Product Site Worst Practice: Geberit

Someone just asked me: “Hey, you wanna blog about a really bad user experience?” and I said: “Not really.” But after I saw this, I couldn’t help it, because missed brand engagement opportunities make me mad.

This is a Microsite for Geberit, makers of Bathroom applicances. They are trying to introduce the Japanese way of, you know, cleaning up after you are done with your business. Any creative would have had a field day with this briefing. Instead, what this brand ended up with is a stale, boring, marketing-speechy, product website that is neither engaging nor credible. No pun intended, but this looks too watered down to make this something people would want to send on to others.

Compare this to the Philips Shave Everywhere campaign. Personal grooming for men: also not an easy topic for brands to dare make engaging. Brand managers at Philips could have argued that the concept for the site http://www.shaveeverywhere.com/ was way too racy or impromper. They didn’t, and they won lots of awards, and more importantly: the site became viral. Geberit missed the chance to make this a fun, engaging experience. And don’t come to me with: oh yeah, but the target audience is older and more conservative. Conservative people are folders or crumplers, too. That’s an insight for you, right there. What a shame.

Earth Hour: Switch off your lights for earth

To raise awareness, in 2007, our Leo Burnett colleagues in Sydney came up with Earth Hour, getting local government, the press and the residents and businesses of Sydney to switch off the lights for 1 hour. Because great ideas are worth repeating, 2009 will hopefully see another earth hour. By now, the concept has been exported to a whole bunch of other cities, and we hope that it catches on in Europe too.

Sign up now.

Download February Cultural Fuel Newsletter

It’s late, but still juicy:+

Download February Cultural Fuel Newsletter

Using Wii remotes to do, like, awesome stuff

I’ve been watching Johnny Lee for a while on youtube. Now this stuff might be inspiring only to the techy readers of this blog, but I certainly dig it quite a lot because it gives you a source for an number of new ideas of what you can do technology.

Johnny shares practical and prototypical ideas and uses of standard Consumer Electronic equipment, for free for everyone to innovate with. Here are three examples of him using the Nintendo Wii remote to do new things.

Johnny, you rock!

Cultural Fuel Newsletter January

Download the January release of Culturalfuel. Many creative cases and insights await you.

Right click to download.

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Cultural Fuel mentioned Adage Power 150

In a recent article “A journey through the Power 150″ by The Herd, we were mentioned as one of the movers. So thank you to all our readers who apparently appreciate our post.

Cultural fuel by Leo Burnett’s Frankfurt office. Filled full of good info. You can also download their monthly newsletter.

We’ll be continuing strong with our blog in 2009.

http://www.thisisherd.com/2009/01/journey-through-ad-age-power-150.html

Season’s greetings from Culturalfuel.com

The team at Leo Burnett Frankfurt thanks you for your interest in our blog in 2008, and wishes you a happy holiday season, and great start into 2009.

We will be back with more in January.

Download Cultural Fuel Newsletter November/December

Hi y’all!

The last newsletter for 2008 from Culturalfuel is ready for download. This time, we bunched December in with November, so there is tons of stuff to see.

Download Now!

Poll question: Christmas Shopping

As the days are ticking away until we all have to look good under the chrismas tree, gift-wise, we were wondering how many of you outsource the burden to shopping for gifts online.

Mr. Burnett on Twitter

Using twitterfeed, we now revived Leo Burnett, the man and installed a blogbot called Mr. Burnett. You can now follow Mr. Burnett on twitter and receive news and posts from different Leo Burnett offices.

Enjoy!

http://twitter.com/mr_burnett

Thank you, Matthias for setting it up!