I came across this site on the NYC subway. There was an odd looking ‘newspaper’ in the seat next to me so I picked it up. It looked like an old-school newspaper (pdf link) with the headline splashed across the front, Europe Is Shrinking, in big bold letters. I immediately folded it up and stashed it in my satchel (alright, who the hell carries a satchel anymore…well it just sounded right, what with the old-school newspaper and all.) When I got home I went to my computer and typed the designated URL into my browser. It took more than a few minutes to figure what the site was all about.
The site was written as a mock protest to high-speed trains in Europe, which, according to the site, will shorten travel times between European cities dramatically, effectively shrinking the conceptual space of Europe. You figure it out when you click the link in the navigation titled Don’t buy tickets here which leads to the RailEurope site. A few thoughts crossed my mind when I looked over the site and the newspaper.I first wondered why this was being marketed in New York City. I realize that NYC is the closest American city to Europe and arguably the most cosmopolitan, therefore probably very likely to to travel to Europe.
But when you reduce the demographic down to the people that can actually afford to travel to Europe you’re not likely to find many of them riding subways in NYC. (There are always exceptions to the rule but we’re talking numbers here and when you’re rolling out a massive ad campaign you’d better know your target demographic, if less than 5% of that number may buy your wares you’re not hitting the mark.)
I next wondered how this was going to beef up their internet presence. The site has the potential to go viral but, once again, only if your marketing to the right demographic. The humor is funny enough that if your got the site into the hands of the right people it could move. As it is now the site is 40+ days old, has no Page Rank and according to Yahoo Site Explorer it has 41 links pointing to it. Nothing to write home about. As an example, a site I’ve been watching since it started in mid-February, Mrs. Wordpress (a parody website about Wordpress), went viral in only a few days and even though it has not been updated in a couple of months garnered a PR 5 with 1300+ links pointing to it. If it was in fact the folks at Wordpress who started that site it was brilliant marketing, funny, irreverant and very tongue-in-cheek, precisely the kind of fodder web junkies eat up. They got it right, RailEurope unfortunately hasn’t. But they’re on the right track. A little more research might have served them well.
Stats:
PR 0
Alexa 2,657,116
Compete N/A
See the screenshots after the jump.
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