Fused Nation - UK SEO Blog

Just noticed the new TV ad campaign by Orange prompts users to “search online for ‘I am’“. A little bit optimistic?

They do run a PPC campaign for the term, but with 1.1 billion competing pages, perhaps it wasn’t a great idea to include that particular step in the communication process?   The site does rank number 6 after a couple of Wikipedia entries and some other unrelated stuff.  What do you think?  Is it a good idea to tie in an ad campaign with a search result that you can’t really dominate?

I can see where prompting users to search online for a term may be a good idea - for example, brand searches (assuming you don’t have any negative PR floating around the place) - but for generic terms?  The Orange campaign isn’t as problematic as it could be - after all they aren’t prompting users to search online for “mobile phones” or any other competitive phrase (in terms of quality of the competition not the quantity).

All the same, it does open the door to competitors jumping on the bandwagon and capitalising on your campaign.

It’s a similar issue to choosing a unique domain name - you don’t want users to end up at competing sites with similar names (which is one of my main arguments against using keyword domains for high ££ campaigns - although I do appreciate that in cases the benefits can outweight the pitfalls).  It’s more of a personal preference for me - I grudge spending time and money on a campaign just for other people to come along and get a free ride!  I’m oddly principled at times!

I do like the idea of using search in different ways though - it’s good to see marketers pulling search marketing into their more traditional campaigns and I think on the whole, the I Am campaign won’t really offer Orange any problems (unless their competitors decide to plough some resources in messing with the SERPs).

I remember movie launches used to be tied in with “AOL keyword searches” which I always thought was a bad idea - popular films spawn fan sites and spam sites pretty quickly.  It’s down to how easily you can control the SERPs really - it’s not that tough to dominate the top 10 for a made up keyword if you really want to - I think marketers just need to appreciate the limitations of their control over the SERPs when the campaign is launched.

Scott