Digital Stuffing

Warner Brothers are releasing a new version of Sherlock Holmes on Boxing Day this year. As part of this, they’re doing a ARG on rails – a flash based game – around the film. I signed up for the game in August and today it got released. Found at the nice vanity URL http://www.221b.sh/, the site looks good. It’s also got some interesting tie ups – Sherlock Holmes on Tweetdeck is obviously part of the offering

However, implementation is not so good. In fact, it’s so bad in my first few screens, I’ve sent a complaint through to Warner Brothers. Here’s the email, which, based on the auto-response will never be read as it’s been classified as spam.

1. Restricting the game to users who have a Facebook is poor. There is no need to do this, games like this should be playable without forcing me to share my personal profile. In order to create an account, give me the OPTION of using facebook (or another OAuth/authentification tool) but allow straight forward account login. Don’t add barriers to your users.
2. On deciding to connect with Facebook, it rightly asks me a series of questions about what rights I will give the game. However, it then decides to keep asking the question about allowing the game to post to my updates. (on logging in at different computers). If you want me to spread the word about the game – make a GOOD game. then I’ll do something about it. Don’t impose your need to broadcast your messages onto my friends.
3. When I decided to play alone, the site is broken. there appears to be no way to play the game that way, despite offering that option. There’s nothing to click on.
4. When trying to partner up with a fellow player, the gameplay is definitely broken. We’re both in the game, we’re friends on Facebook, but if we try and invite the other to be our partner, the only message it sends is that the other person has given up on you and has gone away (plus a link to the site). Looking at forums, it appears the only way this works is if the the potential partner is not already signed into the game. I understand why you may want a distribution mechanism, to force people to invite ‘new’ players, but the implementation is extremely bad and just gives the impression that it’s broken and you have failed to test.

So that’s it. What I see is a design team running through the various ‘must have’ elements, putting them in place, without thinking them through properly, to allow all to play the game (well, all if have flash). Not a good first impression.

I get almost all of my groceries delivered from Ocado. As a company they seem to be pretty good. They have a pretty good ordering website. They have green credentials, allowing you to to book the optimal delivery time plus recycling their bags. They have a lovely iPhone and Blackberry app. They’re even on Twitter as OcadoUK. But they are still managing to annoy me by falling down on their Direct Marketing and CRM, which taints the whole brand for me.

There are two main things with their emails, both related to lack of targeting. Considering they have all my shopping information, they should be able to get this stuff right. The first thing they do is send me emails with offers that are completely irrelevant – I’ve never bought a single baby thing so why send me emails of those offers. The second, even more annoying, is the continuous pushing of their on demand service. Given I probably order once every 3 weeks if not even less frequently, the service is not cost-effective for me (it’s about paying a fixed price for ‘free’ delivery) – they should easily be able to tell this from the data they have.

So we have a online brand that is doing a lot of things right, pushing out how you can interact with them and it falls down with their oldest digital marketing tool, the email. Enough so that every time I get an erroneous email it lessens their worth (not to get it wrong, they do send useful offers). What would be good? Let me rank the usefulness of each email so that they get better targeting and I only get the ones that I may end up using. Or at least record which offer codes I use and send me less of the ones I never touch!

You have to think about the whole package, every single touchpoint is a potential fail point. nthis case, Ocado definitely have an issue.

Beat Cancer and set a record

BlogWorld Expo is taking place in Las Vegas, meaning you have a huge concentration of people with a large online presence. This is the perfect time and group for a brand trying to get some social media marketing off the ground and there’s been a few attempts. But non are quite as audacious is the plan from Everywhere , who hatched an idea to raise some money for charity at the same time as breaking a Guinness World Record.

The cause is cancer, with the money going to a group of cancer charities from a research group through to care group. The money raised is being donated by Coors Miller Light and eBay/Paypal, who will give 1cent for every mention of the hashtag #beatcancer across Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Its an interesting idea that has taken off well – it does not take too many people starting a trend like this for it to be picked up.

Beat Cancer

The mentions are being monitored and counted over at Beat Cancer Everywhere, which displays a random selection and gives you the tools to get the message out easily and quickly to your networks. But I think easy is the correct term. It’s too easy just to add a tag to a tweet. There are ways of donating directly on the page, but it does not seem as though are being taken up very often; also by my calculations, they’ve raised just over $1400 so far from mentions, maybe not as much as expected.

I think this is a great idea, using the networks to get everyone thinking about a cause. It’s worked well and the awareness looks high. But it’s not necessarily the best way of driving donations as it’s too easy to write a quick update and reckon that’s your charitable donations sorted for the month. The best ways of raising real money require direct action, not passive tweets. The #blamedrewscancer is another hashtag for awareness, although in here there are a lot of drives to raise money with direct action, including trying to ‘sell’ the Twitter name Drew to Drew Carey for $1m.

So join in the hashtag frenzy, posting it as often as you can and raise awareness. But also go out and donate directly, either to the charities specifically mentioned or to your local ones (can I suggested Cancer Research Uk?)

Riasing Money Directly for Beat Cancer

Looking at You Tube this morning I saw You Tube now has a trending terms widget. Not sure how new this is but I’ve not seen any comments about it. It’s interesting, Google adding a real-time search element to the site. You’ve long been able to see what people are watching ‘right now’ but this is an extra dimension – what people are searching for, an indication of the external drivers to the videos.

I’ll have to admit I’m not entirely convinced yet. This morning’s snapshot is not necessarily the most interesting. However, I would expect to see a bunch of trending search terms based on TV shows (especially the reality ones), celebrity deaths and sports events, all of then time-relevant areas, where mention in mass broadcast channels drive people to look for things.

You Tube Trending Terms

• Free Monty Python Videos on Youtube Lead to 23,000% DVD Sale Increase | /Film
  Providing content for free increased the sales
  (tags: youtube Marketing business online media research)

Make something fun, make a game of it and more people will do it. No surprises there then. What is a surprise is that this video and The Fun Theory (the site is in Swedish) is done by Volkswagen

Definitely non-typical car marketing, but I love it. The sense of whimsey surrounding the activities is great; a brand that shows it can have fun is one I’m far more likely to interact with

• OECD Broadband Portal
  Broadband Information
  (tags: broadband research statistics stats)