Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

What Men Need to Know

by Rachel on May 14th, 2008

I’ve been getting quite a few emails from the people behind the site What Men Need to Know. They’ve published a few videos promoting the new site that goes live on May 21.

This is what they say about the site:

covering men’s lifestyle comprehensively but not taking it, or ourselves, too seriously Trust us, that will stand out. So, to wrap up, what do men need to know? You tell us.

A couple of things stand out about it:

• Each email has an ‘unsubscribe link’, the site has a ’sign up for more details’ option. So somehow I’ve got onto their email database without ever subscribing, as I never use the b5media address for these things. The subscription opt-in reads “By submitting my e-mail address I agree to receive a weekly newsletter from whatmenneedtoknow.ca”. What this means is that some PR agency added me to the list without my permission. Now, don’t me wrong, I’m happy to hear about these things, but direct from the agency, not by being subscribed to the list.
• The emails make assumptions. Don’t tell me “Hilarious youtube campaign cont’d”. You’re assuming I’ll find the video hilarious, all it could do is confirm to me that the site has a crap sense of humour. The 4 videos, the first one put up 3 weeks ago, have had 1608, 308, 166, and 76 views as of today. This tells me that not many other people think they are hilarious. Actually, it tells me something else - the firm behind this push on the videos does not really know what they are doing, so they do things like sign up people to mail lists The videos are mildly funny, they’re just not getting the promotion on YT. If this is how the pre-marketing is going, the site will need a lot of help.
• The email says “Our site will be fully interactive.” WTF??? A single page with one video on it is ‘fully interactive’ with respect to the content. What do they mean by this? It’s a useless piece of information that means nothing and just serves to confuse.

Nothing is working well so far. I may have a look next week (when, no doubt, they’ll send me another email with the news that the ‘hilarious’ site is online) and see if it is really as bad as I think it may be.

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POSTED IN: Buzz Marketing, Pitches