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| More Web ads that don’t suck | | |
| Surrounded
by infuriating pop-ups, these campaigns shine |
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Virgin
Mobile uses a naughty Santa in Web ads for its cell phone
service.
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| | | By Jane Weaver
MSNBC |
| | | Nov 27 — Love it, tolerate it or hate it, Internet advertising isn’t going away. Apart from the splatter of pop-up ads that lurk beneath countless Web pages, there are sophisticated and carefully designed online marketing campaigns that defy the naysayers. They generate sales, successfully promote new brands and, yes, are intrusive without being annoying. |
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THE INTERNET MAY still
be suffering from a pullback in advertising spending, but Web
marketing is becoming even more important for a growing number
of major consumer brands and others. Unlike TV or other mainstream
media, Web advertising is in a constant state of change and
rapid evolution in the way it looks and how people interact
with it.
As part of MSNBC.com’s ongoing
coverage of online media and advertising, we’re back with
another look at recent notable Web campaigns.
SANTA AND THE SUPERMODEL
As we head into the
holidays, it’s only natural that Santa Claus, the ultimate
pitchman, would show up in an online ad campaign.
But if you’re a relatively
new cell phone service aimed at teens, you’ve got to give
Santa some attitude. For its “Instant Savings” promotion,
Virgin Mobile, a joint venture of Virgin and Sprint, designed
a bold, red pop-up box to resemble a supermarket tabloid. The
headline “Santa caught fondling super model in back seat
of sleigh” is cheeky enough to entice users to interact
with it.
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When clicked on, the ad then jumps
to another image and the punch line is revealed. The “supermodel”
is actually a souped-up Virgin Mobile phone. The ad also offers
a $40 sales incentive. The naughty Santa campaign appears on
MTV.com and other Viacom-owned sites, VH1.com and CMT.com. Virgin
Mobile launched last summer as a cell phone service aimed at
18-24-year-olds.
“It’s a fun connection
between absurd tabloid headlines and our great phones,”
said Tom Williams, USA brand director for Virgin Mobile. “In
an online environment where it’s so cluttered with banners
and pop-ups, you have to be different.”
Did they titillate MTV’s Web visitors enough to buy the service? The ads were launched on Nov. 12 and are too recent to provide data about their effectiveness, Williams said. “But we believe in being targeted and focused. Online is something we believe in fully.”
WHAT LIES BENEATH
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| Gap's "Casting Call" promotion on Yahoo!
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The big portal Yahoo! has gained a reputation
for innovative Web advertising. Its promotion for Pepsi’s
Britney Spears commercial in the Super Bowl earlier this year
is credited for breaking new ground in the melding of TV and
online advertising. More recently Yahoo! has used its high-traffic
front page to help launch new campaigns for consumer brands.
In a new ad for the Gap apparel chain,
Yahoo! uses cutting-edge Flash animation to create the illusion
that a virtual Web page is as real as a magazine page. For the
ad for Gap’s “Casting Call” sweepstakes, Yahoo!
designed the upper right corner of its home page to look as
if it were peeled back like a dog-eared magazine page. Gap’s
“Casting Call” sweepstakes offers customers of all
ages the chance to appear in a print ad for the clothing chain.
In the Yahoo! ad, the company’s
logo appears underneath the teaser copy, “You might be
in a Gap ad.” When clicked on, the ad then opens halfway
across the browser screen as if the page were being peeled back
from right to left.
The ad then shows the sweepstakes jump-page underneath, asking customers to click for additional details. It’s a visually eye-catching ad that cleverly plays with our perceptions of what really lies beneath those billions and billions of virtual Web pages. OK, so maybe it’s only a marketing campaign and not the secrets of the universe, but it’s attention-getting without intruding uninvited on Yahoo’s users. The campaign runs on Yahoo from Nov. 15 through Dec. 1.
TURN THE SHIP AROUND
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“Talking head” ads where
people talk about how great a service or product is are common.
The Celebrity Cruises ads stand out amid the Web ad clutter
primarily because they’re as cleanly designed as a magazine
ad. The pictures of Celebrity guests by Rolling Stone photographer
Mark Seliger give regular people a glamorous image underscored
by the tagline, “Be treated famously.” Celebrity
Cruises is a premium line with a reputation for high-quality
service. But the youngest of the major cruise lines has a relatively
low profile, said Steven Hancock, vice president of marketing
for Celebrity. The idea of the brand campaign, which included
a redesigned logo, was to build awareness of the Miami-based
cruise line. The campaign, which included television and magazines,
breaks away from typical cruise line advertising, which features
big ships and happy campers dancing wildly on deck.
The online ads, which appeared on travel sites such as Fodors and Orbitz and on the New York Times Web site, “were very powerful for us,” said Hancock. Response to the online ads was 75 percent ahead of the premium cruise line’s goals. While the Web component played a lesser role in building buzz about the cruise line, it delivered a greater number of customer leads than TV, compared to the costs of producing the online ads, he said.
TRANQUIL BEACH, GREAT DEAL
Anyone who surfs the Web has probably
seen more than a few Orbitz ads. Orbitz — the online travel
service backed by American, Continental, Delta, Northwest and
United airlines — is one of the most ubiquitous pop-under
advertisers. A pop-under is a window that automatically opens
up beneath a Web page when you visit or leave a site. Many Web
surfers complain loudly about pop-unders, and some Internet
sites claim to have banned them.
“We’re on pretty much
everything out there, except AOL and MSN,” said Geoff
Silvers, director of marketing for Orbitz.
So it’s risky to say that I
like the Orbitz pop-under announcing its new “Florida
Deals Center.” It’s a departure for Orbitz, whose
ads more often feature colorful Flash animation and cutesy come-ons
like “Shear the sheep” or “Pluck the chicken.”
The Florida ad is a traditional animated
GIF image that features Orbitz’s characteristic crayon-bright
colors. But it presents a quieter mood for Web surfers with
a photograph of a tranquil beach at sunset.
The ad’s copy, “World
famous theme parks, pristine beaches, rich history and culture”
tell winter-weary travelers what they already know about Florida.
That’s not the point. An Orbitz ad is about “great
deals,” a message clearly evident.
And despite Web surfer complaints
about pop-unders, the Orbitz ads do their job. Orbitz doesn’t
release click-throughs or customer conversion rates, but pop-unders
remain one of the more effective ways of driving traffic to
the site, said Silvers.
“We yield a high interaction rate,” he said.
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