*One Degree: OK, let’s cover the basics first so people know what the heck “One Red Paperclip”:http://www.oneredpaperclip.com is. Who are you, what is One Red Paper Clip and how did this all get started?*
Kyle MacDonald. 26. From Vancouver. Live in Montreal. one red paperclip is my quest to make a series of up trades from one red paperclip for a house. I started with one red paperclip on July 12th last year after I realized I didn’t have enough cash for a down payment on a house. I saw the red paperclip on my desk and decided to see if I could trade it for something bigger or better. I traded it for a pen shaped like a fish. Then I traded that for a doorknob. Then the doorknob for a coleman stove. After nine trades, I’m up to a recording contract at MetalWorks studios in Toronto.
*One Degree: You’ve done an amazing job of integrating Web 2.0 tools into One Red Paperclip. I see “del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us, “MySpace”:http://www.myspace.com, “Flickr”:http://www.flickr.com, “YouTube”:http://www.youtube.com, “Feedburner”:http://www.feedburner.com, “Odeo”:http://www.odeo.com, “Gmail”:http://mail.google.com, and “Google AdSense”:http://adsense.google.com. How has the availability of these tools impacted what you are doing with One Red Paperclip?*
Category: Offline To Online
How are big advertisers doing at moving people from TV to the web? What better way than to use a global “must see” event like the “Academy Awards”:http://www.oscar.com/ to take a look at who’s pointing people to the web and who’s missing their big opportunity.
Of the 69 spots shown during 12 breaks (some shown multiple times), 36 had URLs. That means that almost 50% of the spots didn’t even try to move people to the web to continue talking to them. Seems like a real waste.
Here is a full list of all the ads and links to all the sites that were mentioned. I think if you review this you’ll find a few very interesting things – eBay doesn’t put URLs on TV ads? WTF?
This whole “Gordon and Frank” thing is offering some really interesting insights into cross-channel marketing.
Not up-to-speed on the saga? Here’s a recap:
# Superbowl Sunday – See Bell Beaver ads tagged with “frankandgordon.ca”:http://www.frankandgordon.ca/ URL, wonder if they registered “gordonandfrank.ca”:http://www.gordonandfrank.ca/. They didn’t.
# Register the domain.
# Monday February 6th – write an “article for One Degree”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2006/02/06/gordonandfrankca explaining why Bell probably should have bought the alternate domain and point gordonandfrank.ca at it.
# Read “the Marketing Magazine article”:http://www.marketingmag.ca/magazine/current/the_work/article.jsp?content=20060206_74079_74079 _(sub. req.d)_ and realize this is a *huge* campaign that will go well beyond the Olympics.
# Wait for someone at “Bell”:http://www.bell.ca or “Cossette”:http://www.cossette.com to notice.
So, after one week, where were we:
* 6,618 pages served.
* 1,225 people clicked through to the real Bell site.
* 745 people got here by searching with words like Bell, Beavers, Frank, Gordon.
* “Bell Beavers” is the most common search term that gets people here.
* 34 people got here because of Norm MacDonald. A lot of them are angry.
* Then again, some people love the beavers so much they’re looking to buy Frank and Gordon plushies.
* The National Post’s Mark Evans “talks to”:http://evans.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/2/14/1761227.html “Frank and Gordon”.
* Still no word from Bell or Cossette.
Things we can learn from this exercise: