Blackberry - 10 second clip in a 30-second slot.

Browsing engadget.com (basically gadgetporn), I saw a lovely new, multimedia ad for the Blackberry pearl.  Beautiful phone, compelling ad, lavish splash page.  But it is my new poster child for crap advertising on the web.

Let this example serve notice - It doesn't matter how great your creative is.  If you don't carry through past the splash page, you are producing a 10-second clip for a 30 second slot.

The ad:

Nicely produced.  Clean.  And who is this Richard Wright fellow.  I must know more!  So I rollover to get:

I like Douglas Coupland.  And I am Generation X.  They really have my number.  So far, they have connected a banner teaser with a rollover teaser.

Click.

A very capable splash page/microsite.  Inexcusably slow to load, but perhaps this is the cost of style.  This new site is lush, smart and stylish.  I crave more information about the Blackberry.  Where can I get this fetish object?  How can I satisfy the cravings of my monkey-brain for the dark, beautiful pearl? Best Buy? Cingular?

So I click the "Where to Buy" link. 

I can only describe the painful disappointment of the page that appears next by asking you to remember that day in grade school when you were allowed to watch a movie in the gymnasium because the weather was too wet for recess.  You remember: movies!  At school!

You are mesmerized by some crappy animation of a popular kids book and the world disappears. But, alas, due to improper loading, poor maintenance, or just the vagaries of fate, the film suddenly freezes on the screen for a moment and melts through, in front of your very eyes. 

It takes only a moment for the celluloid to char and recede, eventually leading to the fwap, fwap, fwap of the uptake reel slapping the newly amputated film against the projector housing.  The film is now two films.  The first part a story that was absorbing you, and the second part an inert circle of film imprisoned on the reel.

Are you with me?  Good.

So I am on the Blackberry microsite and I click on "Where to Buy" and I can almost instinctively detect the odor of melting plastic.  The moody, brooding Pearl experience is now:

Excusing for a moment that this page DOES NOT EVEN ANSWER THE QUESTION WHERE TO BUY!, what happened?

Where is Douglas Coupland?  Where do I hear about modernism and auctions houses.  Where is the regal black and purple.

Fwap, fwap, fwap.  The film is over.  You are back in the school gym, and it is just a rainy day with no recess.

Here is a challenge to Blackberry and their creative team.  Fix this problem.  It is not hard.

Create a smooth interactive experience where a customer is engaged from impression through the entire interaction.

If a client asked a creative agency to produce a thirty-second spot, and they produced a beautiful 10-second reel.  They would be fired.  It is time to set the standards a little higher online.

As a postscript:  Do not ever, ever, ever put your CEO in the commercial on the web.  Especially not in a v-neck.  Believe it or not, we have tested this.

Comments

[Jonathan Mendez]

Great post.

The problem is that Agency 1 did the ad and Agency 2 did the page. This is why you see this all the time. Especially in SEM where there are perceived lines between the SEM/O "geeks" and Agency "creatives."

How CMO's and marketers still can't figure out how to cross this divide is beyond me...

[Yoav Arnstein]

Decided to take a look before the Search Insider event. We ran the BB ad. Comments are fair but as an FYI many sites will limit the animation and hence force the imbalance between ad and site.

Cheers,
Yoav

Yoav Arnstein
General Manager, North America
Eyeblaster

[Matthew Roche]

Yoav,
Appreciate your taking the time to read it.
Let me be abundantly clear that I really like the creative.

You hit the nail on the head in terms of ad and site. I believe the biggest issue in advertising today (no, it is not remnant inventory...) is the mismatch between how ads are produced and consumed.

The whole concept of "The Site is Dead" is to call attention to the arbitrary divisions that minimize marketing effectiveness - creative versus media, ad versus site, merchant versus marketer.

That you as a professional need to create a complete immersive experience *separate* from the site, yet still need to link to the site is embarrassing for our industry, but is by no means your fault.