Re[2]: UKNM: so net marketing types?

[Phil Gyford]

I think the trouble is that we're arguing about completely different things.


<vaguely balanced and objective>

Ray and others are arguing about whether it was an effective ad (in terms

of people noticing it).


Myself, Cait, and others were arguing about whether it's something we'd

want to happen to our site in terms of pissing off users.


I'm coming to the depressing conclusion that these two sides will never

agree on this kind of thing, that we see the Net entirely differently. The

first group see it as an exciting new medium with different opportunities

for building brands in lots of new ways. The second group see it as an

exciting democratic medium which should have more to it than the pursuit of

money.

</vaguely balanced and objective>


I find it incredibly depressing to hear points of views like Ray's. If you,

Ray, find it "difficult to be personally moved" by anything you see on the

Net, then please go and find something that does excite you, rather than

pushing depressing marketing schemes on the rest of us. This is far from

wishing to "restrict its use to those qualified" - As someone who lives far

too much of their life on the Net, I can't wait for friends and relatives

who know next to nothing about computers to come online, but I'd prefer it

if they didn't have to suffer marketing concepts which hinder their enjoyment.


You say "The thing I find sad is that so many people in a supposedly

revolutionary new medium are so set in their ways and blinded by prejudice

that they feel they must always knock companies such as Sky." Ray, this has

nothing to do with the advertiser being Sky. The interstitial page could

have been for something I really love and I would still feel it gets in the

way of people actually using and enjoying the Web, and detracts from the

host site's own character. This is also nothing to do with people being set

in their ways and blinded to revolutionary new ways of doing things. Part

of the reason most of us are in this industry (although I'm beginning to

wonder if we're in the same one) is because of the exciting pace of new

ideas. But something being new doesn't mean it's good.


There are too many people enthusiastically promoting the "new medium",

while still decidedly set in an old media state of mind, willing to sell

anything if it'll earn them a bit of cash, and not giving a shit about

their own sites or the end user.


Phil