B(abble)log
What do you do when your product is a massive fail, and consumers openly say it is horrid? If you are Domino’s Pizza, you boldly embrace the criticism. And, you create a microsite (PizzaTurnaround.com) as a platform to document the change.
On the cusp of its 50th birthday, Domino’s Pizza has put out a new campaign owning up to a product that many people really didn’t like. (In a survey, Domino’s Pizza tied for last place for taste …with Chuck E Cheese. Ouch!) The new “Pizza Turnaround” video was created by powerhouse agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
In the four-minute video focus group members said repeatedly that the crust is like cardboard. Other pizza flavour insights include “totally void of flovour” and “the worst excuse for pizza I’ve ever had”.
As comedian Stephen Colbert pointed out while lampooning the ads, “It takes alpha meat balls to stand up and say ‘America we suck’.”
Exactly. You have to give Domino’s kudos for their humility and transparent approach. The company is taking wonderful, brutally honest step forward, trying to reclaim its image.
But back to the microsite. How does it fare as a content channel?
It’s got the usual social network links to Facebook and Twitter (which are both great examples of social media use and interaction). However, the microsite lacks an RSS feed and a link to their YouTube channel. And, while they have a small members-only Flickr group for employees, there is no group for us, the hoi polloi.
You have to give Domino’s high credit for bringing in a feed from Twitter, and not filtering the results. Many of the comments weren’t exactly shining examples of brand love when I was there. But, bravo for showing the comments – warts and all. It boosts credibility and authenticity.
In addition to driving traffic to the site from Twitter or the Domino's homepage, traffic from natural search queries should never be overlooked. From a search point of view, it would have been nice to see the microsite appear in more niche searches like “Domino’s Pizza taste” or “Domino’s Pizza crust”. (It does currently rank #9 for “new Domino’s Pizza”.) And, I’d love to see the banner text rendered as readable type to search engines rather than a graphic.
So why not extend the campaign as part of the Domino’s Pizza website, much like Blendtec does for the Will It Blend campaign? I’m not sure.
I don’t know if the microsite creates any extra value. Users need to click through to the Domino’s pizza site to order, find a nearby location or get a coupon. While comments are allowed, there is little other way to interact or create content on the site. For example, have Domino's customers create a new tagline for the pizza, or upload their own experiences which could be shared.
Will the commitment to a better product continue on with the microsite, or will it have a limited shelf-life and eventually fade away? If there is a long-term commitment to better taste and a better product, why not incorporate it into the main Domino’s Pizza website?
The site is no doubt a work in progress and it will be interesting to watch how it evolves.
Stumble It! |
Save to del.icio.us | 
Earlier this week, Google announced its foray into real-time search, and as soon as you can say "Bob's your uncle", there are real-time results from various social networks at the top of Google's listings for various queries. The cool thing for searchers like you and me, is we can get information about events from a variety of platforms - Twitter, blogs, etc. For example, when I googled "leweb", here are some of the real-time results Google displayed:
You'll see a mix of results, including a post from ReadWriteWeb as well as various people on Twitter who are discussing the event. The conversation, as they say, is wide open for anyone to see.
Want to know what people are saying about a company at any given moment? You can do that too.
The other day I was having a series of conversations with some friends about Montreal restaurants – the good, the bad and the downright pretentious. As a lark, I googled “pretentious restaurant Montreal” expecting to get blog rants, various foodie forum discussions and the like. (I did.) But, imagine my surprise when Google Local Business listing served up some pretentious restaurants for my viewing pleasure.
I understood the location-based aspect of the Local Business result, but surely, the restaurants weren’t entering “pretentious” in as some of their keywords for the business listing description? I suspected it was tied to the reviews that were being pulled in. But best to try this again just to make sure. How about “worst restaurant in Montreal”? Why, yes, once again Google Local Business pulls through.
How about "worst customer service Toronto”? Bingo!
To confirm my suspicion that these results were triggered by a mix of location (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal) listing keywords (restaurant) and keywords from consumer reviews I double-checked with some colleagues, Martin and Xurxo at Bloom Search Marketing (the experts in paid search) and Dev Basu, a leader in SEO, SEM and local search marketing. They agreed.
Companies take warning: This is the power of consumer-generated reviews. Right now it’s a high concentration of hotels, restaurants and travel. But as user-generated content continues to grow, it will influence your ranking - not only for the keywords you used, but for other unintended keyword queries. More than ever, companies need to monitor what is being said about them so they can address service issues and correct the problem at the source.
Resources:
Google Business Listing Quality Guidelines
Over at When Bad Websites Happen to Good People, today’s tip is all about website speed. In this tip, our 8th, you’ll find some of the usual causes of slow sites, and some suggestions to speed up your site.
But why is speed so critical to website success? Because, according to Forrester Consulting, two seconds is new acceptable norm for online shoppers. Customer expectations can be brutal.
- 47 percent of consumers expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and,
- 40 percent of consumers would abandon a site if it took more than three seconds to load
While this research is aimed at online shoppers, I would go out on a limb and say the same applies to B2B sites. Let’s face it, humans are an impatient bunch. As everything becomes instant, speed is crucial.
As much as it is up to designers to make sure a website loads quickly, it’s up to online copywriters to ensure content is web-friendly, and equally as important, human-friendly. I’ve discussed some of the differences between writing for the web and writing for print publications previously with suggestions on creating web-friendly text.
However, human-friendly content, or brand voice, is not often discussed in the conversion process. But brand voice plays a big role in instant connection and engagement.
Brand Language Influences Online Behaviour
Earlier this year, CDA (Content Delivery &Analysis) conducted a study to better understand the online linguistic processes and pathways that consumers take when they want to find things online. Among some of the CDA’s key findings:
- Language that people appear to respond to most favourably when they finally engage with a website is language that more closely resembles their natural language of intent – less mechanical and more human.
- Language that engages people on web pages is not the same as the language that forms the pathways to a site.
- There seems to be a direct correlation between what language a website uses and how a visitor feels. In many cases participants are put off by what they find because it is not in line with their previously articulated expectations and / or requirements. The language that brands employ on websites can often be too formal (technical, un-human, productised) – and this can alienate people.
So why does this stifling, consumer-inhibiting business formality exist? I’m not entirely sure, but I think that many companies confuse business jargon with professionalism.
Brand Voice Makes Connections
You only have a few seconds to captivate. A strong human brand voice has a realness and authenticity that shines through and connects with remarkable speed and effectiveness.
Brand voice goes well beyond word choice. It considers intent, framing, syntax – it’s a whole semantics smorgasbord! It takes thoughtful reflection to pin down not only what to say, but how to say it. But the return is incredible, a clear voice that is 100% YOU cuts through the same-old,-same-old of a noisy marketplace.
In a lightning-fast digital world, that’s invaluable.
Last night, I took some guests to try out a casual restaurant in a nearby town. It had a happening patio and seemed quite popular with the locals, so why not give it a try?
I know restaurants often welcome free placemats with local advertising to cut costs, but honestly, what is going through your head when you put out placemats that advertise a SEPTIC SYSTEM?
The first thing I saw as I sat down to eat were the words “septic”, “solids”, “bacteria”. Bon appétit, folks!
For the love of Pete, people! I don’t care if they were free. It’s not worth it.
It's hard to believe that the myth of the keyword meta tag still exists, but it does. And now Google has taken a firm stance, stating in no uncertain terms "Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking." So, it's official. Don't bother with the keyword meta tag.
As a copywriter, you can imagine that I don’t really appreciate the phrase “people don’t read on the Web” being bandied about too much. Profession aside, it’s just not true.
In the later half of 2006, the Poynter Institute conducted an eye-tracking study to see how 582 people in four U.S. cities viewed their hometown newspapers (both broadsheets and tabloid format) and Web sites. That study indicated that people may read more of an article on the Web than in print, much to the delight of online publishers and bloggers everywhere.
Participants were given 90 minutes to read the newspaper or Web site as they normally would. The study examined how print and online readers navigate through the paper or the Web, how much do people read and how much readers remember.
The result were this:
- Online participants read an average of 77 percent of story text they chose to read.
- Broadsheet participants read an average of 62 percent of stories they selected.
- Tabloid participants read an average of 57 percent.
People DO read on the Web.
Quite a bit actually. But here’s the caveat: It’s just not in the same way that you’d curl up with a good book.
Well-known Web usability expert Jakob Niesen talks about the online F-factor. F stands for fast and also mimics the horizontal and vertical scanning patterns of online readers. People have learned to scan web pages at lightning-bolt speeds in order to pinpoint key information or quickly determine if a web page is relevant to their query.
What does this mean for online writers toiling over each and every precious word? It means writing differently for the Web in key areas:
Get to the point – Put the most important information first.
Use of headings and subheads – Your headings and subheads are a great way to divide up information as well as provide strong keyword prompts about that the next section may cover.
Start with keywords – Because readers scan down the left-hand side of the text upon initial viewing, make sure that information-carrying words come first.
Break up long paragraphs – Facilitate scanning by varying paragraph length and breaking up very long paragraphs into more digestible chunks of text.
Please don't do this, in real life or online! Keyword stuffing turns people off. Period.
Thanks to @zoonini (The amazing Kathryn of Zoonini Web Services) for the graphic design help! We're on a mission to save good people from bad websites, stay tuned for our upcoming launch of When Bad Websites Happen to Good People.
SEO Resources
B(abble)log
Art & Life
Search!
Stuff
Categories
Advertising
Art
Blogging
Branding
Copywriting
Creativity
Email
Five Questions
Fun Stuff
Make the Frames Stop
Marketing
Online Content
Personal
Photography
Random Thoughts
Search
Selling
SEO
Tips
Usability
Visual Things
Web 2.0
Words
Archives
January 2010
December 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
Blogroll
Copywriters Blog
Gaping Void
How to Change the World
Mitch Joel
One Degree
Possibility Virus
Search Engine Land
Seth Godin
SocialMediaGroup.ca
Meta
Web Site Design | Search Engine Optimization | Portfolio | Etc.| Contact