Some good Pointrolls

Huh? What do you mean where have I been? Ok, ok. So I took a little hiatus, big deal. You weren't supposed to be reading this anyway, you were supposed to be working! ... slacker.

On with today's topic... I received the latest newsletter from Pointroll and unlike every other time I get one of them, this time I opened it. More surprisingly, I'm actually glad that I did. There's some good stuff in there. Here are my three favorites:

FedEx
I love this ad for its interactivity and keeping it simple. I think it's really hard to get someone's attention online when they're trying to read something other than your ad.

But the key is, once you get their attention, how do you hold on to it? Or, taking it a step further, how do you continue to hold on to it? This ad is great because it delivers (pun not intended) the message very simply, but in an interactive way.

But the best part is, if you're like me (and God help you if you are like me), after trying the slingshot once, you have questions:

• If I do it again, will it go to another location?
  
• If I do it softer will the destination be closer to home?
  
• How far can I stretch the rubber band?
  

In essence, the activity and the resulting questions created a natural urge to do it again and possibly again and again. In doing so, it adds more exposures to the brand, more exposures to the message and ingrains the experience deeper into the user's mind. And you thought it was just a fun ad.

Listerine
This one does a great job of leading the user down a path. First, it inspires curiosity, you want to find out what's behind the door. And it just takes a rollover, you don't have to click to another site or anything. So I rollover and wow, a whole new world, complete with rollover descriptions of the villians!

[Of course it would be nice to understand a little more about who this little detective guy is and wouldn't it be better if there was a pretty damsel dentist in distress instead of some Jughead-with-hair dentist? And do you really want to change the interaction and make the "what is plaque" and "caring for your teeth" buttons require clicks vs. rollovers? But I digress, there's a cool story unfolding, right?]

So I click “continue.”

The gang scatters [I'm not sure why, all the detective's packing is a magnifying glass, what's he going to do, burn their wings off using sunlight? But then again, this is for kids, right?] then the contest screen shows up. There's a nice clear call to action that then leads to the site, saying "click here to play now."

[This is kind of where it all breaks down. What just happened? What exactly is the story? What does the Wii have to do with the cavity creeps or whatever those monsters were? And finally, what's with the copy on the last page: "Many will enter but few will win"? Is that supposed to inspire me to take the time to enter the contest? Yikes. Ok, after doing this analysis, there maybe more to dislike than like on this one.]

Menopause
I like this ad because it uses the expandable ad to really load up content in multiple formats for a campaign that is supposed to answer questions (see the image to the left). It offers a nice little interactive trivia game, some videos and another section that I couldn't get to work.

The things I didn't like were the speed (which could be the Pointroll site) which made it too long to get to the three rollover interactions and to get through the trivia game. The trivia also didn't have a prize or a nice end to it, and didn't really help users learn after answering the questions (e.g. by offering the right answer and maybe the reason why it's the right answer). As mentioned above, I also didn't get the "meet our experts" part to work, which seemed like it might've been interesting.

Anyway, although these ads aren't perfect, they're a lot better and a lot more clever than most that I see expandable ads used for. All it took was a little more thought about what's appropriate and the willingness to make it happen.