Tangent Thought Gallery

Online marketing brilliance seems rare

How many sites have you seen in your lifetime? How many stand out among that crowd? You know, I couldn’t even begin to guess at the number of sites I’ve seen but I can guarantee there are precious few that rise above the rest.

One that whacked me up side the head this week was Burger King’s stroke of marketing brilliance in support of last year’s Simpson’s movie: SimpsonizeMe.com. I had seen a few Simponized avatars/icons around the web and had suspicions that there was some tool to do that but hadn’t found it until last night. The Simpson’s have been on screen (broadcast and DVD) quite a bit in our house over the years—definitely not my wife’s favorite, I think she’s got it pegged a few rungs down from the Three Stooges, and although I believe the writing had gone downhill some years ago, I just had to try this online toy.

So, after a little while, my wife comes down into my office and asks “What are you up to?” Caught!

“Well, er, I was kinda burned out on the tech issue I was wrestling with and found this, uh, site.”

She, moving closer to my desk, asks, “Oh really; anything interesting?”

Me, feeling like a 9 year old with his hand in the candy jar, “eh…yeah, well, it’s this site that lets you make a…” (I’m thinking, “Might as well say it, Kolb”) “…a Simpson cartoon character out of your uploaded photo.”

I quickly add, “But it doesn’t really look like me though.”

Zooming in for a closer look at the screen she bursts out laughing, “No, it looks ‘exactly’ like you!”

Now I feel like a 6 year old because my son comes in, takes a quick look and, laughing as well, agrees with her.

I’m over it.

But the site, IMO, is brilliant. It couples a Flash application, a configurator, a commerce engine, personalization, plus enough eye and ear candy to make it seem like an amusement park “A” ride online, and makes it all easy to use. You then can buy personalized merchandise like hats, shirts, etc. And that’s not even the purpose of the site. It’s to promo the movie and subtly blast Burger King’s image into your mind while you’re playing and buying stuff.

There are few sites of that caliber that can capture not only their customer’s attention but also their inner child.

Oh, BTW, Happy April 1st!