glen-martin
Dilbert and Lucy
posted Tuesday, 13 September 2005
I found myself referring recently to a really old Dilbert cartoon, so I wandered over to dilbert.com to look it up. It turns out they do have an archive, and a search function against that archive. After entering my search terms and refining them a few times I was down to 65 hits, but the next page wouldn't show them to me unless I became a $ubscriber.
I felt a little like Charlie Brown having the football yanked away by Lucy. You don't win friends by dangling a carrot and then pulling it away.
More, I was in no way compelled to subscribe when the search results had little apparent relationship to my search - I mean, if they could find 65 results for my query, I don't have much confidence that they're finding the one I want. When I clicked the Results link I was literally thinking "Well, let's see if what I want is there." Fat chance I'll pay for that.
So they've lost the referral my mention would have been. I don't make money on my blog. I'm never going to recoup a Dilbert subscription fee.
dilbert.com won't get value from me that way, and with this policy I can't show folks some older strips they'll never otherwise encounter, and incrementally improve the mindshare Dilbert has in the market. Advertise their subscription service or books perhaps*.
Because that's what logo placement does - advertise a product. I have to laugh when I see school kids wearing obvious logo placements for athletic shoes etc. They pay extra for the t-shirt that bears to logo, even though by wearing it they're doing a service for the manufacturer. The company in question should be paying them. Blows my mind. **
dilbert.com wants to sell books and daily strips and so forth. They could follow Google's lead and make small numbers of ad-hoc searches free, as Google does through their web service. Make the graphics link through to their other services. Or like Amazon Associates, which makes referrals and linking part of their business strategy.
* Oops. I just did.
** Note I'm trying very hard to not name any of the athletic shoe companies in question, at least until they pay my promotional fee. Paypal*** will do nicely.
*** Oops, I just advertised a large payment service ... doh! :)
I felt a little like Charlie Brown having the football yanked away by Lucy. You don't win friends by dangling a carrot and then pulling it away.
More, I was in no way compelled to subscribe when the search results had little apparent relationship to my search - I mean, if they could find 65 results for my query, I don't have much confidence that they're finding the one I want. When I clicked the Results link I was literally thinking "Well, let's see if what I want is there." Fat chance I'll pay for that.
So they've lost the referral my mention would have been. I don't make money on my blog. I'm never going to recoup a Dilbert subscription fee.
dilbert.com won't get value from me that way, and with this policy I can't show folks some older strips they'll never otherwise encounter, and incrementally improve the mindshare Dilbert has in the market. Advertise their subscription service or books perhaps*.
Because that's what logo placement does - advertise a product. I have to laugh when I see school kids wearing obvious logo placements for athletic shoes etc. They pay extra for the t-shirt that bears to logo, even though by wearing it they're doing a service for the manufacturer. The company in question should be paying them. Blows my mind. **
dilbert.com wants to sell books and daily strips and so forth. They could follow Google's lead and make small numbers of ad-hoc searches free, as Google does through their web service. Make the graphics link through to their other services. Or like Amazon Associates, which makes referrals and linking part of their business strategy.
Brand and placement play an important role in a book I'm reading (and enjoying) these days, William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, which nontheless has nothing to do with the content of this blog. Or this blog has nothing to do with it. Apart from mutual discussion of brand.
Quite by fluke, I ran into Gibson at one of my favorite physical bookstores, White Dwarf in Vancouver, a few years ago. He's a little intense, more than a little insightful, aware and thought-full. I enjoyed our brief conversation.
* Oops. I just did.
** Note I'm trying very hard to not name any of the athletic shoe companies in question, at least until they pay my promotional fee. Paypal*** will do nicely.
*** Oops, I just advertised a large payment service ... doh! :)
comments