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Letter From An Abandoned Campaign Microsite

This article is more than 6 years old.

Dear Web User,

My name is cleverphrase.com, and I’ve been live on the World Wide Web since June 22, 2007, 12:00 a.m. EST, although my unique visitor numbers trailed off on August 30, 2007 when the paid media campaign ended.

I was first created because of an important marketing initiative to drive demand for a chocolate candy brand during the hot summer weeks in America. My launch was driven by the TV spot airdate and a one-day homepage takeover on Yahoo! Sports.

I was built in Flash 8.1, cutting-edge for a rich experience. Once the entry page loads (ave. time is 45s), you can choose among five video clips, two of which are repurposed TV commercials and three created by the digital agency who insisted on original content. The TV team didn’t think they were very good, but let it go after an integration meeting and several eMarketer facts presented by the digital strategist.

Peppy stock music autoplays to 'enhance and extend’ your experience while browsing. 78.4% click the mute button. As a user, you can navigate to the witty manifesto, browse a photo gallery of behind the scenes, or enter the "Endless Summer Sweeps" for a chance to win a trip with three friends to Six Flags over Texas (obviously now a 404 error). The original plan included harnessing your computer's built-in camera to navigate hands-free with head movements (so you could eat a chocolate bar and explore), but production and timing problems arose and an eMarketer fact that only 22% of users had a built-in camera.

Other links lead you to Privacy Statement, Contest Rules, and the main brand site for more on the storied brand history and product ingredients. Be forewarned that site has a completely different navigation system and look-and-feel. The CMO wondered why the team wasn't using the existing brand site she had just paid $1.35 million to create, but the associate digital marketing director explained the templates wouldn’t work for the big creative idea and IT couldn’t get it up in time.

You cannot buy the chocolate bar directly through me or know where to actually find it, but I share the spirit of the brand and hopefully you are hungry and buy one the next time you’re in a store (preferably during the six weeks of our campaign window).

My cost was $675,800 which included digital agency hours for design, writing, information architecture, project management and development, but did not include: the general brand agency advisory hours which came out of a retainer; the site hosting which came out of IT's budget; or the $224,500 for Flash display banners, backup GIFs and the one-day homepage takeover on Yahoo! Sports, which came out of the media budget. Sadly, I do not help our search ranking, having been built in Flash.The banner ads, which earned a .054% CTR, may also get in touch.

My results: I have welcomed 431,000 unique visitors and average time spent has been 2.5 minutes. 41,500 entered the sweepstakes although only 7.5% were found to be among the desired target audience. The rest were people who consistently enter online sweeps. While there are no clear benchmarks or ROI, for a time people felt good about me and the digital agency entered me in more than 12 interactive award shows, four of which I made bronze or finalist. Sales of the brand were up slightly during the initial period. On the awards entry form, it said I paid for myself.

The marketing director is now at a cookie brand, the project manager works at Google, the art director is in-house at a client, and the copywriter is in management consulting. It is not clear how, and who is paying for me, but I am still here.