INTERACTIVE'S BIGGEST FLOPS

Watch This!


This video you’ve just seen was in an article called Interactive’s Biggest Flops. Clearly, I had to watch thinking I’d have a chuckle at someone else’s expense. I know, I’m a bad person. “Fantastic failures” is mentioned in the article to set up the video. I guess my expectations were too high…fantastic failures?...hardly. Unfortunately, there are no extreme tales of blunder as I had hoped, but there are a couple of tidbits that I found interesting.

First, I always find it interesting the perspective, or in this case, the strategy when I hear these types of testimonials. If you’ve read some of my blogs in the past, you’ll notice that I speak to this a lot. The case in point I’m referring to in the video is branding versus direct response, or traditional agency strategy versus interactive best practices. One of the biggest blunders mentioned is over-investing in the destination and under-investing in the media to drive users to the site. It doesn’t matter how great the design of the site is if no one gets there to see it. Not only is this true in web design, but creative as well. Advertisers and agencies spend a ton of money developing the next great rich media ad, then leave themselves with nothing left over to place the ad, or can’t run it where they want as the site cannot accommodate. So now, they are stuck with an expensive ad they’ve used for a month. On the flip side of the case above, someone speaks to a heavy media buy with the backend infrastructure not in place to accommodate the buy. Clearly, the strategy of the campaign was direct response to drive a ton of traffic to a shopping cart or conversion process that was flawed. This leads me to the final point I want to make. It is upsetting to say this, but I see this more often than I would care to. Put it this way, for every one streamlined conversion process (consolidated pages, no unnecessary steps), there are five, ten or sometimes more examples of a clunky process where the design is meant for something other than the conversion. One example is it becomes more of a lead generation tool than a shopping cart. The goal should be to get the sale. Get’em in and out. If you want data on them, no problem, but that’s another campaign and objective.

Lastly, I’ll leave you something from the video that stuck out and I found amusing. It goes, “Nothing is a flop, it’s a test that didn’t work.” I guess I find it funny that it seems like the word "test" means exclusion from accountability.

Friday Venting Section

So although I normally stick solely to speaking about interactive, I wanted to briefly comment on something I noticed this week while at my daughters new school... It was kind of on the forefront as I frequently read articles about ad agencies who are having a hard time finding quality interactive talent.

First and foremost, of course my daughter is the smartest, prettiest girl in the entire world - but it seems that she also has her Dad's inability to sit still. In her first week of kindergarten, I've already been called in for a meeting with the teacher. Once that meeting finished though, I turned into "that parent" that no teacher wants... I started asking questions about curriculum, and specifically about computers. I was told at the beginning of the year that computer lab would be every other week, yet I didn't see it on my daughters class schedule. Of course, I was told that there was one computer in the classroom that they'd get to use from time to time - but that they didn't actually do computer lab.

Knowing full well that I was called to this meeting because of other issues, I didn't push my luck - but it got me to thinking... Why do we teach Spanish once a week, but not computers. Or why do we teach writing for 50 minutes a day, but not how to use a keyboard. I mean seriously, I think the only writing I do on a daily basis is signing my name to things... The rest is all typed out on a computer. I'm also ok with teaching a foreign language - but how about teaching Mandarin instead of Spanish? Mandarin is spoken by an estimated 1.1 billion people worldwide, followed then by English, Hindi, and then, oh yeah - Spanish. Maybe because we're in the South, Spanish is a popular choice due to our proximity to Mexico, but I don't recall Minneapolis schools teaching Canadian instead of computers... The point being, even though the kids are young, I think it needs to be a mandate that the teachers and the education system start getting these kids up to date on the technology around them. The fundamentals are great, but imagine if we taught the fundamentals to them while using a computer. 20 years from now we're going to need these talented kids if the industry is going to continue to progress!