JC Penney, In The Doghouse, Epic Fail
Alisa Leonard-Hansen over at her blog, Socialized, rips apart very concisely, the new campaign from JC Penny called “Beware of The DogHouse.” She does it so well. A missed opportunity exposed in all its gory beauty. [In the Doghouse is a viral marketing campaign that allows women to put their significant other in the "Doghouse" for bad gift choices this holiday season.] Ach!!
Excerpt from Alisa’s post - Not only is the premise of the campaign utterly ridiculous and condescending–but at its center is what else…a microsite! A microsite, oh why didn’t we think of that before?! Ah, but wait, it gets better. They implemented Facebook Connect. Now, you’d think I’d be pretty excited about it as I’ve been covering FBC since it was first announced back in May of this year…ah, but marketers never fail me. So did they do something useful with the FBC implementation? No! They created this lame microsite and a game by which chicks can put their dudes in a doghouse and do so via Facebook Connect. So, you chose to use FBC to let girls pick Facebook friends/bf’s into some lame doghouse? Because that is super useful and makes much more sense than say, integrating FBC into the JC Penney online shopping experience and thereby including friend data (purchases, wishlists, etc) into the product merchandising model. No, that just makes too much sense. We’ll just stick with this awesome Doghouse thing…sweet!
Tags: In The Doghouse, JC Penney
December 4th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Well, that’s one opinion. I actually find it it be a great campaign. It’s funny. It’s being passed around. I think the use of the microsite works well (if it were a blog would it have been better).
I didn’t know JCP sold diamond rings. Now I do. I’d even go far as to say Epic Pass.
But we are all entitled to our own opinions. I appreciate yours.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
@Jim,
I think the point is that the campaign was an 1/8th of an inch away from being brilliant if those behind it had understood the idea of the web as entirely social not just parts of it. Facebook Connect was available, the marketers here failed to use it…they were going for viral but that’s the dog chasing its tail, pun intended.