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.

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