Back on February 6th we started an interesting experiment here at One Degree when I registered “gordonandfrank.ca”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2006/02/06/gordonandfrankca and pointed it to a One Degree article about the importance of protecting domain names.
That post and several subsequent ones drew lots of traffic and a loads of comments. One common theme was “why hasn’t Bell or Cossette” said anything about this.
Well, now they have…
Late last week I received this e-mail from Elaine Bissonnette, Director, National Creative Lead and Brand for Bell Canada. Here’s her message to us:
bq.. Thank you for your comments and I must say that everyone at Cossette and Bell visits your web site judging by the number of emails I got.
I agree with all of your comments about web domain names and spell check. We actually register all possible spell check errors when we advertise a web site in our communications.
In this case since the web site was originally launched in Quebec back in October 2005 and we turned around in a record time to deliver everything, this has been overlooked by the folks at Cossette and me. This has been a great learning experience and most of my colleagues which are actually fan of yours and did relay the message.
By the way the “www.frankandgordon.ca”:http://www.frankandgordon.ca/ site got a tremendous response with an average time per visit of 5 minutes (actually 35% of the visitors spend between 10 to 29 minutes on the site) and judging by the number of “pin the tail” download lots of kids will be playing this game during Birthday parties! We are looking at an update for the new campaign coming soon.
Once again the comments are noted and I will make sure the team registers it as a priority in the next web campaign.
Regards,
Elaine Bissonnette
Director, Chef Divisionnaire
National Creative lead and Brand
Creation nationale et Marque
p. My guess is Bell handled this correctly. Wait for the storm to die down and then follow-up with a friendly, non-confrontational e-mail rather than coming down hard with lawyers and counter-arguments.
So dear reader, what’s your take? What should Bell have done? Does this resolve the issue? Better yet, what should I do with the domain gordonandfrank.ca? Point it to the real site? Keep it here? Or?
3 Comments
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I agree that Bell did the right thing, a bit too late, but in the end they addressed the issues without creating another.
As for the URL, you have the following options:
1 – Offer it back to Bell
2 – Re-direct as a gesture of good will
WOW.
Congratulations to Cossette AND Bell for stepping up and claiming ownership of a mistake!
Better yet, one that they plan to use as a “lesson learned”
How often does that happen?
I must say I am impressed that they have addressed this with everyone – and my suggestion would be to offer the domain to Bell as good will (I agree Roger!).
The campaign is obviously successful based on the overwhelming amount of time spent per visit with the Bell Beavers online…perhaps we should throw them a bone and give it to them – don’t you think?
Do it for Frank and Gordon or should I say Gordon and Frank!!!
Ha, I’m not surprised that Bell screwed up and gave Frank top billing. They screw up all the time, so much so that this photo editor/animator of experience is very tempted to barbecue the pair of them after having my well thought out email bounced. They put the link on the page, at the end of a consolidation transaction, it should have worked.
BTW
Check out my Canada Post web site, if you love beavers.
In this case they did do the right thing. There is a problem (of course) with the link to their FrankandGordon site, it takes you to bell.ca which on dial up, (set to delete all temp files)) takes 3 minutes to load, and there is no direct link to FrankandGordon on the page.
D. pours lighter fluid on the charcoal bricks.
Don’t get me wrong, in a recent phone survey, I gushed over those two hairy guys. I love em!
Just for the irony of it, EI spell check turns FrankandGordon into Frankenstein!