Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Cup of Joe: The Sky May Be Falling, But At Least Everyone Is Laughing!” plus 1 more

Cup of Joe: The Sky May Be Falling, But At Least Everyone Is Laughing!

Posted: 05 Feb 2011 05:31 AM PST

When you own your own business things are bound to go wrong, every now and then. When your business is on the internet, sometimes these mishaps can be a public event. Wouldn’t it be smart to try and at least pull off these types of blunders with a smile that leaves everyone laughing instead of yelling?

Here are three short examples of how some companies are leaving their users with a smile instead of a frown.

Hilarious Unsubscribe Pages

If you have ever unsubscribed from a Groupon email list you are probably already familiar with this stroke of genius. Here, when a user selects to unsubscribe from a Groupon mailing they are sent to a confirmation page that introduces them them to some guy named “Derrick”. Apparently, Derrick, is the one responsible for sending you an annoying email. There is a button below Derrick’s video feed that says, “Punish Derrick”. After pressing it, hilarity ensues! I don’t want to ruin the fun so go ahead and try it yourself! This type of unsubscribe page is not only genius because it puts a smile on an angry face, but also because its so creative that it has dissatisfied customers still talking about your brand in a positive light! That is nothing short of magic in my book!

Creative 404 Pages

404 pages are the black sheep of the internet. No one wants to see them. Seeing a 404 is like hitting a brick wall. But some companies are getting really creative with their 404 pages. Take for example one of my favorite animated web series, Homestar Runner, has a 404 page that is comedic and blends in well with the rest of their site. Which means that even though the user doesn’t get the content they are looking for they still get a chuckle!

HTML full of LOLs!

Everyone already knows that The Oatmeal is no stranger to laughs. But, did you know that his zany sense of humor even extends into his HTML? Don’t believe me? Go ahead and visit his site, right click and select View Source. Now there is no telling why Mr. Oatmeal decided to grace his <head> tags with a Pterodactyl. But as a web developer I can appreciate an entrepreneur that tries to make even their code monkeys happy! Because happy code monkeys, means happy code, and happy code, means happy web sites, and happy web sites, mean happy users!

Verizon’s iPhone Plan: Now Unlimited-ish

Posted: 04 Feb 2011 02:48 PM PST

Yesterday, Verizon had their most successful first day opening in their history when they opened the virtual doors to iPhone pre-sales. But while they were taking in money with one hand, they were changing the rules with the other. That “unlimited monthly data plan,” they’ve been advertising is about to become . . . well. . . limited-ish.

As Verizon puts it, the iPhone network is “a shared resource among tens of millions of customers.” That means that they have to balance the needs of the many by reducing service to a few.

A spokesperson was quoted in the LA Times as saying:

“If you use an extraordinary amount of data and fall within the top 5% of Verizon Wireless data users we may reduce your data throughput speeds periodically for the remainder of your then current and immediately following billing cycle to ensure high quality network performance for other users at locations and times of peak demand.”

Sounds reasonable, right?

Well, how about this? Verizon said that it may compress large images and videos on websites and in apps. They also say they might “get rid of some colors and decrease resolution of videos, photos and text in a way that . . . won’t be noticed by most users.”

Most users? Okay, they’re probably right. Most people won’t notice if your logo is now more orange than bright red, but it’s still your logo and they shouldn’t be messing with it, should they?

Here’s one more from the LA Times article:

“The optimization process is agnostic to the content itself and to the website that provides it. While we invest much effort to avoid changing text, image, and video files in the compression process and while any change to the file is likely to be indiscernible, the optimization process may minimally impact the appearance of the file as displayed on your device.”

Wow, that’s a lot of techno-babble to cover something they claim most people won’t notice. Now, I agree that 95% of Verizon’s iPhone users shouldm’t have to suffer because 5% of the people want to stream movies 24/7 on their phone but these other changes sound a mite suspicious. What it sounds like is a bit of bait and switch. Lure people in with an “all you can eat” special then fill the buffet with wilted lettuce and last night’s pasta.

But forgetting the users for a moment, what does this mean for you, the marketer? You put in the dollars and effort to turn out the best mobile materials but Verizon’s going to change them if they take up too much space.

Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s the same as cutting off the edges of a movie to make it fit on your TV screen. Or maybe it means mobile ad and app designers will have to change their designs or have them changed for them.

What do you think? No big deal or is Verizon stepping out of bounds with their new data management plan?