Marketing Magazine’s August 15th issue has an article called “The Spot’s Next Shot” that gives details on a new cross-channel campaign from Slim-Fast:

“I’m not sure whether it is the way to the future, but it’s definitely a breakthrough for the category that we operate in,” says Sinem Uner, brand manager of Slim-Fast at Unilever in Toronto. “I think it’s a much better way to intrigue consumers.” In Slim-Fast’s case, the decision to use short spots on HGTV, Life, Showcase and the Food Network to drive consumers to the Web made sense when research found Slim-Fast’s target market of women 25 to 54 often uses the Internet as an information source.

What’s more, psychographic data found Slim-Fast’s target group is comprised of often-frustrated dieters who are bombarded with messages on health and weight loss from various media. “When they hear about these things, they’re more likely to surf the Web,” Uner says. Enter dietingsucks.ca, a lighthearted domain name “that taps into our consumer insight and empathy.”

Along with a minisite at dietingsucks.ca, the campaign featured some of the longest domain names I’ve ever seen used in a consumer campaign, namely ibarelyhavetimetopeeletalonediet.ca and iworkouthardsowhyismybuttsoft.ca.

While the URLS are clever and probably pique the audience’s interest, I’m sure they had significant drop off in web traffic from people not being able to recall the domains. I couldn’t remember them in the time it took me to open a new browser window after reading the Marketing article so I can imagine lots of people where left playing a guessing game when they got to their computers minutes, hours, or days after seeing the commercial.

On the other hand, dietingsucks.ca is a great domain for this campaign. One of the nice things about Canadian campaigns is that short useful domains like that are still to be had.

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Originally published at www.onedegree.ca on August 20, 2005.