Month: December 2006

December 3, 2006

  • Never Overestimate Your Visitors

    It’s easy for us to get very focused on what we do and to assume that everyone thinks like we do. But they don’t. We’re all “web 2.0” and “folksonomies” and “viral marketing” and they’re all “click what?” and “but the guy said he was related to Nigerian royalty”. Let me very simply illustrate the incredible chasm that we have to deal with.

    Back in September, I wrote a post called Kraft.ca — The 20 Character Home Page that just this weekend generated this email from a One Degree reader:

    In the last year your 600 gram packages of cheese has gone from 600 grams to 560 and now to 540 grams. Do you think that no one has picked up on this. What’s going on. I purchase your brand exclusively, but maybe not any-more.

    Bob

    Clearly Bob is confused. He thinks our post about kraft.ca means that he is ON kraft.ca and he’s decided to complain about the vast cheese conspiracy he’s uncovered. Please remember this next time you hear someone say “don’t worry, our users are pretty with it — they’ll figure it out”. BTW Bob, I think this is the page you were looking for. Oh and “BTW” means “by the way” — sorry about that.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on December 3, 2006.

  • Just For Laughs Goes YouTubey

    I was going to do a big write-up about the new Just For Laughs website which as gone all YouTubey and MySpacey, but it turns out the site did it for me:

    One thing the site does need to fix up is how they deal with French and English. The site tries to incorporate both into one interface which kind of works but when you embed a video (like I’ve done above) you sometimes get French text rather than English. Oh yeah, and kill the audio mouseovers on the main nav bar for the site — very irritating.

    I’d be interested in thoughts on the site both from the IA (Information Architecture) and Social Media geeks out there. A bold attempt by a Canadian company to stake a claim on the emerging video sharing & social media space.

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on December 3, 2006.

  • QotD: Make This Viral More Viral

    Here’s an interesting situation. Ideazon, who makes “gaming keyboards” (something I must plead ignorant to even knowing existed) has created a very sophisticated viral campaign called “Dominate” that, as I understand it, is not actually “going viral”. Or at least not to the level they’d like (or that the budget would require I’m guessing).

    I think the campaign has many of the components needed to go viral with their hard-core gamer target market (95% of customers are male and 82% are over 25) but something seems to be missing in the strategy, execution or media. My guess is that there are a bunch of little things that all dampen the viral impact — probably enough to prevent it from becoming a true hit.

    Rather than offer my $0.02 worth I thought I’d leave it as an exercise for you humble One Degree reader. Consider this a group assignment for this, the first full week of December.

    1. Go to Dominate and review the site. Warning: Some people will be offended by this. Guaranteed. If so, hit the back button quickly and accept this little unicorn chaser to cleanse your mind.
    2. Think about what great viral marketing campaigns have in common and see if anything is missing from Ideazon’s.
    3. Consider new ideas they might try to jumpstart things that you haven’t seen elsewhere.
    4. Report back to us in the comment area below. I look forward to grading your work. 🙂

    Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on December 3, 2006.