Yellow-freaking-chocolate

Right, well I thought it was about time I put my thoughts to this Yellow Chocolate... thing.

I haven't been much of a fan of this campaign since the beginning and you can find out in full, why here or I can give you the quick version:

• They are doing an advertising campaign, a lot of which is driving to their online product, for a product that leaves little to be desired
• Awesome ideas integrating twitter (banner ads and twitter billboards) which as far as I can tell, didn't actually work
• Bad links & a slow loading website

So that was what I thought was wrong with it back in October.

Reasons I am still not a fan of the campaign.

I understand that this is pretty niche and probably cost Yellow a lot of money, but only going with progressive for distribution? Uncool. Way too hard for me to get my hands on the product and it's not interesting for me to go out of my way to get.

The end product (Yellow online) is still shite and what is worse, is that they have a total monopoly on this market in NZ and we don't have a choice. Now, in Hazel's piece in NBR back on 12 Feb there is a quote from the marketing manager about this: "We're a print-based product that's been trying to become a digital media brand and it takes time. It's not just as simple as an IT person going in and fixing it."

THIS bugs the living daylights out of me. The internet is not a new contraption that came along last year that everyone is trying to come to terms with. The internet has been here for a while now, and there was obviously a decision at some point to take Yellow online. This may be a case of, 'we'll have an online presence because we need one' however, the end product, should have been fixed a long, long time ago. I agree, it is not a matter of an IT person going in and fixing it. It is a matter of paying one of the many, many talented people in NZ who can make this product as good as it can be and giving them a slice of your pie.

I was going to continue to rant and rave about this campaign (you know, the people that I have talked to that have tasted it have not exactly raved about it - that it was way too sweet etc. or the fact that there is way too much yellow food colouring in our food as it is, like we need anymore) but instead I am going to make a call. Its a biggie. I hope you are ready for it. I'm going to make a comparison.

Yellow and Telecom XT.

Are you ready for this?

- Both nationwide services

- Both have something of a monopoly on the market

- Both should be providing customers with the best possible service

- NEITHER are delivering to a level they should be

- Both have products which are broken

- Both spent a pretty penny (and if you think about the turnover for each company, we're talking relative comparisons here) on advertising campaigns which only appealed to a niche audience: Hammond & XT - Top Gear fans; Josh & Yellow - teenage girls (this is a quote from Ms Nathan, Yellow's marketing person, in the 11 Feb issue of The Independent) when they really could have invested in advancing their technology rather than deciding they were 'good enough'. Did they decide that they were good enough? Or did they just give up?

So there you go. I have had a number of hits to the blog with people searching 'yellow chocolate'. Now, I'm not sure if this was the kind of information that they were looking for, or if they are searching for bars on sale online. None of that here kids. Just opinions. My opinions. That's the way I roll.

For the record - this is how big the Internet is:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Really big.