Myspace gets page-raped. Skinning gone mad!
Skinning (or page rape as we like to call it) seems to be all the rage right now. Everyone’s getting in on the act. Occasionally you see it done well with seamless integration, a relevant brand and a genuine contextual reason for being there. But more often than not, the ad placements are just plain wrong and butt ugly.
Below is a case in point which is currently live on Myspace. It’s difficult to know what the product is, but more importantly, does ramming it down the throats of the average teenager they are most likely targeting mean they give a shit? And what does this say about the Myspace brand, when they are basically prepared to sell the homepage completely to get the $ across the line.
I’ll get shot down in flames for saying it, but this kind of product just belongs on TV, or at the very least in an ad where it’s attributes can be effectively communicated (whatever the hell they are????).
To me this in indicative of a bigger problem within digital. Creatively the options available are still limited to commodotised 728×90 or 300×250 banner ads, skins or takeovers or mega-annoying TVC’s in a pop-ups. For digital to take a bigger share of TV spends for categories like FMCG, we need to find a better, less tacky and ultimately more effective way of driving brand and product awareness.
3 Responses to “Myspace gets page-raped. Skinning gone mad!”
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This is just a poor creative execution.
Background skinning / takeovers are great ways to bring branding campaigns alive online in my view. I definitely disagree they are ‘page ra…’ No…I can’t even type that phrase!
As with all advertising, execution is critical and this was just poor execution.
This is a great execution of one:
http://talkingdigital.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/screenshot1436.jpg
(via http://talkingdigital.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/great-target-takeover-on-gawker/)
I completely agree that when done right skinning can deliver. My criticism of the Myspace execution was based on relevance, context and the branding’s share of page real estate going way too far.
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