Interactive Marketing Cafe

observations and strategy by melonie gallegos

I Bought Social Media For Christmas November 22, 2008

Filed under: social media — Melonie Gallegos @ 9:13 am
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iwearyourshirt.com

iwearyourshirt.com

It’s true I was dazzled, whooed and sold by the I Wear Your Shirt campaign, that’s Jason Sadler the man behind it all pictured on the left. And I was sold on Twitter of all places, converted through the .com and closed on PayPal.

Here is Jason’s concept:

“In this up and down economy I’m outsourcing my wardrobe (namely shirts) to corporate america and you! I’m going to wear a different shirt for 365 days straight in 2009, take multiple pictures throughout my day and blog about it. Days are sold at “face value” so January 1 is $1 and December 31 is $365.”

This is what you get with a spot:

-Daily Video on YouTube & Ustream.tv
-Daily Photos on the blog & Flickr
-Daily Posts on the blog & Twitter
-Calendar (You/Your Company’s Logo & Website)
-All of these with wearing your shirt and information about you, your company and/or your product.

As of this post he’s already sold out through March. Jason pinpointed opportunity in crisis, packaged up social media in a way that others in the industry have struggled to conceptualize (as an afterthought this was a no brainer), and is delighting his audience. What a way to monetize the Internet.

When I came across the campaign on the blogosphere (interview here) I loved the idea and immediately began wondering how I could buy in personally or use it for a client. The latter is still up in the air but the idea dawned on me that this would make a great Christmas gift for someone who has everything, and has a brand and business. Hence I now own August 19th National Aviation Day – the theme of my gift social media campaign to honor my Uncle who is a well known artist in aviation circles. Don’t worry the blog won’t spoil my surprise he doesn’t  read it (maybe he’ll start after Christmas). I can’t be sure if he has Google alerts set so I’m not going to mention his name in text but here’s a link to his Wikipedia bio and website to check him out.

This is what my gift package will include:

  • Campaign strategy and planning, and uh a little social media 101 probably in the form of a PPT deck
  • Tshirt – Help I need a design!
  • The iwearyourshirt Aug. 19 spot

I will share all through subsequent posts and of course let you know how it goes over with the family. When this is all done maybe they will finally understand that I do not work in IT!

 

Amazon Windowshop Beta, More Heavy Flash Thingies November 20, 2008

Filed under: user experience — Melonie Gallegos @ 10:17 pm
Tags: , ,

…and the Flash monster trend continues. Amazon seems to have a busy team of Flash designers leading the charge toward getting customers to engage and spend more time with products on their site. Introducing Windowshop beta. A bright shiny object that holds little utility in matching customers with relevancy or help in actually locating and buying what they want or need.

Case in point screen 1. This is the first visual in your experience – before you get the pretty stuff – offering instruction on how to work the Flash using non standard actions such as spacebar and keyboard arrows. If you need a user’s manual it’s not intuitive. (period)

Amazon Windowshop beta screen 1

Amazon Windowshop beta screen 1

Case in point for irrelevancy screen 2. Your first serving is a display of some random music selection (which auto plays). Maybe I’m not cool enough to know who David Cook is but how do they know I’m looking for music and this music in particular? Find that I’m already asking myself why I’m I here.

Amazon Windowshop beta screen 2

Amazon Windowshop beta screen 2

Moving on. There’s an action, I think it’s clicking black space but I have trouble reproducing it, that takes you to a view of several product tiles. Well this could’ve done better as screen 2, or even 1 if instructions weren’t necessary. In this view you’ll be stuck in the row lest you’d read the instructions in screen 1 telling you to use the arrow keys. The angle is a bit odd.

Amazon Windowshop beta screen 3

Amazon Windowshop beta screen 3

I’m not against Flash by any means nor am I against Amazon experimenting with better and cleaner ways to display merchandise. I am for users first and designing around a smart user experience. Too many Flash designs are well, just “flashy” and create more obstacles. Users should not have to work for the design, the design should work for the user. Flash is not the ideal technology of choice for every execution. And building a pretty, shiny Flash monster does not equal engagement or viral traffic. What it can equate to is useless time wasted while your customer is engaged and you could actually be servicing, delighting and selling them.