ and a ‘personality’ to a brand that is faceless – since it’s online only.
I can honestly say that last week if you asked me "what's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say 'shoes'", it wasn't Zappos. This week, that has changed. This week, I’m a fascinated voyeur wondering what the Zappos guy is doing today. Oh, you’re giving a speech...and there is a sale on shoes so I should go visit your site? Ok.
TWITTERING as a Marketing Tool
So I’ve been infatuated by Zappos lately (as Darcy is well aware!). (Zappos is an the #1 online-only shoe retailer). Surprisingly, not because of the shoes. I read an article about how Zappos is using Twitter ( A microblogging tool) successfully to market their brand. Not many companies are doing this so I signed up to follow Zappos Twitter feeds. Turns out the CEO of Zappos is who is Twittering (31 year old Tony Hsieh), which is even more intriguing. Who doesn’t want to know what the CEO of a very successful company does every couple hours of his day. (For those of you who say "not me, what a waste of time," I'd likely guess watches no form of reality TV. The benefit to this is I'm following a really smart entrepreneur and new-age marketer. Maybe I'll learn something.)
He twitters about his wait at the airport, his martini at dinner, his family, the speech he's giving, who he's having dinner with, etc... And of course – throws in a percentage of “marketing pushes” back to his site. But he doesn’t over push. That's the key. He’s a smart guy I’ve discovered. (Like the fact that he took a $500,000 company to a $600+ million company in a few short years doesn’t already qualify him for that.) He’s giving away shoes and trips and other such things to his twitter followers. He’s asking for feedback on his next venture – Zeta (Zappos on steriods). He’s building a ‘face’ and a ‘personality’ to a brand that is faceless – since it’s online only.
I can honestly say that last week if you asked me "what's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say 'shoes'", it wasn't Zappos. This week, that has changed. This week, I’m a fascinated voyeur wondering what the Zappos guy is doing today. Oh, you’re giving a speech...and there is a sale on shoes so I should go visit your site? Ok.
Interactive Buzz - April 11 '08
WORD OF THE WEEK - "Digg"
I've seen this little icon on the bottom of many sites. Or even the term to "Digg" an article, blog posting, video, etc. So what does "Digg"ing it mean? Digg (according to Wikipedia) is a community-based news article popularity website. It combines social bookmarking, blogging and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system.
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The internet is like Paul Harvey
I'm assuming most of you are familiar with the syndicated radio broadcaster - Paul Harvey and his famous quote "And now for the rest of the story..." Pay attention to traditional media and just how many campaigns tell you to visit "www...." for more. During the Superbowl, while I didn't count, I bet that at least half of the commercials asked to you visit their URL for more.
Good execution:
I was watching TV last night and UPS's "Whiteboard" campaign commercial was on. It had a guy drawing on a whiteboard, illustrating just one way in which UPS can help your business. Then, "to find out more, visit www.ups.com/whiteboard". This is one of the best "completing the story" executions I've seen in a long time. This "microsite" is an in-depth web of videos, animated shorts, copy and illustrations that allow users to interact, pick their problem, snoop around and find a solution that's relevant to them. They bring the brand elements through by using the "TV Illustrator" guy at the intro and followed through with the 'illustrative' style they introduced on TV. This site is a great example of taking the brand to the next step and allowing people to engage further.
Bad execution:
Another example of one that is not as well done is for the Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. I've been seeing the TV commercials that tell a story about a family and their premature babies, then it drives you online to find out more. I couldn't remember the URL, so I just went to www.childrensmn.org and "Great!" there was a banner at the top of the page that has the graphic I saw on tv and the copy that says "Born 3 months early..." I'm hoping for more details on that story, maybe an update on their life...link to their progress blog...anything. However, when I got there, I was disappointed. I couldn't figure out how to "continue the story". So I left.
The moral of the story is - if you're going to ask people to go out of their way to get more online - deliver something worthwhile. The last thing you want to do is disappoint someone before they even buy your product or service.
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Unique Navigation System
This is a pretty cool site - Sparks - as long as you're willing to just "play" with it an are not actually coming here to complete a task or look for specific information. While this site HAS a lot of good, useful information, it requires you to go on a bit of a journey to find it. It's an entire wall with scribbles and art and furniture and wall hangings. You navigate by moving around the wall. If you scroll all the way to the bottom you can see the "sitemap" of the entire wall to get an appreciation for the whole thing. Again - fun design, executed well, but not really task-based functionality.
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Great Quote:
This quote has nothing to do with interactive or websites - but it does have to do with the presentation of information. And I just thought it was worth sharing:
"One of the things I learned about in the formative stages of my career was public speaking. I learned by watching lots of presentations, and one thing I figured out early on is that most CFO-level speakers — particularly CEOs, particularly male CEOs—really suck as speakers. They're boring; they're long; they wander around. I saw speech after speech, and I discovered that if there's anything worse than a speaker who sucks, it's a speaker who sucks and you have no idea how much longer he or she is going to suck. That's a horrible feeling.
To prevent you from getting that feeling, I've developed a Top 10 format. All of my speeches are in Top 10 format, because if you think I suck, I at least want you to be able to track my progress through the speech so that you know approximately know how much longer I'm going to suck."
— Guy Kawasaki
Interactive Buzz - April 4 '08
Word of the Week - Twitter
So, do you Twitter? I don't Twitter but I'm beginning to feel just a wee-bit of peer pressure to start. Friends of mine at a competing agency seem to Twitter on a regular basis. Wellllllll, if they're Twittering, I certainly should be, right? Even if I don't become a regular Twitterer, I should at least have an account and become "one" with Twittering. So, what the heck is Twittering? Basically, it's simple. It's just "Microblogging". Or like they explain on their site "Twitter is a service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" (NOTE: Twitter is actually a "brand" of the microblogging category. It just happens to be the most well known, so we're making a brand into a verb for the sake of this post.) Blogging is for deep, insightful thoughts, opinions or sharing of ones life. Microblogging is for posting short thoughts, musings and ponderings. You're limited to 140 characters per posting. So, why the $@%# would you want to Twitter or read other people's Twitters? See the video reference I've noted below.
Great Online Video Execution
From the same site mentioned above - this is one of the most clever video executions I've seen in a really long time. Go to Twitter.com and click on WATCH THE VIDEO. It's simple, quick and entertaining. Add that to the fact that it is useful and has some pretty solid content. After watching it, I actually understand the purpose behind Twittering.
3M enters the "Make your own video" craze
(Sigh) As if it hasn't been done 1-million and two times already, 3M has entered the craze of "create a video about our product, share it, you could win!" They have a Microsite about the promotion, banner ads to drive you here, and a networking area for video uploads/views on YouTube that they pre-populated with self-created videos. Today (4/3/08) is actually their "YouTube buyout" day. This means that their video is placed on the home page of YouTube for the entire day in hopes of folks noticing it. I honestly couldn't make it through 1 version of a consumer-created video. I tried watching 8 different ones and...It was just too painful to watch. I don't think there were more than 8 posted total so far and I'm not sure how many of them were "3M" lobbied videos and how many were organic uploads. Maybe none if they're just kicking off the campaign. I'll watch this for a couple weeks and see how many total views they get.
So, do you Twitter? I don't Twitter but I'm beginning to feel just a wee-bit of peer pressure to start. Friends of mine at a competing agency seem to Twitter on a regular basis. Wellllllll, if they're Twittering, I certainly should be, right? Even if I don't become a regular Twitterer, I should at least have an account and become "one" with Twittering. So, what the heck is Twittering? Basically, it's simple. It's just "Microblogging". Or like they explain on their site "Twitter is a service for friends, family and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?" (NOTE: Twitter is actually a "brand" of the microblogging category. It just happens to be the most well known, so we're making a brand into a verb for the sake of this post.) Blogging is for deep, insightful thoughts, opinions or sharing of ones life. Microblogging is for posting short thoughts, musings and ponderings. You're limited to 140 characters per posting. So, why the $@%# would you want to Twitter or read other people's Twitters? See the video reference I've noted below.
Great Online Video Execution
From the same site mentioned above - this is one of the most clever video executions I've seen in a really long time. Go to Twitter.com and click on WATCH THE VIDEO. It's simple, quick and entertaining. Add that to the fact that it is useful and has some pretty solid content. After watching it, I actually understand the purpose behind Twittering.
3M enters the "Make your own video" craze
(Sigh) As if it hasn't been done 1-million and two times already, 3M has entered the craze of "create a video about our product, share it, you could win!" They have a Microsite about the promotion, banner ads to drive you here, and a networking area for video uploads/views on YouTube that they pre-populated with self-created videos. Today (4/3/08) is actually their "YouTube buyout" day. This means that their video is placed on the home page of YouTube for the entire day in hopes of folks noticing it. I honestly couldn't make it through 1 version of a consumer-created video. I tried watching 8 different ones and...It was just too painful to watch. I don't think there were more than 8 posted total so far and I'm not sure how many of them were "3M" lobbied videos and how many were organic uploads. Maybe none if they're just kicking off the campaign. I'll watch this for a couple weeks and see how many total views they get.
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