I just visited the new Hyundai Hispanic marketing website and was very disappointed. Not only was the site boring, but it took me 5 minutes to figure out the navigation — clever, but way to complicated.
The site lacks visuals, of all things! I didn’t see a single picture of a shiny new Hyundai. The copy was good, but why, oh why, would they not use images or video? I mean, buying a car is a cultural and emotional experience, and there is no better way to communicate that but through visuals. Even when checking the “design” section — nothing — No pictures, no colors, no videos.
The company has a new head of multicultural marketing and is riding its third Hispanic agency in less than three years.
I visited LatinWorks site, (beware of the urban music on their splash page…) and immediately you can see that their Flash animator has a love for words and animated lines.
Hyundai’s new Hispanic slogan is “Discover it for yourself” but all I did was read about it… They missed the opportunity to provide their customers a truly interactive discovery process through the power of the web.
I haven’t seen the TV spots, so I won’t include those in this critique, but as far as the website, not effective use of marketing dollars, if you ask me.
Bradley Werner has an article over at iMedia Connection titled “The Wal-Mart Model for Video Advertising,” but what caught my attention was a section where he writes about how Wal Mart sells CDs.
Recently, a colleague was telling me how a few years ago, Wal-Mart installed machines in all their music departments that allowed customers to listen to the CDs they were interested in before making a purchase.
Customers needed merely to bring the CD to the machine, put on the attached headphones, scan the CD and listen to whatever tracks they chose.
As a consultant for Wal-Mart at the time, my colleague asked an executive why, if all the CDs were already in their database and accessible by search, the machines required users to actually scan the CDs.
“Wouldn’t it make sense to have all the CDs available through the touchscreen?”
“Nope. Once those CDs are in our customers’ hands,” said the Wal-Mart executive, “they’re half-way to the cart. This system helps get the CDs in their hands.”
Wal-Mart, or at least the inventor of those machines, knew how to interact with people. When it comes to online video, we too need to know people.
Makes you wonder if we sometimes make things much to easy on the internet? It seems to me that the lesson here is that the key to effective interaction is to understand human behavior.
I read this article by Max Kalehoff a few months ago, but it came to mind again last week as I was writing about usability. This is the new world of media: full user-interaction. Today’s media consumers don’t just want to consume; they want to participate, engage and have fun while doing it.
Kalehoff’s article reviews the work of Ami Jo Kim, creative director at ShuffleBrain and holder of a Ph.D. in behavioral neuroscience. Kalehoff writes that Kim “noted at Supernova how successful games shape our behavior by engaging us in ‘flow,’ which is achieved through an optimum balance of challenge and skill.”
As humans, we need appropriate levels of challenge as our skills increase. The ability to match these two components is what makes good teachers good and great games work.
Kim suggests “game mechanics†as a framework to create services that are more fun, compelling and addictive. Boy, it seems incredibly obvious now: As YouTube’s popularity has skyrocketed, so has its alignment with these five key elements of game mechanics:
Those five elements are:
1. Collecting.
The most successful games involve the collection of items like artifacts or tools…
2. Points.
Points are the second critical component, because people will continue a certain behavior to gain more points…
3. Feedback.
The next key aspect is feedback on how you’re doing, whether auditory, visual, or other…
4. Exchanges.
Next are explicit or implicit exchanges, or interactions, such as trading or gifting…
5. Customization.
Finally, customization increases investment and creates barriers to leaving…
Can you imagine if more non-profits, churches, and even politicians started allowing more of their users/readers/members to customize their interaction with their websites, and engage at a deeper level? This would be one way to bring “community” and greater engagement through technology, which could then translate into more donations, more votes, or more people exploring their faith in person on Sunday morning.
We’re clearly not dealing with an amateur. This is very much aprofessional – likely someone who I would consider my counterpart onthe Left – and they have a budget behind them.
Based on the evidence above, I’m convinced that anonymous user, ParkRidge47, is a skilled liberal operative.
His reaction to the outing and Phil’s firing from Blue State Digital:
Typical over-reaction from Blue State Digital. “Let’s fire the most effective person on our team.†Back to being normal.
Its a new world out there, and this is how it’s looking like from the trenches inside the beltway. I know most of you readers from outside the beltway could probably care less.
But, if you are a business professional, you should read this and ask yourself “what lessons can I glean from this.” Do you know what your employees are doing? What if one made a YouTube video of your company? You need to be asking yourself some tough questions, and waking up to the reality of a new level of transparency and accountability thanks to citizen journalism, and websites like YouTube.
Today’s corporations have new channels through which to get their message out. Whether it is in response to a crisis or public criticism, or to proactively do brand messaging, the mainstream media channels are not the exclusive venue anymore.
Seeking to get in front of the brewing storm over rising gas prices, the American Petroleum Institute on Thursday hosted a conference call for bloggers with its chief economist, John Felmy. Realizing it won’t get favorable treatment from the liberal media, Big Oil is turning to bloggers to share its message.
I had the opportunity to sit in on one of these conference call meetings with Ken Cohen, the vice president of public affairs for Exxon Mobil.He spoke to a group of conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation’s weekly bloggers’ lunch. Blue comments on that meeting:
Cohen’s focus was on global warming, but his presenceat the meeting was a clear signal that the company was willing to engage with a new medium.
They are smart in doing so. Whether the criticism on big oil is called for or not, I’ll let you decide (I have my own views, of course…), but every company has the mandate to ad value to their stock holders, and should have the opportunity to share their side of the story.
It is foolish for a company to not make use of the new-media channels (Blogging, YouTube, etc.) and make sure their side of the story is getting out. Ultimately, the consumer appreciates having more information with which to make an informed and educated judgment or decision.
JetBlue just jumped to the head of the class! How do you make lemonade from lemons? JetBlue is leveraging a bad customer service moment — a real bad one — and using it to leverage a viral campaign to spread the message of their new Customter’s Bill of Right.
They are using YouTube.com to distribute a video directly to consumer, and gaging by the comments, I think its working. I certainly have a very positive impression of them overall, dispite their big fiasko highlighted in the news all last week. I suspect as far as branding, JetBlue just might come out on top on this one. Check out the video.
Hyundai Misses It: Campaign Geared To Hispanics
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