Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

This morning, I was surfing.

I've been trying out a new Web browser called Flock, and I hadn't moved my bookmarks yet, so I had to actually type in the URL for this page I wanted to see. Of course, I fat-fingered it, and it turns out there's no Web page at the address I actually typed in.

But instead of getting what I would have expected (a message from my browser saying, "Address not found"), I got a big ole page full of ads from my friends over at Road Runner High Speed Online, which according to some tiny little text, was "powered by Yahoo! Search".

Now ostensibly, this was done to help me: "Obviously, you are new to this whole interwebs thing, so here's a helpful list of some folks who've paid us for keyword placement more-or-less matching up with that URL you just mis-typed. You're welcome!"

Except I didn't feel helped, I felt mystified... "Hey! This isn't that page I wanted... WTF is all this, then?" And then when I realized I had typed my URL in wrong, I was all like, "did the name I typed in resolve or didn't it? Why is Road Runner hijacking my browsing session? What else are they watching me do!"

It was like that briefly surreal moment when you're going to use your hotel's Wifi access: you type in Google's address, and you get something but it's clearly not Google, and you get that sort of "WTF just happened" vertigo right up until you realize it's just one of those cheezy, "agree to our TOS, and you can continue" pages.

But I digress.

So I'm sitting there looking at ads, and not knowing why. Lost. Why did this happen? Clearly, something more than just mis-typing has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Then I see, right next to the little "powered by" logo, a lifeline... a way out, hope of finding answers.

The link says, "Why am I here?"

No, seriously. That's what it says. "Why am I here?"

I click it without stopping to ask, "do I really want to know." Sure enough, I'm here basically due to Road Runner and Yahoo teaming up to turn my typing issues into a marketing opportunity. Lightning quick, my eyeballs parse out the words, "Preferences" and "opt-out", and they veto my brain before it has a chance to waste any more time reading lame rationalizations. I opt-out.

Whew! Order restored. See? Scooby-Doo-ian rational empiricism reveals that no matter how mysterious, there was always a perfectly logical explanation all along. And just as the Scoob has, himself, so often observed, my mystery's explanation had it's roots in simple greed. "Why am I here," indeed.

Naturally, my next step is to prove (empiricists like me and Scoob like proving things) that my opt-out preferences have been honored. So, confident that I will now see the familiar "Address not found" message, I type the URL back in, careful to mis-spell it the exact way I did before.

Except that's not what happens.

Instead of the "Address not found" page, I am once again assaulted by the jarringly unexpected - a big ole page full of ads, the Road Runner logo now replaced by the Flock logo! It turns out my new friends over at Flock have teamed up with Yahoo to turn my typing issues into a marketing opportunity... same "Sponsored Results", the same "powered by Yahoo! Search"!

The "scooby-dooby-doo" tune rolling through my head is immediately replaced by the Twilight Zone theme song and I slowly realize:  I am not Scooby-Doo, able to impose my rational expectations on my environment. I'm Burgess Meredith left (perhaps forever) to helplessly wander in the existential angst of, "Why am I here?"

Y'all, I am totally going back to Firefox.

Last week on their Internet Explorer blog, Microsoft celebrated the first anniversary of Internet Explorer 7's release by putting out a post touting IE 7's rapid uptake and tightened security.

Predictably, when this hit the blogwaves some experts jumped in to question a few rather dubious claims in the post. But the real news happened a few screens down in the comments section, where a deluge of scorn and frustration was heaped on the Internet Explorer team by the general public - the regular people who use and build the Web.

Microsoft is widely regarded as being pretty good at advertising and marketing it's products, but they've occasionally been conspicuously unable to perceive irony in their messages. Microsoft proclaimed they were fighting for their "Freedom to Innovate" in response to the U.S. Department of Justice's anti-trust action a few years back... action launched of course because Microsoft's monopolistic practices were squishing innovation . But it's one thing to ignore what your customers are asking for, then brazenly lead your marketing with, "We Heard You". It's quite another to bring that kind of thinking over to your corporate blog where unhappy customers are free to call you out.

Why were users upset? Well, consider that in the time since IE 7 was released...

Firefox went 2.0, and released beta versions of 3.0. Scores of extensions - a la carte features Firefox users add in to customize their browsing experience - have been improved or newly released this year.

 

Safari released 3.0 Beta, including a new version for Windows that feels lighter, faster and smarter than IE 7.

 

The strangely overlooked Flock released a 1.0 version. While IE 7 finally adds the same level of RSS support other browsers have had for years, Flock gets social media right, and is a glimpse of what IE might look like three versions from now.

 

Opera has committed support for next-generation technologies like HTML 5, SVG and future versions of JavaScript, while IE is still struggling to fix buggy, incomplete support for decade-old standards.

 

...And for the people who either want to or have to use IE, watching Microsoft let a year go by with no new improvements highlights lessons un-learned - not something to celebrate.

A special variety of animosity came from Web designers and developers who can't ignore IE because of it's broad market share, but are growing weary making Web pages for 2008 that have to work in browsers from 2001 (IE 6), and are frustrated with lack of progress in IE 7. Microsoft realizes it needs these people - what could MS have been thinking when they provided the time, place and catalyst to turn them into an angry mob? They might as well have handed out the pitchforks and torches!

You can learn from your customers with your corporate blog. When it's time for a mea culpa, your corporate blog might not be a bad place to put it out there (hint, hint). Your corporate blog can be a very powerful weapon in your communications arsenal, but as with any weapon, it's never a good idea to point it at your own foot.