The other day. a friend sent me this Newsday link to a gallery of 50 wretched album covers. The topic is an oldie but a goodie, and a little Googling found this site , which lists 100 terrible covers (with mostly well-known artists plus snarky comments), this site , which has 149 awful covers, and this link to the Chicago Tribune, which is either a gallery in the making or one that’s died: the links don’t work, but the page is designed exactly like Newsday’s. I wonder who was the swiper and who was the swipee.

What struck me upon navigating through the Newsday feature (besides the absurdity of some of the covers of course) is that as you click through from cover to cover, you get popup after popup. It’s a good way for Newsday to increase their ad impressions delivered, of course, but is there anyone who thinks that in the middle of a tour of album cover lunacy someone will stop themselves cold and say, "Oh, yeah, that’s right — I need to sign up for an American Express card."

Takeaway for marketers: Context and relevance matters.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways.