Spotted on a crowded platform at London Bridge on my way home tonight, my first sighting of the Japanese phenomenon of citing the search term rather than a website address. At the bottom left, the ad asks you to search for “I am”.
It’s a simple idea – rather than asking people to remember the URL, which becomes harder as memorable domain names becomes ever more elusive, using a search term instead. Always available, but at a price. I’d love to know just how much this cost Orange in search engine marketing. Interesting to see them picking up this idea here first (to my knowledge) – it’s something you are going to be seeing much more of in the near future.
Cabel Sasser wrote about it back in March in Japan: URL’s are totally out – and it didn’t take long to reach London. I like Cabel’s prediction in his piece about the Safari title bar – though I have to tell him, on the basis of some of the user testing we do, many people think that is the way browsers should work right now.
Seeing the Orange ad was almost as exciting as the screen which preceded it telling me that New Kids are reforming. That one’s for my youngest sister.
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Very cool. Wonder if Orange did some testing. You could really test this with an online digital ad if you had a one with a search term and one with a url and see which one converts better.
— Farhan Lalji · Jul 11, 10:28 AM · #
Oh I agree – I can imagine it working particularly well in environments like the tube – on escalators or in carriages – where you have a short time to plant the seed of an idea in the viewer’s head.
Lots of applications too – from the playful to the profound. Has the potential to give advertisers a whole lot of creative freedom.
— Andrew Travers · Jul 11, 10:36 AM · #