This is a great example of a site that’s almost entirely about the company and hardly at all about the customer.

Who comes to a Web site? Computer users. Now imagine if Pepperidge Farm had put tongue in cheek and created a site that was all about the cookies that several people here thought it was about anyway?

As for the reported cost involved? Egads — it’s like the mid-90s all over again. “Sure, we can build that for you for, oh, $760,000″ … ummm, can you sharpen your pencil? … “How about $430,000?”

And so it goes …

Regarding your comment about PF not needing to create a site of their own, but go where people already congregate, I liken that to getting a seat at someone else’s table. It’s necessary to be sure, but how much better to create a table of your own and invite others to join you. You know, a “niche” community.

Again, the issue here is the decided lack of anything social. PF ought to take Toby’s list of suggestions and implement, and perhaps they should go so far as to hire her to help them… and pay her a boat-load of money while they’re at it!

The problem was, Hallmark and McDonald’s had insanely loyal fan bases who actually paid attention to this stuff– and owner operators who had a slush fund to help pay for it. You could build a list of a million or two whose local store loyalty was worth the spend. No one cared about cereal, let alone Saran Wrap, that much. (Ironically we did get another client for whom this would have been perfect– the Disney parks– but by then it was no longer flavor of the month at Burnett and so they killed it all and moved on to forcing the next trendy answer down every client’s throat.)

So anyway, been there, done that. It works for a few brands. Most brands, nobody cares enough about you. Try something else.

I’m waiting for the high-end automotive site to tell me how I should vote.

Seriously Jeff, the people running the marketing departments of many of these companies (not just the agencies) are so far behind the curve, you’d probably explode if you were stuck in a conference room with them. I know I have!

Let me just say I LOVE Pepperidge Farm cookies. But I’d have to have a really bad case of the flu (you know, the kind that makes you exhaust all your desultory fooling around on the internet) to actually visit a cookie “social site.” Bond with friends over cookies? I’d rather eat them all myself (once I’m over the flu, of course!)

That is precisely what they are suggesting: that we go to the cookie site to get advice on friendship. And $2-3 million for one PR story would be damned expensive.

Honestly, I work in communications and being mocked by bloggers is really not that good for your brand. It makes them seem like idiots. Who wants to eat a cookie made by idiots?

And, I doubt very much it was a PR play. It really sounds like an ad agency who thinks sticking their client into the latest trend is a good brand strategy. Yikes. It was stuff like this that killed online advertising in the .com bomb days and it’s feeling just a little bit too much like the year 2000 to me (flashback – this could have been the cookie lovers destination site).

Oh and by the way, the only reason i clicked through from my feedreader to this story was I thought it was about tracking cookies, not edible ones. lol.

I’m sure of one thing, though. The agency will win another advertising award for such a “creative” advert. It makes me sick.

I think Stuart Elliot has made a spurious connection, more implied than literal, between Facebook, MySpace, etc. and the P. Farms site. To me, the “cookie” site is no different than a golf club manufacturer giving you tips about how to make business deals on the golf course or a SUV manufacturer giving you tips on off-roading destinations.

However, you make an excellent point: why on earth would I go seek out a cookie site? What’s going to draw me there? If I want to improve my relationships I’d be more likely to go to Sally Horchow’s site because she’s the expert at maintaining friendships, not the cookie maker. If anything, P. Farms should be paying Sally Horchow to put a link on her site to come to P. Farms to check out the content or they should get Sally to endorse them in a blog post, or something.

Good post – it really stimulated my thinking.

Facebook is intriguing but again it depends on the levers and filters – just cause my friend likes something does not mean that I do. At least they are trying to work from a new framework. I stil think they should have given me the user to turn all ADS off as default..;)