Half a birthday wish to the Vancouver Sun for its half-hearted attempt at its 100-year anniversary web pages. The paper celebrates its 100-year anniversary on February 12.
Being in a festive(?) mood, the Sun has put up a confused mess of sort-of
100-year-old web pages. Sadly, they didn't hire the good page designers.
One of the lead stories is about the Titanic sinking, "4 hours ago" on February 10, 2012. All other "100-year-old" stories are similarly misdated.
Wonderful opportunity lost, again.
How often does a business mark a 100-year anniversary? Without a calculator handy, I can only guess that it might happen once every 100 years or so.
So why not make it special?
Why not do something out of the ordinary? Why not do something unexpected?
Why not surprise the readers?
Hey I know, let's change the masthead and call it a day.
• Why not create a special micro-site? What's so special about the anniversary pages being identical to the rest of the site?
• The original paper was 24 pages. Why wasn't at least the front page reproduced, actual size, online?
• Why is the web site background a boring white and not a 3-D antique paper look?
• Why not use an older-looking font? (Hint: look at a copy of the 100-year-old paper).
• Why not re-create some 1912 pictures.
• For the 100-year-old news, why not script the time and date to offset by -100 years? If that couldn't be figured out then don't publish server time/date.
• Get rid of the utterly stupid auto-links to the totally irrelevant third-party web sites. A link to "Pippa's bum"?!?
• Get rid of all the distracting junk on the pages. Why destroy the effect?
• Kinda cool having a travel ad right next to a picture and story of the Titanic sinking. That should really boost business for the travel agency.
How much pre-notice was there that the 100th anniversary was coming? A couple of days notice? Maybe a few weeks? Maybe a few years?
So, why not work with advertisers to create "old" ads? Make advertisers part of the fun. Making advertisers part of the celebration will only strengthen the ties between paper and advertiser. But who wants that?
And most of all, why not make the readers part of the fun? Remember them??
Giving a few readers a free cupcake doesn't sound like too much fun.
It's too late now but:
• Make up some sort of contest with a "100" theme and give a $100 bill to each of the 100 winners, (lay-off a reporter to cover the cost
).
• Get the BC Lions to give away 100 season passes (or are all the seats sold out?).
• Have a contest to win a car for the 1912 price or for $100.
• Get kids involved: who can read aloud 100 words the fastest? Perhaps create some special 100-word news stories that can be read aloud. Of course, this might risk getting lots of TV coverage and who wants that?
• 100 passes to the zoo, the museum, the whatever-else-exists-in-Vancouver. 100 transit passes. 100 free pizzas. Go out and twist every advertiser's arm.
• Sunshine Girls dressed in 1912 swimwear. Oops sorry, wrong Sun.
• Free lunch for every 100-year-old person in town. Would hate to set a world record for having the most 100-year-olds in a room.
• Each school sets up a team of 100 students. The team that does the best one-day community service project wins free pizza lunch for a week (or whatever). (Example: teams clean up a park; help at a food bank, etc.) Of course, it'll be a tie and every team wins.
• Walking tours of Vancouver's historical sites. Bring your camera!
• Get readers to send in their favourite Vancouver memory from the past 100 years. (warning: this may create a ton of new story ideas for the paper, and who wants that to happen?)
• Get readers to write about the most important reason why they live in Vancouver (warning: this may create a ton of new story ideas for the paper, and no one wants that.)
• Get readers to describe what they want in Vancouver in the next 100 years.
• Find a few interesting families with a traceable 100-year (or longer) history in Vancouver.
• How many advertisers in the 1912 paper still exist today?
A little imagination goes a long way toward winning (and keeping) customers.
But then, who wants that?
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Added:
Here's how to do a 100th anniversary.
LL Bean is celebrating its 100-year anniversary:
special web site, special blog, lots of giveaways, lots of stuff for customers to do (no purchase necessary), opportunities for customers to send in their stories,
re-creation of 100-year-old pictures.
Sure, LL Bean has far more money than any newspaper but they sell to an international audience. Everything that store is doing can easily be done on a smaller budget for a local audience,
Topic: Many happy returns (Read 4533 times)