RE: UKNM: sticky portals - (TAXI)

[Mat Morrison]

Got to tread carefully here, 'cos a few of the people at Taxi are friends.

Taxi is not "supported by big name brands" as such, but rather by "big name

brands' agencies". This is always something to bear in mind, when looking at

advertising -- sometimes the biggest budgets have the poorest planning

(necessity = mother of invention etc.)


Taxi is a brilliant concept from a marketeer's point of view: (think

interactive TV in 5 years time with powerful pseudo-intelligent EPGs and

strong personalisation). Users register personal details at a level where DM

agencies go wild: you can (theoretically) target adults by postcode,

explicit interests etc. You can also target by the number of children/other

users in the home. It's like Hotmail in its targeting flexibility, but by

household (ergo you can make certain planning assumptions about the ads

wider environment. Passwords make sure that you can send seperate messages

to children, mother and father.


However: it's a pretty weak concept from the perspective of the user. What

does it actually bring to the table? A sort of limited Yahoo!? A piss-poor

directory? And a little bit of x365 technology that allows you to view stuff

offline. Not v. compelling.


As a result, in an audience which is hardly large enough to split by

demographics or psychographic data, where we don't even have the sort of

audience share data that makes the US market so much more attractive to

traditional advertisers and fmcg brands (although it could be argued that

this is not the best way to plan...)we have the ability to buy, what, the

three people living in SO23 with kids under 5 who use the net? 


There's no real way this one's going to run, is there?


And I agree with Mr May's point about kludgy coding. Just try getting the

bugger to work...



M

____________________________________________

Mat Morrison

Commercial Manager

BMP interAction

+44 171 258 4349

+44 7775 953165 (PLEASE NOTE: NEW MOBILE)

mat [dot] morrisonbmpinteraction [dot] com

mat [dot] morrisonbigfoot [dot] com

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur.


++The views expressed are rarely those of my employers