Absolutly Wasted
There is so much wrong with this site from Porter Novelli for Absolut Vodka.
Firstly, for an agency to recommend a booze brand make a campaign out of the the ‘drink responsibly’ thought is frankly ludicrous, not to mention completely paradoxical. They have essentially taken a serious issue (one perpetuated by the products being advertised) and made it into a recruitment campaign. Their justification for this is seemingly the inclusion of ‘helpful’ tools; like a service enabling you to send yourself a text message to remind you not to get really hammered. WTF? On top of that, just to really insure that I won’t consume slightly too much of their product, they have loads of detestable smug w**kers telling us how we should behave, oh and a Facebook page, coz it’s for the yoof right?
Genius, that will do the trick, not least because everyone really responds to smug w**kers, especially those employed by marketing companies:
Dear Smug W**ker (employed by marketing company),
Thank you for your sincere advice – you’ve saved me. Prior to your meaningful message all I ever wanted was to be a hopeless alcoholic. Pretty much as soon as I was old enough to drink, I decided: I want to become an addict and ruin my life. Until this moment I have been struggling to manage my relationship with the hugely addictive culturally accepted substance – but thanks to you, I can now put all that behind me.
?
Ok, so clearly I don’t buy the strategy – so what about the execution?
Well, if I was to write a list of all the lame things you could do if you were making a website like this, it would be the ID boards for this site. I won’t bore you with the details but come on? A Facebook group, user generated video content and ‘share’ on YouTube/Twitter button (which has had the embed disabled???). Straight out of the handbook on building ‘yoof’ websites 2003.
Porter Novelli, check yourself and ask yourself why? Why would anyone actually do any of this, especially the people you are intending on having a conversation with.
NYT article here.
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3 Responses to “Absolutly Wasted”
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This is truly execrable, in every conceivable sense, literally one of the vilest, meretricious concoctions of dismal thinking i have ever seen.
lummy, cooper. you aren’t pulling any punches today, are you? what have Porter Novelli done to offend thee?
Get off the fence Cooper. What do you really think?