CopyDiva

At the requisite weekend BBQ, I chatted with my friend Caroline, a relative Internet newbie who is completely enthralled with all things online. I had told her about Pandora Internet Radio, and she was telling someone else about it, which reminded me that I hadn’t listened in a while. So, today, while working, I logged in to Pandora.

Wow, it’s really changed since the last time I saw it.

The whole interface received an upgrade, which is nice, but I have to say their ad model is just, well, weird. I initially could not figure out why there was a strange looking pair of legs on the page. Then, I see that I am invited to listen to “Schick Quattro Radio for Women,” or add it to my radio list. Now why would I do that? I mean, do I care that much about what razor I use that it is somehow related to my music choices? This is some weird-ass brand extension idea. I would be extremely curious to see what kind of impact this has.
I did also see the opportunity to listen to radio stations put together by Budweiser, which seems more likely because listening to music somehow seems more related to drinking beer than shaving my legs.

I decided to click through on the Schick ad, and it just got weirder. I was offered a free leg reading –uh, what? Somebody actually got paid to come up with the oddest idea for a viral campaign I think that I have ever seen. And odd here is not good, I can’t actually believe that someone would actually send this to a person, wasting bandwidth in the process. I only did it so I could blog about how weird it is.

With my fake name (Eunice), I selected pictures of what kind of shoes (flip-flops, sneakers, heels), clothes, and toe nails (painted, unpainted, tattooed) to get my leg reading — which it turns out is a really dumb ad for these new razors for women. The lack of imagination and fun value that’s required for a successful viral campaign is not anywhere to be found in this campaign.

But this is really besides the point. Really what I cannot figure out is why I would want to listen to song selections made by Schick. Especially if I am making my own radio stations on Pandora because I think I know what I like.