Ampex Ad Headline a Wee Bit too Wee

Man bites dog, that’s news – as is the debut of a highly promising improvement in a product or service. So let ’em know

I have seen the future, and it doesn’t quite work – yet.

But the folks at iNEXTV.com, a division of Amgen, insisted on advertising it anyway.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. And the way they do it these days, if you are an Internet start up, is to put a printing press in your basement capable of cranking out millions and millions of convincing looking $100 bills.

So when a foodcart vendor in the street offers you a hot dog for $1,000, you say, “Sure, why not?” And if he includes a generous dollop of mustard and sauerkraut, you give him a $500 tip.

I don’t have a SRDS newspaper rates guide handy, and I don’t know in which editions of The Wall Street Journal this ad ran. So I can’t tell you how much it cost. But we’re talking high five figures here, maybe six – enough to buy an awful lot of hot dogs even at Internet start up prices.

It’s not the business of this department to comment on the quality of the Web site being advertised unless it’s relevant to evaluating the ad. But in this case, perhaps it is relevant. I found the site itself so disappointing that I couldn’t help wondering if maybe the ad was designed to discourage response, because it isn’t really ready for visitors. It’s like a real estate developer advertising “Come see our model home,” and you drive out there and stare at a big hole in the ground: “Over here, there’s going to be a beautiful living room with cathedral windows – and back there, a real Martha Stewart kitchen. You’re gonna love it.”

What you see when you look through the door to iNEXTV.com is some streaming sound videos a little larger than usual, as indicated by those teeny-weeny postage-stamp photos at the bottom left of the ad. The streaming photos are also less jerky than usual, but I would have to add, not so you could notice on a galloping horse.

“The first site to showcase our new bells and whistles is iSTYLETV.com,” says the ad. “If you want a peek at the future, take a peek at iSTYLETV.”

I took a peek as directed. Unless I’m doing something wrong, which I doubt, all I saw were slide shows of mansions for sale, a fashion show and a polo match. So maybe the ad is a great success in that it’s keeping people away.

But just in case they want people to come anyway, I have redone the ad with a new headline to convey the exciting promise – even if the promise is not fulfilled by the Web site in its present state. (By the time you read this, the site may have improved greatly.)

I puzzled over the “headline” and accompanying woman’s face a long time. Finally, with some effort, I concluded its intended message was, “You call this TV? You’ve got to be kidding.” Any of my readers have a better theory?

Product and service improvements should be treated as news. My headline tries to encapsulate the news value of the story that follows.

As is often the case, the body copy is basically OK – if you have a magnifying glass and a reasonable amount of patience. But I’ve tried to speed it up a little and better capture the exciting promise of my headline.

Actually, in my copy I toned down the promise somewhat. Their copy boasted, “Decades of research and development have led us to video stream quality that many thought wasn’t possible until broadband.” Since what I saw didn’t seem quite that amazing, my copy settles for the more modest claim of “a video image that’s smoother, cleaner – and 50% larger.”

Frankly, I couldn’t help wondering if somebody got their signals crossed and the ad ran before the site was ready for visitors. At the site I found this mysterious message: “During this soft launch period, we are continuing to create programming and gather content, as well as well as assess user feedback while we conduct further testing. Please pardon any difficulties you may experience while on the site.” Not exactly what you would expect to read when responding to an expensive ad in The Wall Street Journal.

In the ad, I couldn’t quite figure out what was depicted in those tiny square halftones illustrating how much larger the new video image is. The best I could make out, it was a photo of lipstick sitting upright on a stand and casting a long shadow. I figured puppies have more universal appeal than lipsticks, so I substituted an adorable puppy.

I’m reasonably confident my makeover would generate more response. Whether that’s desirable at this stage of the technology’s development is something for the advertiser – and you – to decide.

P.S. It’s ‘fess-up time again. (Listen, if The New York Times can run a correction now and then, so can I.)

In a recent Makeover Maven column featuring the Art Technology Group ad “Which Commerce Platform?” (DIRECT, February), I explained that in the interest of clarity my makeover headline called it a “Web site” rather than a commerce platform. Upon reflection in the middle of the night, I have decided that I was wrong.

Anybody, even your grandma, can put up a Web site. But constructing an interactive, animated e-commerce platform with hundreds of intricately linked pages is a big deal, costing up to $1 million to produce. So my headline should have read “e-commerce platform.” (But I still think they were wrong to leave off the “e.”)