RE: UKNM: The invisible banner?

[Robin Edwards]

On Monday, March 01, 1999 3:46 PM, Sean Phelan [SMTP:

seanmultimap [dot] com

] wrote:


> I find in my own quick and unstructured serveys that people give pretty much

> the same answers for TV and banners, except that they are more likely to

> recall two or three amusing or well-made TV ads.


Yup - different medium, same old problems.


> Which I think supports the points that Ray and others have been making about

> creativity.


Indeedly doody. The thing that people don't tend to agree on is the definition 

of creativity. Wayyyyy back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and 

Steve and Ivan squashed their entire team into a small part of the Cyberia 

basement, Tango had a "black text on grey background" website that was clearly 

designed to be ironic and sarcastic. Some said "what a crap site - it hardly 

has any graphics", whilst others said "oh, the genius, the genius - sheer art!"


The effectiveness rules are now well-known, and will be enhanced over time, but 

here's another thought:


What if people just aren't interested in a client's product or service at that 

time? Will any amount of effectiveness tweaking, or 

bannercompetitionwinningbeautifying, make much of a difference? Maybe that's 

why I click on so few banners - my eyes are somehow tuned in to certain things 

at certain times and I can spot them out of the corner of my eye (comes from 

years of flicking through Record Collector magazine trying to pick out the 

bands I am interested in). We're running a campaign at the moment that is 

clearly seasonal (a Mothers Day campaign) which I suspect will show a higher 

than typical CTR because people are thinking about Mothers Day at the moment 

(or we hope they will be when they see the banner...). When that, and Easter, 

are over with, it will be a serious challenge to hook new visitors in, and to 

do that all-important recruiting of new customers (note the difference there). 

If customers opt-in to a closed mailing list though, we will be able to target 

them very cost-effectively with special offers throughout the year.


And for those at the back who are sneering, consider this - we get around 80 

percent of the opt-in visitors returning to one of our sites when we email 

them, and the special offer on our latest site is almost always the most 

popular item as long as it is clearly a special offer (e.g. less expensive than 

normal).


Anyway, glad to see the S:N ratio has finally turned around :o)


Robin

--

Robin Edwards

Clockworx Design Limited

T: +44 1543 252370           F: +44 1543 420761

E:

robinclockworx [dot] co [dot] uk

     W: http://www.clockworx.co.uk/ 

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