A big deal has been made about the launch of Honeyshed, a branded entertainment and shopping site created by Droga5:
Andrew Essex, Droga5 CEO, says that Honeyshed is “based on the idea that people love brands and don’t mind being sold to if it’s completely transparent.” I guess that’s why advertising works then, eh?
David Droga takes it a step further saying, courtesy of adverganza, “everyone is scrambling to do branded content, but for the most part, there is no real home for it. The strategy has mainly been to create entertaining content and then seed it, put it on YouTube or elsewhere. So content is king, but the king didn’t really have throne. Our idea was to have a site where you could be overt about the brand. The site gets at the entertainment value and the sociability of shopping.”
The issue is that this isn’t content, it’s just advertising with a bit of product demonstration. It’s QVC via streaming video (and younger hosts).
Honeyshed is just not as groundbreaking as some quarters would have you believe. It simply takes an idea that has been effective offline and brought it online. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea; Amazon has done pretty well and all they did is take an idea that worked well offline and take it on.
Whether Honeyshed works or not, I suspect that we will look back on the excitement of these days the same way we look back on the initial dotcom boom. We’ll wonder just what made us believe that all of these crazy ideas would make money.
Sure, some will be financially successful, but Maurice Levy is right in slamming the excesses of the web 2.0 age. There just isn’t enough advertising money to go around to support everything.
Don’t believe all the hype.
4 responses so far ↓
Tangerine Toad // November 12, 2007 at 7:31 pm |
And the name sounds kind of pornographic, you know?
Like if your wife or girlfriend saw “Honeyshed” in your browser history, she’d definitely have her suspicions…
Can’t believe that was unintentional.
not sure // November 13, 2007 at 3:24 am |
i think honeyshed is Australian slang for outdoor toilet. it certainly sounds australian.
this is qvc online isn’t it. or am i missing something? i’m surprised they didn’t just do it video on demand with the cable companies.
i agree that we will look back quizzically at these times. the thing that bothers me personally is that none of these developments (facebook et al) bode well for brand communication. advertising is being pushed ever farther to the peripherary of people’s lives. and the options to enage are diminishing. it annoys me when people say what a great time it is to be in advertising. common sense dictates that the opposite is true.
Tribble Ad Agency : The Advertising Agency of Record » Maurice Levy - I'll Repeat What Tribble Ad Agency wrote a year ago // November 13, 2007 at 8:23 pm |
[...] player at Publicis group repeats what Tribble Ad Agency has stated a year ago – but it appears to get press when he states [...]
honeyshed really is the internet qvc « the daily (ad) biz // February 8, 2008 at 10:27 am |
[...] A while back I called Honeyshed, that online shopping utility created by Droga5, “the internet QVC” because that pretty much sums up the whole [...]