|
BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: DAILY BRIEFING | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
|
BW ONLINE DAILY BRIEFING |
 | |
 | |
 |
||||||
Flooz, ecampus, and Storerunner: Down a Slippery Slope Some sites' ads really really want you to remember their name. Is that enough? At last, there's an online alternative for those who hate to shop -- even online. Flooz.com's ads talk to young men who couldn't choose a decent present if their Rollex depended on it, or don't have the least interest in doing so. It's fitting that Whoopi Goldberg -- who comes off as down-to-earth and not particularly materialistic -- is Flooz's outspoken spokesperson. In one ad, she berates a dweeb of a man who's inspecting a pink basket in a gift shop. Sounding like a deranged fairy godmother, she yells, "Hey, who are you getting THAT for?" "Mother," he replies," and Whoopi really lets him have it: "The mother who carried you for nine months in her womb, and you're going to make her carry THIS?" Instead, she suggests a gift of Flooz. "What's flooz?" he asks. Good question. Whoopi explains that consumers send it by e-mail, and recipients can spend it at the online sites of their favorite stores. Hey, it beats trying to stuff cold cash through a modem. Unfortunately, the ads don't provide any indication of which online merchants are participating in this program -- much less how to get your hands on some Flooz. Then again, men such as the ones portrayed in this ad probably don't care. And therein lies the problem with the name: Flooz. Sounds short for floozy, or plural for flu. Maybe the company is betting that the name is so strange, it'll stick in consumers' minds. It did in mine. Now what? GAS LIGHT. No one gets respect these days. TV commercials for ecampus mock college students as big babies who can barely function on their own, or juvies more interested in frat-boy hijinks than in higher learning. The company's cleverist ads take a humorous, though not dark, look at student poverty. In one spot, a young man is so desperate he fakes his own kidnapping to extort money from his parents. In another, a hungry student fries up his pet gold fish for dinner. The message: We know you're broke. We make you less broke. That's about as sophisticated as ecampus gets. Its other ads tend toward the sophomoric and scatological. In one, a beefy guy wolfs down a can of beans. When he's done, he lights the result. In another, a student recites the entire alphabet while belching. The tag line for these commercials is: "Getting college kids the intelligent literature they desperately need." As if, you think, books would make a difference with these guys. Ecampus has a catchy name. Its slogan -- "Textbooks and stuff. Cheap" -- is clear. Only question is, can cheap laughs draw a paying audience? HEADACHE. Storerunner.com's ads are way too smart for their own good, assuming, as they do, that viewers have an inkling of what storerunner does. In one ad, a man stands on a putting green while a golfer -- at short range -- drives balls into the back of his head. As the balls auger through his noggin, he rattles off detailed information about the ball and the golf club. He also babbles on about the places -- Web sites and stores -- that stock this equipment. Is this some sicko masochistic sports ritual, or just an eccentric sales pitch? Finally, a narrator explains that the man is a professional shopper for storerunner.com and an expert on sporting goods. And that's all the info a viewer gets. Click on the site (I had to so I could finish writing this review), and it turns out that storerunner.com helps online shoppers find specific goods on the Internet as well as in regular-old stores. It's an interesting concept -- and a mystery that storerunner's ads never reveal. By Louise Witt in New York _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
| |
 | |
ONLINE SPECIAL REPORT Dot.Com TV Ads: The Good, the Bad, and the Left-Us-Clueless Some Toy Ads Aren't Much Fun Ads for Women's Sites: Three Swings, One Hit Amazon's Cheesy Choir vs. Barnes & Noble's Eager-to-Please Authors Online Brokers: Tapping into the Investor in Us Pet Store Ads: Not Enough Animal Magnetism FTD, SharperImage, Nordstrom: Sending the Right Message, Mostly Right -- and Wrong -- Ways to Push Health and Beauty Aids Online  Assistive Technology barker.online Byte of the Apple Eye on Japan Hers.online Inside Wall Street Not-So-Neutral Corner Online Asia Power Lunch Privacy Matters Sector Scope Sound Money Street Wise Washington Watch News Flash Archive | ||||||
