Hijackable Marketing

Back in the dark old days of the internet, Compuserve hoped to have everyone connect to the net via their service. Rather than all these horrible double-you double-yew double-ewe dot names you’d just have Compuserve keywords.

So you’d connect to the internet using the Compuserve software and then enter a keyword, say “finance”, to get to the relevant content.

I’m noticing more and more recently that advertisers seem to want us to go back to using keywords instead of website addresses.

Nintendo tell us in their recent advert “Search for DSI”. An advert for the new Monsters Vs Aliens film says to “go online and search for MVA”. Even the government are getting in on the act and telling us to search for “act on CO2”

What was wrong with just giving out a web address? Surely with this “search on…” approach you’re risking losing your traffic to a affiliate marketers or a competitor who is going to hijack your traffic with some good SEO?

Have I missed something or are advertisers just being very silly at the moment?

I’m attempting to hijack their marketing, but in a different way. Whenever you see an advert that uses this silly tactic, you’ll remember this blog post and think about KashFlows great accounting software : )