Microsite.com

In yesterday’s post I expressed my disappointment in Chevy’s “Car Wash” Microsite because it’s basically the same thing OfficeMax did on its “ElfYourself” Microsite two months ago. The moral of the story is that if you want to gain online traction, you should have content that’s exclusive, novel and have a certain edge. Even tweaks on someone else’s novel idea can catapult an effort to mass-appeal nirvana – hell, it worked for Shakespeare and Walt Disney.

Hewlett Packard’s newest Microsite, “Ride a Chopper with the OCC Crew,” at first appears to be similar to the “Car Wash” Microsite, which is just like OfficeMax’s “ElfYourself” Microsite. (By the way, I overuse the term Microsite for SEO purposes. Sorry for the annoyance.)

But it’s not the same in important tweaky ways that lead it to the Microsite/Viral Promised Land.

The HP effort, like the Chevy effort, is an extension of its Super Bowl commercial, which is part of its marketing campaign “The Computer is Personal Again.” At the HP Microsite, you can ride with the Orange County Choppers crew from “American Chopper.”HP Microsite

San Francisco-based Personiva again provides the impressive technology that runs the Microsite.

In a Chicago Tribune article, Barbara Camozzi, HP’s interactive marketing manager for personal systems group, explains, “We thought [Personiva] had very engaging technology that allowed us to extend the campaign through a viral marketing message that was fun.”

Ha! That’s it. That’s why the HP Microsite is fun and the Chevy site is very not fun.

In the same Tribune article, Kelly O’Neill, Chevy’s advertising manager, got all strategery-like on us – talking about how the technology and execution fit the Chevy brand, yada, yada. Hey, you’re putting a goofy cutout of your face on somebody’s body. That’s not brand building. That’s just goofy fun.

Ms. Camozzi, of course, got it right in her quote. The damn thing is fun. Goofy fun. Nothing more. So she clearly granted her agency broad creative freedom with the directive to be unique and fun – the same way “ElfYourself” was bizarre and fun. The art direction is surreal, yet approachable with nice we-don’t-take-ourselves-too-seriously touches throughout.

I put my seven year-old’s headshot on a biker and watched him cruise around in a video with a bunch of tough-looking bikers. My son appears Forrest Gump-like (or Zelig-like, which I thought of first before I realized it really dated me) in various scenes, even popping up unexpectedly on a billboard. The technology even has his eyebrows move and appears to increase the size of his smile. I love the fact the head bounces. The whole thing made me laugh. I could also personalize everything from the billboards and jacket to the helmet. When the video was over, I wanted to show somebody. It didn’t change the world. I didn’t rush out and buy an HP computer. It just made me want to show somebody. And it made me think HP was pretty cool. Almost as cool as Apple. Well, now I’m getting goofy.