Website Reviews 23 Aug

Volkswagon - The People's Reviewer
http://www.thepeoplesreviewer.com/

The People's Reviewer is a microsite developed by Volkswagon to show off it's new mini-SUV, the Tiguan. The microsite has an attractive home-made quality about it, though no doubt some designers spent a very long time achieving the 'under-designed' effect. The Tiguan microsite and subsequent landing zone on Volkswagon's UK site gives an enjoyable customer journey that is a nice addition to the UK automotive digital library. With a few exceptions, such as this Volkswagon site and the generally excellent Mini activity, this body of work takes itself a little too seriously and offers rather pedestrian customer experiences (see what I did there?).

So what's so special about The Tiguan activity? Well, it showcases the vehicle in mostly positive terms without resorting to the usual automotive cliches: sharpe angles, long twisty roads and heavy production. The Tiguan activity has taken a nice approach of putting the product in the hands of the people and letting them review it (hence the url). Armed with a new Tiguan and a digital movie camera, members of the great British public take an extended test drive and record their live experiences. These are then downloaded and the best one's shown on the website.

A voting mechanism is added to make it more interesting for site visitors, though this is my least favourite part of the experience. Whilst I enjoyed watching one video, and quite liked the second one, it all got a bit long for me. To revisit the site week after week voting on videos of several minutes is going to take up a rather larger part of the week than I am prepared to give up. Perhaps others feel differently but this seems to me to be asking too much of the audience. OK, there is a Win a Tiguan for three months competition, but that's not enough to get me playing all the videos and returning every week. What I'd have liked to see was a library of real people doing stuff with the car, like weekly shopping, picking up kids, changing the rear seat configuration, the car parking automatically (which features in some of the videos to great effect). Seeing how lots of real people enjoy (or otherwise) doing the stuff that I do every day would have been good. The site kind of offers that but it's organised to suit the competition rather than be organised to suit different uses.

No doubt Volkswagon know what they're doing and plenty of research drove (see, did it again!) their decision making in this direction.

When you click through to the main Volkswagon UK site, the Tiguan landing page opens nicely with the car driving into the frame and then parking itself. It's a really clever way to continue the customer journey and I particularly liked the vehicle going almost completely out of frame before reversing back into full view. So good. It nicely showcases the product and the killer feature (self park).

It remains to be seen whether this promotion captures the attention of suffcient numbers of target buyers and persuades them to try the car, however I think Volkswagon have done a lot right here. By using members of the public and providing a low-key video production, the statements made in favour of the vehicle by the test drivers achieve authenticity - very hard to do and extremely valuable.

Website Reviews 17 Aug

Fly Baboo
www.flybaboo.com

Baboo is an airline based in Geneva, Switzerland. They fly a couple of dozen routes, mainly south of Geneva. I noticed advertising for the airline whilst I was in Geneva airport last week. The thing which struck me first was the logo, shown here, which has neatly incorporated the Swiss national image (logo?) into the corporate logo. The 'B' of Baboo has been resolved with the cross of the Swiss flag in the cross of the first letter of the corporate name.

Some attempts at logos look contrived, particularly when a message is intended from the logo. Baboo, however have managed to neatly create an original logo whilst noting their relationship to Switzerland, without looking forced.

Having never flown with Baboo I can't report on their service quality, however looking at their website my impression is positive and I'm pretty sure this will carry through to their service delivery. The site is clean, neat and contains pretty well everything you need. One thing it does have that many more airlines could add is carbon offsetting in action. Baboo have added a 'baboo forest' section to their site which shows, in some detail, the levels they have gone to in offsetting emissions. In partnership with a site called Aquaverde they have arranged to plant around 7,000 trees (so far) in a designated area of the Amazon Rain Forest, in a concerted attempt at reforestation, working with local communities deep in the Amazon.

This is a nice touch and demonstrates tangible, proactive moves by the airline. Contrast this with the rather poor efforts of many (most?) other airlines. EasyJet, for example, it seems to me, are in denial about the impact of emissions and have filled their site with content about how little their planes pollute (compared to other fleets) and the contribution to global warming accounted for by air travel (small according to EasyJet). To me this rather misses the point and I'd far rather fly with an airline that was serious about doing something about emissions, rather than take the 'we're not as bad as some' approach. Is there anyone left who thinks another 1000kg of CO2 into the atmosphere is a good thing?

So, well done to Baboo, firstly for the emissions being front and centre, secondly for a nice site and thirdly for a great logo execution.

By the way, if you find yourself in Geneva airport, great food and drink can be had in the Montreux Jazz Cafe. That's 'Rob's Top Travel Tip' for today!

PS. At some point I will return to logo design and in particular 'Suisse' Design, as advocated by, among others, Josef Muller-Brockmann. In the meantime, here's a link to a top designer influenced by Suisse Design - Suisse Studio www.suissestudio.co.uk.