AOL: Polishing a Older Online Service
May 24, 2011
The America Online brand polishing continues. That’s no easy job, even for the “real” public relations professionals. PR is a stellar occupation. The Facebook initiative demonstrates how reliable certain “real” PR can be.
I enjoyed “AOL’s Chief Upbeat on Rebooting the Brand.” At a time when Apple is the top brand and Google a lesser top brand, maybe AOL sees an opportunity to climb up the brand rankings. Brand rankings, like the inclusions in those college league tables, are entertaining but often disconnected from reality.
The passage I found memorable was:
Q: …you mention a Web site AOL owns like tech blog Engadget, some people say, “Oh, they own that?”
A: Right. I think a lot of it was just that old perception. If people used our services, they usually had a lot of complaints about them. But about six months ago, something started to change. The difference between the last six months and probably two years ago is when people stop me now, they say: “Oh, I’m addicted to the front page of AOL. I love it. I love the new way the e-mail’s been designed.” Forget about the financial industry and forget about our stock and all that other stuff. Our number-one lead indicator of this company being successful is the people who touch our products and services actually physically seeing the level we care about internally translated externally. I think that’s starting to happen, and that’s eventually what is going to change the AOL brand.
To check the addictive aspect of AOL.com’s front page, I visited it for the first time in quite a while, maybe five or six years. Here’s what I saw:
There must be something wrong with my chemistry. Not only was I not tempted to click, I was puzzled by the skull and cross bones and the “You’ve Got: Checklist All Women Must Know.”
My hunch is that Ms. Huffington will end up running the show. Googlers with soft degrees and a few years in the land of controlled chaos are not the stuff of “reboots”. Top line revenue growth, an increase in stakeholder value, and traffic are the components of a successful reboot. PR not so much. The search experience was enhanced by Lady Gaga, which looked like Lady Gaga results on the new, consumerized Google. Maybe Google should buy AOL so there is a reunion of Googlers and a more seamless integration of that old time instant messenger magic?
Stephen E Arnold, May 24, 2011
Freebie
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