I’ve noticed recently that several brands are offering us search terms rather than URL’s in their offline marketing, not very interesting I hear your whisper, but hear this one out.
The most recent incarnation of such is Orange’s latest campaign ‘I am’. On a recent trip through Heathrow T5 (Which has it’s own usability problems we’ll discuss another day) I noticed a poster for Orange ‘I am’ complete with an abstract search box and magnifying glass prompting us to search for the term ‘I am’ when we’re next online. Do we have a new call to action on our hands?
And there we go.. Tuesday morning and a search for ‘I am’ gets us a CPC ad in Google (not a surprising outcome, but I did wonder if the natural work had been done).
So, technically it works, but do users get it and does it work for the campaign?
I think there’s certainly argument for saying that users are more able to remember short interesting terms rather than URL’s, so it scores there. We know users don’t generally like clicking on paid links so a natural campaign might, if it made it to number 1, gather more click-throughs. Unfortunately, there’s potential for your competitors to out bid you and the results today do show another mobile provider getting in on the action, but through what seems to be a 3rd part re-seller. I thinks it’s one of those themes that benefits from it’s newness. Like domains, the more cluttered the space the more difficult it is for consumers to remember their call to action.
So it’s fair to say it’s a neat trick and in this case will probably work well for Orange and it ties in really nicely with their integrated campaign.
Worth thinking about: yes
Worth pinning your campaign idea on: maybe once
UPDATE:
Just remembered where I first saw this as a working concept and that’s over with Iain. Interesting how in Japan it’s being used.
It’s always worth while spending time over on http://trendwatching.com.
This months briefing is a special edition covering 41 new business ideas – Innovation Avalanche.
http://trendwatching.com/briefing/
We begun filiming parts for a new project this week. Our meeting room was converted to a fully functional studio compete with green screen. Jake one of our designers roped himself into being the hand model for the day. Great hands Jake.
Saatchi & Saatchi AtPlay introduced me to their Love Marks thinking on brands. I think it quite eloquently sum’s up how brands are feeling at the moment. What really interests me is how digital can relate to this as a concept adding or indeed removing love.
Here’s what Saatchi & Saatchi say about Love Marks
“The bottom left finds you in the Low Respect and Low Love quadrant. This is the positioning of classic commodities. Public Utilities, low value transactions. Essential to our lives but going nowhere. Zero brand heat.
Now, move across to the bottom right quadrant to Low Respect and High Love. This is the land of fads, trends and infatuations. Last month’s gotta-haves. Next month’s has-beens. Hairstyles and Pop Stars. You can have a lot of fun down here but you won’t get Loyalty Beyond Reason.
The High Respect and Low Love quadrant in the top left of the axis is where most major brands are stuck. Functional benefits, solid performance, and always fixed on those “e-r” words. Newer, brighter, stronger, bolder and worst of all cheaper. Needed but not desired.
High Respect and High Love is the place to be. The top right of the top right hand quadrant. This is Lovemark territory.
Only here, stretching for high love and resting on high respect, is where deep emotional connections are made.
Remember only the customer can decide Lovemark status. And they’ll only do it for brands that are up there in the top right, where the sun always shines.”
Here’s some more great examples of interactvie design processes in the form of paper prototypes. This time it’s for some of our favourite apps, Flickr, Vimeo et al.
http://deeplinking.net/paper-web/
One of the truly great things about the web is the ability for it to introduce you to a million new things in just one day. Just out of interest I followed the ‘via’ links from my last post on Paper Prototyping to see where they’d take me.
My starting point was Andy Polaine’s blog. I read his blog regularly. I started reading primarily due his connection to my education and early interactive work with ex Antirom folks Andy, Andy and Joe.
1 – http://www.polaine.com/playpen/
Then we go on a nice journey across a couple of blogs to del.icio.us.
2 – http://daringfireball.net
3 – http://waxy.org/
And finally to a del.icio.us account
http://del.icio.us
Short and sweet but it highlights how viral and addictive the web really is, I’m sure many many more stories have many many more interconnecting points. If I had the time to follow the path of some of those 860 people who’d also saved the link to their del.icio.us account I’m sure I’d end up in some really interesting places.
