What struck me is now incredibly stupid the "offer" is in this e-mail. Why in the world do they think I would want to view a newspaper "ad" (it's actually their insert) online? To me that's kind of equivalent to listening to a radio commercial on my television. They are completely different media and trying to put a newspaper circular into my electronic inbox is just lame.
But I was curious. So I clicked on the ad and was taken to a site that loaded very, very slowly. It looked like this:
Several things bother me about this whole concept.
First of all, I'm not convinced people really want to view catalogs or newspaper inserts online. There are a lot of companies out there offer this service, but I think the idea of creating a virtual catalog - even if it does have animated page turns - is a very poor use of interactive media.
One of the companies at the forefront of doing this type of conversion is called RichFX. They're actually pretty cool and have a lot of very exciting, high-tech capabilities for online retailers. They are obviously who Toys R Us hired to put their newspaper ad online. Look at the URL. They didn't even make an attempt to disguise what is going on. If you look at the browser's header you see Rich Catalog without even a mention of Toys R Us. I know for a fact that RichFX can integrate the online catalog so that it appears to come directly from the retailer, but I guess Toys R Us didn't feel this was necessary. From a simple branding standpoint, this is just stupid.
So I can only conclude that the marketers at Toys R Us are idiots. Or they just don't care. Maybe a little of both.
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