Of course a part of your constituency will be made up of people that don’t go online at all. As a company your actions need to be as inclusive as they can be otherwise you run the risk of disenfranchising some of your customers.

Adding media and maintaining interactions in social networks is relatively easy. If we can do it on an individual level then a company should be able to in the very least update a YouTube account by uploading a video. It’s pretty much one click of a button. Their agency should have given them the optimized small version of the commercial just for that reason.

That’s my main gripe. Uploading is as easy as clicking a button. There’s no excuse not to have it up on the default video website.

Maybe some of my friends didn’t think to look it up online right away, but they soon will. Digital and social media interactions will become more and more apart of more people’s lives as things become easier and more ubiquitous. NOW is the time to prepare oneself for when going to online becomes a part of all of what we do.

Damien Basile’s last blog post..Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-29

Damien, LOVED this quote: “Good marketing is invisible. Bad marketing makes me work. Good marketing creates fans. Bad marketing destroys relationships.” (RT’d it on my twitter account actually.)

The thing I do agree with it that the campaign wasn’t congruent AND it wasn’t set up to go viral. Potential Macy’s evangalists, such as Damien, didn’t have that THEY needed to pass on the feel-good meme.

We’ll never have such good marketing as the fans of our business provide. Serve them and they’ll serve your business.

~ Mark

It’s unfortunate Macy’s has not only abandoned their YouTube Channel, but that they would let it rest online in such a poor state. It’s very hard for me to accept this as Macy’s official YouTube Channel. Surely this wasn’t their effort?

If that YouTube Channel does indeed belong to Macy’s, it is simply fascinating to me that a big brand (one that wouldn’t dare send out a print ad that doesn’t perfectly resonate with their image) would put so little effort into their YouTube presence. It’s inconceivable.

“When a consumer doubts the veracity of your presence that is an instant brand fail.” – Exactly!

And when you get the branding presence just right, you can achieve great results (even if you aren’t officially backed by the company – http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135238).

Asma’s last blog post..Is Behavorial Advertising Ethical?

If that‘s the case however and they could care less about extending a feelgood vibe to the net, then it shows how elitist a brand it is and how irrelevant it will become unless it adapts. (And there are plenty of ways to extend that piece online, from stories of each historical mention to consumer contests, to linking up with the Coke spot with the parade ballons from last year. Basically, stuff to get people interested and engage them more. This isn’t hard to do, yet too many brands are clueless about it.)

It’s amazing that people still put all their money into a :30 to get major talent like Macy’s did only to leave huge gaps in the online execution. There are functional lapses like this on a lot of brand sites though, not just Macy’s.

(Most recent example is the Pepsi sxsw site. Nice attempt, but their Twitter stream/aggregator flew by and only allowed you to read updates and not have any way to search, favorite or share something you saw. The whole point of this stuff is conversation and exchange of ideas, right? In addition, none of the interviews with people were streamed live [Ustream, etc.,] or even archived to live on their site after it was over, unless you caught the Blogtalk radio bits. Forget marketing, that’s just basic UX. ;-p

It was only after I wasn’t able to watch it again online or share it with my friends that I started thinking like a marketer. All I want to do is extend that good feeling that you gave to me with the commercial. When you disrupt my experience you step into a very dangerous zone that gets me thinking about your brand instead of feeling your brand. I felt good about Macy’s until I couldn’t share my feeling with my friends.

Saying that 99% of their consumers out there wouldn’t search the web for their commercial is a gross overgeneralization. If THAT was true they would have no need for a website at all. Yet Macy’s does have a website and is promoting a make a VIDEO contest on their site. They obviously think their consumers are savvy enough to create a digital video and upload it. That’s savvier than a lot of people who just use the web for email and search.

Good marketing is invisible. Bad marketing makes me work. Good marketing creates fans. Bad marketing destroys relationships.

I wasn’t the biggest Macy’s fan before but because of this commercial I wanted to be. I wanted to tell all my friends about my new found respect for them by sharing the cool thing I saw, which in turn may have made fans & customers out of them as well. I might have been so cool that I would have shown my friends their commercial on my iPhone while I was with them in person. None of that happened.

In the end all that matters is the bottom line. I was driven enough to devote my time to write an article about it when I could’ve used that time to promote Macy’s by sharing the video with my friends. I won’t do that now so Macy’s has ultimately lost out on potential customers and that’s the bottom line- making money.

Now you know the ad had to be produced by an agency, no?

And they haven’t yet pitched Macy’s on the reasons why their campaigns need to be unified across all media?

And if that pitch failed, they didn’t at least ask for the social media contacts at Macy’s to get their work posted on the official, YouTube and Facebook pages?

Shameful.