Media and Technology Fail: Duracell myGrid Uses Broken URL in TV Ads

Years ago I used to work for the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, I was the guy who put up a lot of the early websites that allowed my employer (Glaxo Wellcome at the time) to have TV commercials for prescription drugs. The deal was back then (almost 14 years ago) that to have a commercial about a drug, you had to have a website up for the drug too so people could read all the warnings (in addition to the ones they told you on TV). Oh sure we had marketing info up there on the sites as well, but in the end the most important thing was that when the commercial aired, the URL that went up, worked.

It seems that Duracell Canada didn’t get the memo.

Duracell has been advertising their new myGrid product for conductive charging on TV pretty heavily, with the standard URL to learn more about said product, just one hitch. The link goes to a 404 not found page.

Oh sure if you scroll down the page you’ll find myGrid down there (pretty much at the bottom of the page), but what does this do for consumer perception about a company when they get that wrong? Or the people who aren’t very confident online, type in the URL and get that error screen? I’ll bet that they’ll think it was their fault.

Okay, you might think I’m being harsh. It happens right? Sure, the first night of a run, oops someone forgot to tell IT or something. The problem is that I first saw this a week ago and today, after seeing the commercial again, checked and still: 404 not found.

Here’s the lesson for media and marketing types: when you use an URL, check it. If you’re not sure, double check. What I find amazing is that it seems that no one has noticed! Really, the first night someone should have checked when the ad ran. It would take a moment to set up the redirect to point to the correct page. I know this isn’t a huge scandal, but honestly this is the kind of thing that media companies should just do.

Oh and in case you’re wondering (as I originally was), no they don’t have a charging case for the iPhone 4.

Thumbnail photo by Demion