I also don’t think I was too hard on them. It is what it is. A lot of budget and resources were put behind the TV campaign, and at this point, for basically nothing.

It’s even more painful to see now. The Masters winner yesterday is a PING player, and although I may be mistaken, the “magic” putter Kenny Perry has been using is a year old PING mallet. I’m expecting a release from the PING PR department any minute.

All of the deserved hype is going to drive even more action to the website for users interested in The Locker Room. Once there, there’s nothing to do but leave the site disappointed.

The true pain point is that the early adopters (which are easily the most sought after online audience, or should be) have probably already been there, seen it’s worthless and left, never to return. The chance for building a community just got cut off at the knees.

Thank you for responding. Your opinion matters, and I’m glad you commented. Ironically, I thought the URL part wouldn’t be the no-brainer (easy to miss); I thought having something (anything) there other than an “Under Construction” page would be the no-brainer.

P.S. Over the weekend, I thought of one more misstep.

#5 Not buying campaign keyterms to support initiative. When I go to Google and type in “PING Locker Room”, there isn’t one paid ad. For the cost of a nickel, they could have pulled that searcher in. Instead, they’re just forcing them to try another way to find what they have to offer. Making it difficult for users to find you is never a good campaign strategy.

However, agree with you on all your points about creating URL’s, making them simple to type in and remember – that’s kind of a no-brainer.

Another great example of how large brands drop the ball and simply fail at integrating offline and online strategies.

See it all the time.

Brian

Big FAIL on the ad production Ping.

Good catch @danperry!