Prada

If The Devil Wears Prada, she sure as Hades did not get her frocks from the Prada web site. You are hereby judged and banished to the Seventh Level of Purgatory, Prada!

(Jeesh, talk about entirely missing the boat and a once-in-a-lifetime chance at having your web site rank up thousands and thousands of eyeballs. What were they thinking, if at all?)

Lamborghini (Hall of Shame no longer!)

Maybe Time-Warner cable is right. Maybe I really am delusional and hallucinatory. Only a short while ago, The Distillery visited the Lamborghini site and found it bereft of anything approaching 21st century internet advertising and “immersive” content. Was I not seeing what was there? Did I banish it to The Distillery’s Hall of Shame by mistake? No, I do not think so.

Regardless, the point is moot. Lamborghini has jumped onto the internet with a passion for exquisiteness typical of its fine automobiles. We now find a fully Flash-powered site filled with sights and sounds. Almost approaching art is the black and white mini-movie featuring the Gallardo and shot through the streets of New York City. (Follow model range to the screen featuring four different models and then click anywhere on the automobile images. Next click on Gallardo and then on movies.)

You will also find mini-movies (a.k.a. extended length advertisements) for the Murcielago LP640 and Gallardo Spyder. A couple of others are also scattered around the site, including aged interviews with the legendary Ferruccio Lamborghini, himself.

Welcome to the internet and the Information Age, Lamborghini. If The Distillery gave an award for Most Improved, you would win it hands-down.

Maserati

Maserati. Cool sounding name, is it not? But, does the Maserati web site live up to the legend and reputation of its automobiles? Answer: Yes and No. It could be entirely “Yes” with only the addition of music in selected areas throughout the site. That said, video gems are found throughout the site, such as this very short interview with Formula 1 legend, Michael Schumacher. (That is saying infinitely more than can be said for Ferrari, which will soon join The Distillery’s Wall of Shame.) Although not multi-media, you will find the largest collection of nice automobile desktop wallpapers from one manufacturer that I have found to date. One finds the Virtual Factory Tour, which is also downloadable as a 22 MB zip file.

The most irritating aspect of the site is that far too many links open new pages. At this very moment, I am looking at seven open tabs after only a few minutes of navigating the site. This is a web site where the OnStar navigation system would be most helpful. It is very easy to get lost. (Now, where was I?) Oh yes, I now point you to Maseraticorse.tv where there is a large collection of [mediocre quality] videos. However, they are sufficient in number to satisfy anyone looking to see Maseratis in action.

Whoa, Nelly! And what do we have here? No less than [supposedly] interactive 3-D views of several F1 racing circuits. However, one must download a player (Anark) of which I have never heard. To its credit, after several spyware scans, it does come up clean. But try as I may, I cannot get the player to load and display the 3-D circuits. (Was anyone paying any attention at all to this aspect of the site’s design? Eschewing de facto media/content standards and players? Clearly not. Duh.) It therefore appears one of the main foci of the site is entirely kaput. And such is why I can again say both “yes” and “no” to the question of whether the Maserati web site equals the reputations of its cars.

Burger King (Kids Club)

Burger King barely avoided the The Distillery’s Hall of Shame. But as is said in Isaiah 11:16 (KJV), …and a little child shall lead them. And therein BK only barely avoids The Distillery’s i-media and immediate damnation. There is essentially nothing noteworthy at the primary Burger King site, but things change when we look at the Burger King Kids Club.

I am pleased that once you get past the first page, all other pages clearly state, Hey kids, this is advertising. Granted, that very likely does little good with the vast majority of kids visiting that portion of BK’s site being quite young. Their brains are not yet cognitively developed enough to comprehend the warning’s meaning. That development does not fully occur until the age of 10-12 years old. (And that is why some countries ban any form of advertising to children under certain ages entirely.) But still, it is a step forward from times past for Madison Avenue and American marketing.

Beyond the unavoidable advertisement for an upcoming kids’ movie, where there just happens to be no warning for kids at all, we find Honbatz. At first glance, it appears innocent enough and offers a few fun things for kids to do, but interlaced is advertising which simply should not be there. Kids’ meals and Burger King screen savers and wallpapers simply do not go together. This is the sort of advertising, regardless of its placement, that gives marketing a bad name.