February 22, 2006
Join Bode.com for a Nike URL faux pas
Am I the only one who, tired and sluggish after watching hour-upon-hour of over-hyped-yet-sub-par American performances coupled with hours of inane Visa commercials featuring either Olympians who have withdrawn from the games or Lilliputian men ingesting Brobdingnagian burgers, has a bit of difficulty understanding directions? Am I the only one, festering with some strange schizophrenia of national pride coupled with a pervading sense of schadenfreude every time one of my countrypeople takes a showboating-digger or fails to meet the expectations we had been pre-conditioned to expect, finds it just a wee bit difficult to retain something like a URL?Did Nike even think about this? Did they do just the teensiest bit of market research? Did they even consider the brain-addled state of those in the grips of Olympic fever?
Well, okay, maybe I’m the only one who didn’t get. I’m willing to admit that. I am, after all, not always the slickest stone past the hogline.
What’s that? You’re still here? Oh, another commercial break, I see. Well, on with the story, gentle reader.
So, finally, after listening and listening, I acquiesced. I dragged my fatigued and deflated self over to my keyboard and begrudgingly, Olympic-fever quickly returning to 98.6 F, finally did succumb to the suggestions, and, like some brainwashed hotbox denizen, finally chose to join.
With careful fingers, I quickly typed in the URL that might sustain me. The URL I had been told join: bode.com.
But you see, here’s where it gets interesting. Because, I wasn’t actually supposed to go there. Because bode.com has nothing to do with Bode Miller. It has to do with Nationwide Commercial and Civil Litigation Lawyers Bode & Grenier, L.L.P.
You see, Nike wanted me to go somewhere else. But, like every other red-blooded American with an unpronounceable Eastern European name that’s watched a few too many hours of Bob Costas cracking wise, I don’t pay attention so good. So, even though I now realize that they must have been asking me to go to joinbode.com, at first blush, it just didn’t stick.
And this—for as much as they spent on the advertising campaign—ranks right up there with Mr. Miller’s performance in the Games, in my opinion.
Now, does it match the ineptitude of the Arlington Pediatric Center? Potentially. And it most certainly surpasses the strangely provocative Sunkist misspelling of its own name. Again, I quote Adam Sandler, "Who were the ad wizards who came up with this one?"
You see, here’s the thing. The campaign and the site? They planned for him to lose. Well, okay, maybe they didn’t plan for losses of this magnitude. But they compensated for it. So, if you go there (and I don’t necessarily recommend it, especially in your condition), you get to hear our boy Bode talk about how participation is as important as winning.
You see, for Bode it seems, it really is about the game. And I’d like to believe that. I’d like to believe that because he’s on the borderline of not even competing.
But you know what? Most of us will never get there. Why? Because we’re staring at bode.com wondering if there’s a lawsuit pending.
And that’s why the true failure of the whole Bode Miller campaign doesn’t really fall on the shoulders of his performance. The failure is really that of the ad wizards.
Technorati tags: Nike, Bode, bode.com, joinbode.com, BodeMiller, Olympics
Join Bode.com for a Nike URL faux pas
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