Friday, December 01, 2006

what a waste!

Product (Red) has scored one of the hottest pieces of advertising real estate today -- World AIDS Day.

Forget Times Square. Forget the Super Bowl.

I'm talking the Google home page.

The normally pristine white space has a (logo'd) link to Product (Red)'s World AIDS Day page.

Sure, there have been cutesie pictures to commemorate the holidays, but this, this is a coup. Is there a precedent that I am not aware of?

Here's the (infuriating) bummer -- why did the folks at Product (Red) not make more of an effort to create a destination page that was more dynamic to greet the traffic they're going to get today? A lame video of Bono saying nothing much that's new and certainly nothing that's particularly empowering (the man obviously cares and he's inspired me in the past . . .) ? A pathetically brief list of things that the campaign's partners are doing today to mark the day, including "Veronica Webb will sign copies of Gap's Individuals book on Friday, from 6-8 pm at Besame Mucho in Key West, Florida".

Huh?

I have been incredibly impressed with the campaign. But someone wasn't thinking . . .

Red = not as smart as they should be on digital advocacy. Green = still so damn smart.

(If you need any ideas next year, give me a call.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It doesn't change your main point, which I agree with, but the book signing was a huge success. I was there and an amazing amount of books were signed and sold and the word got out on World AIDS Day.

greg@designkeywest.com

abf said...

Glad to hear it, Greg! I assure you that I want nothing more than people to have a greater awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to ensure that people have access to the meds they need.