Mars Fling – it’s all about the domain name?
I think most of us now understand how important a good URL is to the success of a campaign. Nearly all of us now speak in http shorthand. It wasn’t so long ago that when we read out a web address, we would say the whole thing – “h t t p : forward slash, forward slash dot w w w dot mktgdigital dot com” now of course we just say “mktgdigital dot com”.
This url shorthand has entered into our lexicon and marketers need to be aware of it. Especially the guys at Mars Confectionery.
In the US, Mars are currently running a campaign to launch a new chocolate bar called Fling. The advert has the usual enticement to eat the bar, using phrases such as “Pleasure yourself” and “Naughty, but not that naughty” and a call to action encouraging the public to check out the website.
The problem that the team at Mars didn’t see coming is that we are so sophisticated at using the web, that we make the assumption that a new product called Fling will have a url to match, in this case, ‘fling.com’. But, those loyal customers end up at a porn site!
Of course, we should all be thinking of the right url ‘flingchocolate.com‘
All joking aside, what this demonstrates is that in an ever more complex world, you need to be able to keep things simple. Have you thought about how your brand, new or old, works across a wide range of online platforms? At mktgDIGITAL we have developed a ‘Social Media Checklist’ to help each of our clients gain control of their online presence, whether they need one or not!
How do you protect your brand?
Filed Under: Digital Marketing
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