Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

Herbal Essences Dump Cupid

by Rachel on January 17th, 2007

Herbal Essences have an interesting microsite that is a very mixed bag. The theme is that if you have great hair you don’t need Cupid, so Dump Cupid, wash your hair and get on with your life. There are 6 main parts to the site.

• Cupid videos. Three shorts showing their oversized, hairy cupid in different situations
• Share your story. tell your relationship nightmare story. Moderated, they are only posting 5 per week. (which is a nice cover if they do not get a lot)
• Send to a friend. Not yet available
• A little game - put in your choices and it’ll tell a story at the end of it
• Sweeps to win a £25k shopping spree
• The product section - find your product from the range, which then takes you to the product site.

The site is pink, fresh and cuddly, looking like it’s aimed at the 18-28yo woman. The style sits well with the main product site, with the same vibe, but interestingly there is no obvious link from the main site to the microsite. The strategy here appears to be keep the entertainment away from the product info,but there is still a fun quiz on the product site.

The Share Your Story section follows the trend for UGC, but is definitely one of the most controlled I’ve seen. The moderation I understand but I’m wondering if the restriction on posts per week is due to concern they will not get any content or for some other reason.

The videos are weird as they are obviously designed with viral in mind. They’ve picked three of the most popular themes for this kind of stuff - the woman getting into an argument in the street, the pole dancer and the rap song. But the videos are not linkable nor downloadable. But they are on YouTube, loaded up by a user who only joined to load up these three videos, which has to be agency driven. If you are going to put them on the video sites and they are obviously branded, it pays to put them with links to the main campaign.

As I said, all in all, a mixed bag. There’s some fun little touches but also a lot of bandwagon jumping and no real new idea here. I’ve played and joined the sweeps but not excited overall.

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POSTED IN: Branding, Consumer Packaged Goods, Fun and Games, User Generated Content