Seriously Fun Websites

By the way, if you've found any fun sites please email them to me.

This past summer I endured the tedious process of reviewing, analyzing, documenting and updating all aspects of every site we host on our servers. It was an important, necessary and intensely boring job. As I was digging through directories I came across one with the unusual name of "shavemyyeti." Yes, you read that right - Shave My Yeti. I wasn't sure where this site came from, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to find out. It turns out the site came from the disturbed minds over at nail, one of our agency partners. It was a promotional piece for Polartec. Okay, I know a site with a name like "Shave My Yeti" (www.shavemyyeti.com) is irresistible - as many of the sites in this newsletter are - so go ahead and click the link and enjoy. I'll wait. (Don't worry the Yeti is "decent" under his fur.)

Admittedly, humor is always in the mind of the beholder. Not everyone will find the Yeti as hysterical as I do. In fact, I should take a moment for a humor disclaimer. It is quite possible that some of the sites I'm reviewing are significantly less funny than they seemed when I first reviewed them. I was probably succumbing to "The Far Side Effect." "The Far Side Effect" is what happens if you attempt to read an entire anthology of The Far Side in one sitting. It's a well-known fact that the editors carefully sequence the panels in ascending hilarity. They start off funny, but get even funnier page by page until every cartoon knocks you to the floor in asphyxiating, stomach-cramping laughter. A word to the wise - beware flipping through The Far Side at the store. Just buy it and read it at home. If you aren't careful you might find yourself gasping for breath on the bookstore floor.

Shave My Yeti is an example of the first category of fun sites I will review - fun sites with a serious purpose. These days, marketing is getting harder and harder. The ubiquity of marketing messages, the proliferation of marketing channels, and the emergence of new technologies with the corresponding decline of old ones are making the marketer's job much more difficult. An evolving marketing technique known as viral marketing attempts to utilize new channels, like the web, by intentionally influencing trends and fads. Malcom Gladwell's book The Tipping Point does an excellent job of analyzing the subtle factors that cause trends, fads and outbreaks of all kinds. Seth Godin applies many of these principles for marketers in books like Unleashing the Idea Virus and Purple Cow. Today's marketers are learning ways to influence such trends to their clients' advantage. If you can get thousands, even millions of people to send a link to a friend, you can reach people with your message in epidemic proportions, even without national television advertising budgets. Shave My Yeti is one such effort to get the Polartec brand out in front a young audience.

Another example of a fun site, produced by serious marketers is Subservient Chicken (www.subservientchicken.com), created by Burger King. The guy in the chicken outfit does whatever you type into the text box. He does it your way - get it? I know, go ahead - I'll wait...

BMW created a snowman jumping game to promote the BMW mini (www.miniusa.com/crm/jumpgame/snowman_jumpgame.jsp). I'm not very good at landing the game, unless the point is to make the snowman crash in interesting ways. I'm pretty good at that.

Creating a fun and compelling website is one way to promote a product or company in an incredibly cost effective way. Of course instigating a trend is not something that can be controlled. If you make a mistake it can't be stopped - a fact that leads us to our next category of fun sites.

Sometimes a website that was originally created purely for fun becomes so popular, that it gets adopted into a serious marketing campaign. That's what happened with the dreaded Quizno's Sponge Monkey campaign. Someone at the Martin Agency was crusin' the web and came across www.rathergood.com - a truly bizarre example of fun musical and animated creativity on the web. They hoped they could piggyback on the faddish popularity of the Sponge Monkey song We Like the Moon (www.rathergood.com/moon_song). This was a mistake. The site is popular mostly because of how bizarre it is. It has the same dark, compelling allure of a carnival side show. It may provoke your curiosity, but it doesn't make you want to eat a sandwich. Needless to say the campaign didn't improve Quizno's sales and the Martin agency was canned.

Fun sites can be used in serious marketing efforts, but some sites exist for pure and simple fun. My absolute favorite pure fun site by far is Homestar Runner (www.homestarrunner.com). This site was created by Matt and Mike Chapman a.k.a. "The Brothers Chaps." It evolved from a simple children's book idea they had back in 1996. In 2000 it made its internet début. Since then it has garnered the attention of Wired, Time, MSNBC, and NEWSWEEK. The site has millions of fans, including the band They Might Be Giants, who teamed up with the Homestar creators to write a song/animated video called "Experimental Film" (www.homestarrunner.com/expfilm.html). What was originally just a way for the Chapman brothers to learn Flash became an amazingly popular site.

One of the things I admire most about Homestar Runner is that it has been successful based on its creative merits alone. It has no corporate sponsors, no advertising, and no marketing agenda. In fact, when I first started visiting the site I couldn't figure out how in the world anyone could devote so much time without a discernable budget source or revenue model. But as a result of good writing, creative ideas, skillful execution and an incredible sense of humor Homestarrunner.com has become so popular that these two brothers now have several employees and earn plenty of money simply by selling shirts and character figurines.

If you've never been to Homestarrunner.com before, you're in for a lot of fun. However, what I said earlier about having a few minutes to spare does not apply to Homestar. It would literally take hours maybe days to watch everything on the site. My introduction to the site was a particular Strong Bad email (one of the most popular features of the site) appropriately dubbed "website" (www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail51.html). Homestar Runner has serious "Far Side Effect" potential, so be careful. I'd suggest only a few Strong Bad emails or a couple of 'toons at a time; maybe a Teen Girl Squad, or Holiday Short too, but that's it - pace yourself.

Some sites are both fun and functional. Movie websites certainly fall into this category. I use Rotten Tomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com) all the time to get a good idea about which movies are worth seeing. It aggregates scores of professional reviews to determine a movie's freshness or rottenness rating. I've found it a more reliable source than the individual opinion of my local newspaper's staff writer. In the same vein I love the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com). You can find comprehensive information about almost any movie or television show ever made. Of course there's also Apple's movie trailer site but I don't need to tell you about that one.

I heard a rumor that if you look up "satire" on dictionary.com a picture of "The Onion" shows up (www.theonion.com). Steve Martin titled one of his albums "Comedy is Not Pretty." Indeed it's not. The Onion is strong comedy it will bring tears to your eyes, but sometimes you may feel like you need to scrub off the offending oils. Nevertheless, when they nail an article, you're on the floor again.

Yahoo! News posts a fun news site in conjunction with Reuters called Oddly Enough (news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=index&cid=573&/). It's quite amusing, and it's different from The Onion in that all of the news articles are true.

Well, I've had about as much fun as I can handle writing this month's newsletter. I've pushed myself well past "The Far Side Effect" and need to recuperate. But just in case your tolerance for fun is greater than mine I'll leave you with a few links to completely random fun sites that you might enjoy. If you come across any more fun sites let me know I'll check them out once I get up off the floor.

Political fun: www.jibjab.com

Amateur film fun: www.savethewheel.com/melville

Weird RISD kid fun: www.tomthinks.com - (www.tomthinks.com/liveaction.php)

Video Clip Fun: www.stupidvideos.com

Urban Legend Fun: www.snopes.com - check out www.snopes.com/humor/lists/insurance.asp