DISQUS

Max Cameron · 4 months ago

I was in a town car last night coming home from the airport and I saw a billboard for something (i can't remember what) and it had a fairly prominent URL on it, and I remember thinking, "how stupid is this? Who is going to remember a URL while they're driving from point a to point b, and hopefully concentrating on the road?

If they had just put their name in a really big font, I might have remembered it. But then again, maybe not.

Andrew Lane · 4 months ago

I certainly agree that there's no perfect way to bring people from offline to online but this is where the idea of the value in short, memorable URLs come into play. With so many sites on the internet (and so many domain squatters) getting a short, memorable, relevant URL is just another challenge to holding consumer attention and bringing offline engagement online. The combination of a short URL and a memorable ad with the brand name prominently displayed is likely your best shot at retention, but seeing as how you don't even remember what the ad was for, it was likely something that wasn't speaking to you in the first place.

Of course, there's also the argument that billboards next to highways aren't the most effective media - as you pointed out, some of your concentration would've hopefully been focused on the actual act of driving!

Thanks for the comment!