Traffic from Mountain Dew's "Stay Sharp" Campaign

Looking for the Mountain Dew's "Stay Sharp" website?
Visit StaySharp.tv to view the Mountain Dew MDX commercials and the answers.

Otherwise - read on...

An earlier post about this TV campaign has inadvertently drawn much organic search engine traffic from people looking for the commercials and answers online. Hence the link to the StaySharp.tv site above.

Web analytics reports for this blog show these are traffic-driving StaySharp-related keyword phrases for the past week (most to least popular):

1. mountain dew stay sharp
2. stay sharp mountain dew
3. staysharp.tv
4. stay sharp tv mountain dew
5. staysharp.com
6. mountain dew stay sharp test
7. mdx stay sharp test
8. stay sharp mdx
9. staysharp.com+mountain dew
10. staysharp, mountain dew
11. mountain dews stay sharp tv
12. mountain dew mdx stay sharp test
13. mt dew sharpness test
14. mountain dew sharp test
15. mountain dew- how sharp do you feel
16. staysharp-mountain dew
17. stay sharp dew
18. staysharp tv
19. staysharp tests
20. mountain dew staysharp.com
21. stay sharp test dew
22. stay sharp test mountain dew
23. www.staysharp.com dew
24. mountain dew (stay sharp tv)
25. staysharp
26. mdx stay sharp commercials
27. stay sharp, mountain dew
28. mountain dew stay sharp
29. stay sharp answer, mdx
30. stay sharp tv- mountain dew
31. staysharp.tv
32. mountain dew stay sharp commercials
33. answer at sharp dew
34. mountain dew + staysharp.com
35. stay sharp mt. dew
36. stay sharp pizza
37. mountain dew, stay sharp
38. staysharp dew
39. mdx mountain dew-stay sharp
40. mountain dew stay sharp
41. mountain dew - stay sharp
42. mt dew "stay sharp"
43. mdx stay sharp
44. sharpness test mountain dew
45. mountain dew mdx stay sharp
46. stay sharp tv and mountain dew
47. stay sharp,tv,mountain dew
48. stay sharp sharp mountain dew .tv
49. stay sharp+mountain dew
50. stay sharp mt dew
51. staysharp .com
52. staysharp mdx

This list is varied in phrasing, spelling and combinations, which will be of no surprise to SEOs. And as predicted, I wasn't the only one who didn't see the .tv extension in the commercial. The keyword list above shows others also searched on staysharp.com (granted some may have been looking for Stay Sharp Diamond Tools, but I don't think so because this was over a holiday weekend).

My blog post isn't the only listing pushing staysharp.tv down on the search engine results page (SERP). If you search on mountain dew stay sharp on google.com, staysharp.tv is 4th on the SERP. It's a very short listing, easy to miss. The listing immediately below in 5th place is a forum for discussing commercials that viewers hate. Here's a short snippet of the SERP:

What should be done to increase StaySharp.tv's ranking?
More strategically placed keywords, for starters:

1. Revise the HTML page title for StaySharp.tv to include words people are searching on and will recognize; such as "Stay Sharp with Mountain Dew MDX" or "Get answers for Stay Sharp Mountain Dew MDX commercials".
2. Add a description metatag that includes the keyword phrases above, in a way that makes sense to readers. This will add a couple of teaser lines below the staysharp.tv SERP listing, making it more visible and noticeable.
   
3. Add more keyword-rich HTML text to the landing page,which is mostly flash and images. This text can be inserted lower on the page (below the flash movie) and still be effective for search engines.
   

I also suggest buying some pay-per-click search engine ads to handle the spelling variations in Stay Sharp, mt dew and corral unusual phrases such as "mt dew sharpness test".

This case shows once again the importance of thinking through (e.g. using personas), testing campaigns that require your viewers to do something while the campaign unfolds, and then checking to see what actually happened.

• How likely will events unfold just as you planned?
• What might derail your plans (your viewer) and cause unplanned outcomes?
  (This is why major brands kitchen-test the recipes they post on their websites)
• Check your Web analytics direct access, search and referrer stats for surprises.
  What potholes developed that you didn't foresee?
  What are you going to do about them?

Comments?

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Before closing... If you found the above useful, you may want to read about another interesting case of what can happen when marketers haven't thought enough like their customers, Bell Beavers, Frank and Gordon, on OneDegree.ca.

Since early 2006, Bell has used two nutty beavers, Frank and Gordon, in many of their campaigns. On the Internet. On TV. On the backs of buses.

Bell registered the URL frankandgordon.ca but not gordonandfrank.ca. OneDegree registered gordonandfrank.ca and redirected it to onedegree.ca. As recently as three weeks ago, the URL gordonandfrank.ca, which leads to onedegree.ca, is still the "most requested article" on OneDegree.ca.

Read about what Frank and Gordon have taught us, on OneDegree.ca.

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June Li
ClickInsight

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Tag you're it! Blog-Tag and the 5 Things Meme

Blog-Tag or the 5 Things Meme is the blog version of a chain letter. Share 5 things about yourself that few people know about, and then tag 5 others.

I've been tagged by Kathryn Lagden. I'm curious about where this leads and what I can learn from it, so here goes:

1. Before landing in Canada, I lived in England and Malaysia.
2. Because of my travels, I assume accents a bit too easily, sometimes without realizing it. Send me to Houston for a week and I'll come back speaking like a Texan.
3. I belong to Toastmasters, a hilarious club called the Phoenix Toronto Toastmasters.
4. I haven't been to Toastmasters recently because my 2 daughters play competitive ringette at the top level for their age group, and we spend 3-4 weeknights in ice arenas plus weekends in tournaments. I could write a book about "Ice arenas in Southern Ontario".
5. Stealing a great idea from Avinash Kaushik, my Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is eNTp (extraverted-intuition-thinking-perceiving).

...and I tag Robbin Steif, Braden Hoeppner, Melissa Bernais, Stephane Hamel, and Nima Asrar Haghighi.


June Li
ClickInsight

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Mountain Dew's "Stay Sharp" isn't Sharp

Have you seen the Mountain Dew "Stay Sharp" ads on TV? A series of quick-changing visuals are shown, and at the end of a spot, you're asked a question to test how sharp your powers of observation are. For example, "how many pieces of pizza did you see?" To find out if your answer is correct, you have to go online and the ad flashes you a vanity URL.

At first, I thought, here's an offline drive to online campaign that's measurable!

Cool! So I went online. I recalled a URL containing StaySharp, but didn't remember exactly what it was. Here's where the fun starts.

I go to www.staysharp.com. Wrong site! This site is about diamond tools for cutting rock!

Next stop, Google.
I searched on staysharp.
Nothing appears that looks like Mountain Dew on the organic side of the results page.
And not a single PPC ad.

OK, how about staysharp mountain dew?
No PPC ads.
No title with "Stay Sharp" shown above the fold.
And then I see MountainDew.com with staysharp in the description. I click and I don't see the words StaySharp. Browser back to Google.
Then, I see in the 2-line description that the URL is staysharp.tv.
I don't recall seeing the .tv extension on TV.

Given my experience, activity from direct access to staysharp.tv may be much lower than Marketing expected.

If this ad was audience-tested, they probably didn't do a broad enough audience-experience/usability test. When a URL without .com is used and you expect people to remember a URL, it's always a good idea to place some PPC ads to trap spelling mistakes and compensate for distracted, faulty memories like mine. Else great creative could be wasted.

I went back to the home page for mountaindew.com, and I did finally find the link to staysharp.tv. It's the 7th and last in the list of Brands. The print is tiny. I didn't recall that the Mountain Dew brand was MDX, so the graphic was meaningless to me.

Perhaps not being sharp, I wasn't their target audience, but then isn't that the point of Mountain Dew MDX? You need MDX to stay sharp.

June Li
ClickInsight

P.S. And I'll bet that traffic to Stay Sharp Diamond Tools is inexplicably higher than normal, albeit with a high entry bounce rate.

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CaseCamp Second Life - Outstanding!

I posted earlier that I'd signed up with Second Life and created my avatar, Junius Paravane, so that I could attend CaseCamp Second Life. Junius was lucky to be one of the 40 to score an invitation in a random draw.

Tonight was the big night! Awesome event! A lot of work went into getting the Crayonville Amphitheatre ready for CaseCamp. Kudos to Bryan, Kate, CC, and Eli for pulling it together so quickly. Audio quality (by Lynette Radio) was crystal clear.

Many photos of the event are on Flickr. Four presentations by:

• Doug Walker (SL avatar Chad Huffines, photo on Flickr), World RockPaperScissors (RPS) Society, talked first. Unfortunately, I missed most of the presentation because I couldn't find the audio play button (it's labelled 'music'). And then I didn't figure out how to make the presentation screens less fuzzy until the start of the 2nd presentation. Luckily, Bryan was manning chat and giving technical assistance to us SL newbies. However, I did learn from Doug that against men, throw paper and against women, throw rock. Doug asked all avatars to do a RPS, and we did so. And most of us had figured out how to clap by the end of the talk.

• Michael Seaton (SL: Twain Chamberlain), Scotiabank, talked about a viral campaign for Scotiabank and the Ottawa Senators. Did it pay out? Yes - Scotiabank brand awareness rocketed from 4th (last) to 1st in the Ottawa area.

• John Wall (SL: Funk Barbecue) shared his learnings about optmizing seven factors in a Google Adwords campaign for AccuRev. Keep tweaking and measuring and you'll ramp up your ROI.

• Eli Singer (photo - who was Eli's SL avatar?) talked about World Wildlife Federation's recent (Nov. 2006) black balloon "Save Our Climate" event in Toronto. Pulled together in two weeks, photos were posted on posted on Flickr and YouTube videos created. Resulting publicity and blog coverage exceeded expectations. YouTube videos are still being viewed today.

Folks participated from India, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Canada and elsewhere.

Since Kathryn Lagden of AIMS was one of the 58 who did not receive an invitation because of SL technical limitations, we rigged up a way for her to observe. I fed Kathryn real-time visuals using GoToMeeting and audio with a good old speaker phone.

Outstanding CaseCamp! Definitely will sign up for the next. Maybe next year, a SL Web Analytics Wednesday?

June Li
ClickInsight

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Web Analytics AIMS Event in Toronto Filled to Capacity

Over 100 people attended the recent AIMS event, "Web analytics: Make the connection between your marketing spend and the bottom line". A diverse audience of not only frontline marketers but many from the "agency side" - traditional marketing agencies, SEOs, SEMs, CRM data miners, information architects, usability experts, web site developers and designers, and Web analytics vendors.

Sponsored by WebTrends, this was the first event staged by the AIMS Web Analytics Council, formed earlier this year (read announcement).

Two presenters, Steven Goldhar of Sundance Media and Sulemaan Ahmed of SearsTravel.ca showed how they used Web analytics to first find areas in need of a boost in conversion and then to gauge the improvement in the changes they made. In between these the two case studies was a session by Alan K'necht of K'nectology about why hits are meaningless, and how to extract meaningful insight from data in spite of inaccuracies.

Here's a recap of the event on onedegree.ca...

June Li
ClickInsight

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Beware the Hidden Costs of Switching Web Analytics Products

Web analytics applications are tools. And like many tools, there can be significant hidden switching costs. Forget Web analytics for a minute and think about cell phones. When you get a new cell phone, there’s more cost than just the cost of the phone. You have to buy new accessories, learn how to work the phone, download all your ring tones again, perhaps reenter your entire phonebook manually, and get used to the fact that the buttons do different things (I hate it when “send” and “end” are reversed!). These are your switching costs.

Getting back to Web analytics, are there good reasons to switch Web analytics products? Yes. You’ve outgrown the existing product you’re using. As with any other business tool, business strategy changes can lead to new requirements, and the business outgrows the tool. For example, it may be time for tighter integration between CRM, Web analytics and Business Intelligence processes. When this happens, the Web analytics tool may have to be upgraded, or a new tool sought out.

However, if there isn’t a business strategy change that’s triggered new requirements, and you just feel that you aren’t getting the insight you need from your reports, call your vendor account representative before you switch. This is especially recommended if your Web analytics tool is a “purchased” server side (definition) Web analytics version rather than a hosted service. There may be newer software versions from the same vendor with exactly what you need, or perhaps the capability is there and training is what's required. If you do have to upgrade, there will be upgrade costs, but these will often be less troublesome than switching costs.

One organization that I recently talked to was considering new analytics software because they wanted clickmaps (clickmaps are Web page overlays that show an image of the page, with percentages indicating how many visitors clicked on each link). Because this organization had not contracted for a maintenance agreement, they were not receiving updates when the Web analytics product evolved. They didn’t know that newer versions of the product did in fact provide clickmaps as a standard feature. By upgrading instead of switching, this organization will be able to get clickmaps and keep the knowledge they previously gained with the older tool.

If you’re using a Web analytics application hosted by a 3rd party, the switching costs are even higher. Consider the investments you’ve made:

1. Each page on your site is coded (tagged definition) with the JavaScript from your current vendor. If you switch vendors, you’ll have to replace existing script with new JavaScript. It’s not unusual for tagging rules to be different for different vendors, which means a new set of rules that your technology folks have to learn. Inappropriate tagging will lead to lost, unrecoverable data, which can be very costly.

2. You’ve invested in training your Web analysts to analyze data using your current application. Re-training is needed, and there may be a lag in reporting quality and analytical dexterity until they come up to speed.

3. You may have to re-tag all your ads and inbound links from other sites. Forget to do this and campaigns may be untrackable.

4. You have built up site traffic history, which you’ll lose when you move.

With Google Analytics being available free, some organizations have thought of moving away from their paid hosted applications to Google Analytics. It may be the right decision but make sure you count switching costs in your evaluation.

So if you are dissatisfied with your current Web analytics reports, before you abandon ship, call the representative from your Web analytics vendor and find out what can be done to improve the situation to give you more useful and meaningful reports that you can take action on. If it’s been a long time since you talked to a vendor rep, call the vendor’s toll-free sales line, explain to them you’re considering switching and I’m sure they’ll have someone contact you pronto.

Also posted on the AIMS blog. Thoughts anyone? Feel free to comment here or on the AIMS blog.

June Li
ClickInsight

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