Initiated an interesting discussion (sorry, only in Finnish) yesterday on a topic that had been on my mind lately: whether or not Flash sites (especially microsites) are the new 30-second spot: a standard first (because of high production values) offering by agencies for marketing activities from basic product launch to an invitation for customer collaboration. Working on a client side, these solutions get thrown at me every now and then as a solution to just about everything. And why not; a Flash microsite is a well-defined project with a beginning and an end; you get to work with creative people who make all stuff colorful and put them moving around in exciting ways; in the end the site is launched and you get to have a party with the team.
There’s just one problem. Flash sites are usually not very social. With being social I don’t even mean that it should initiate a genuine dialog between the customers and the brand, but simply finding the content in the first place. Sharing individual pieces of content from a flash site is not always possible: trying to copy-paste and email/IM/Tweet a link will just send your buddy to a front page or 1st level sub-page, even if the content you wanted to show was deeper in the hierarchy. Flash is not well indexed by or found with search engines (although this is improving) and mobile devices, which are increasingly used for surfing, don’t get it. Still, Flash sites are offered as a cure for just about everything.
One reason of course has to do with great sales people at ad agencies. Flash sites motivate designers, bring good money and score awards better than Google adwords campaigns. But the other reason clearly is internal: it is far easier for a busy marketing manager to write down a three-slide powerpoint on sales goals, main communications target and a schedule, than engage in long-term thinking about how the company should continuously engage with the people through digital channels. This latter is not a job for ad creatives (they can help with the tools of course), but instead rest on the shoulders of client-side people. It’s tedious, lengthy labour with no quick returns (as with numerous eyballs that you might lure onto your flashy Flash site with extensive banner campaigning), but instead trying, failing, trying, failing and trying again, and doing it in relatively small steps, as few companies will hire an army of bloggers outright, but instead the existing workers need to manage this on their coffee breaks. Customer satisfaction and rewards from these kinds of activities are built over time, and require constant and active effort from the people that are running them. Also, not all marketing managers are fortunate enough to launch e.g. an official company blog before lots of numerous, strenuous sessions with general management and communications directors and strangling rules and guidelines for communications. Still, these methods of marketing should be pursued as they create a customer experience completely different from the traditional tools of web marketing - a human one. Loyalty and customer bond from these activities last and can withstand hard times better than the experience from visiting a Flash site.
Don’t get me wrong. At best, a Flash site is a great brand building tool, even without funny videos. One of the most powerful branding experiences that integrated seamlessly with the product itself was (and to my surprise, still is) the Requiem for a Dream site, which unfolds the story in ways that enhance and expand the movie experience in a way a html site couldn’t (ok, ajax and some other tools could - to some extent). Flash is a tool like anything else and needs to be applied to a correct context; you wouldn’t cut your nails with a chainsaw either.
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Thanks to everybody on Jaiku who commented on my initial question. While the feedback was largely what I expected, there were lots of true insights there as well.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Ville Vesterinen // Aug 30, 2008 at 12:47 am
Good bits of thinking there Sami. Someone should educate both sides of the table on how thinking long term would be a win for both: Ad agencies and their clients.
I remember talking to a friend the other day via Skype while she was busy talking to her former employer about some issue in relation to her work that she left about fiver years ago. The employer was UN and she was IMing with their HQ is New York. Apparently, the employees have life long access via Messenger (among other things) to the organization after they give the unique ID code and thus prove their identity vie the channel. Might be an expensive experiment, but I can only imagine the word of mouth about the customer experience if some commercial actor would provide that level of service: An access via IM, 24 hours a day/seven days a week and have the same welcoming experience five years after time of purchase. Wow!
2 Ville Vesterinen // Aug 30, 2008 at 1:07 am
…to continue from my previous comment above. To make the model scale a bit better, could a company like Sonera provide Twitter/Jaiku account to each customer who don’t have one, and for those that have one take down the Twitter /Jaiku name (@villevesterinen) , thus enabling them to link the service account and the customer asking the question.
Then you could actually have a customer service rep. 24/7 (or if you only operate in couple of countries you could actually close the service for night) serving people just by answering Tweet that are addressed to @sonera.
This way the customer rep could identify the customers without a need for them to reveal their identity, just by linking the nickname with a real name that they have confirmed at the time of the purchase.
I’m starting to like the idea already, don’t you? =)
3 Ville Vesterinen // Aug 30, 2008 at 1:12 am
…best of all, you could give personalized customer service without the need to reveal identities and it would only take one person to ‘answer all the phones at one time’(!) by addressing people directly with their Jaiku/Twitter nick names, while the Tweets/Jaikus flow by.
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