Georgia-Pacific Thinks People Care About Wood
This Georgia Pacific site, GPTimeMachine, is designed to show how long the companies products last by providing viewers a virtual time machine through which they can check out a house ten years into the future to see how it's holding up. Nice concept but the execution is extremely goofy and corny. So much so that it actually might be good though we remain undecided on that front.
This is one of those ingredient branding things that always makes us wonder why companies bother doing it. Obviously it must work or else Intel wouldn't still be doing it. Unless your a geek or a detail freak, you likely don't give a crap what sort of chip is inside your computer or what kind of wood is used to build your house. We could see this Georgia Specific thing being targeted at home builders but we'd really like to see what results come from this consumer-focused, ingredient-branding approach Georgia Pacific has taken. Do tell. Numbers please.
Comments
I have the fortune to be currently working on a brand extension website, and also wondered why they even bother.
I appreciate a site that solely entertains. Or one that provides quick, clear information about the product. But when these two areas start mixing, it makes me a little ornery.
Considering that I know better and don't believe the site I'm working on will be a "success," it is still moving forward. The machine is in motion, and these semi-ad sites are becoming a standard part of campaigns. For me, the cost and effort put into making it is isn't worth it.
Seems like these websites are going through the growing pains of early CD-based adventure games, complete with the bad green screen and puzzles just to get to content. In this way it fails at being either entertaining or informative.
Oh my, sorry about the weird double-spacing.
Nik, I completely agree. This site reminds me of those Journeyman games from Presto Studios. They were incredibly corny.. but they eventually lead to Myst III (which finally seemed to get the technology right). Hopefully sites like these will also lead to something much cooler..