The Ungrateful Bastards Indeed

Look, I'm not into tearing people down. If you want to hear negativity you can surely find some on this great big series of tubes. I'm all about going for it and kicking ass and optimism and teddy bears and bubbles. But everyone has to make exceptions.

A little backstory: I've somehow made it onto the PR list for DiGennaro Communications in NY. I guess it's because I run this here blog and they've decided the best way to reach out to bloggers is to crawl their emails rather than say hello. But at least it's usually relevant and cool work I get. I don't post it because that's probably not why you read this blog and besides, you can view it all on other blogs like Agency Spy or Ads of the World etc that post the work all the time.

So they send me this email:

Today, Y&R NY and VML launched a new website called “The Ungrateful Bastards.”

If you received a gift during the holidays that you don’t want (and who didn’t?), you can visit this site and trade for someone else’s unwanted gift.

Check out the site here: http://www.theungratefulbastards.com

“Because one man’s stupid, unwanted holiday gift is another man’s treasure.”

CREDITS:

Agency: Y&R NY and VML

Chief Creative Officers: Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichenthal

Creative Directors: Guillermo Vega, Icaro Doria

Managing Creative Director, VML: Jim Radosevic

Creative Director, VML: Mike Wente

Art Directors: Menno Kluin, Alex Nowak, Sandra Nicholas

Copywriters: Tiffani Lundeen

Illustrator: Peter Frendrik

Producer: Jo Kelly

Lead Developer: Frank Cefalu

Flash Developer: Marc Brown

Director of Technology: Martin Coady

And I follow the link to Ungrateful Bastards because it sounds like a fun, if unoriginal, idea.

And then I immediately regret doing so.

The site is, to put it mildly, underwhelming. And I'm not talking about the fact that there's about a dozen items on the site (including a hat listed under gadgets, which actually made me chuckle a bit.) I'm talking about the fact that this is a site from a global ad agency (Young & Rubicam) and a full-service digital agency (VML) and, even though it's obviously a fun side project, it looks like it was thrown together last night by the interns in a red-bull-induced-rave-state.

I'll just be frank: the site is bad. Really, just poorly done. Honestly, how many of those 15 (Fifteen!!!) actually worked on the project? Would they all still want their names attached to it if they saw the final result?

The people involved are no doubt talented (several were involved in the amazing Skittles work of several years ago) but the end result is woefully uninspired.

So is it any wonder that people have been less than eager to get involved with the site? It amazes me that an agency so big (Y&R claims 186 offices and 7,000 employees) and a self-proclaimed full service digital shop would ever let something like this out into the wild.

There are a few possibilities:

1. They actually think this is good
2. The interns did it and everyone else wanted credit (why?)
3. They don't care
4. They tried to be bad on purpose (but weren't bad enough to be funny-bad)

So how does it get better?
Let's break it down:

The Idea
It's been done, but hasn't everything at this point? The key is to do it better than anyone else has before or add a unique twist. Neither were done here, so that'd be where I'd start.

The Execution
The end result is not the effort of the 15 people credited. It's barely the effort of one skilled developer. People have a low tolerance for subpar design / usability these days when there is so much good design / usability being done. People also make judgments within seconds of visiting your site. Guess what people are thinking at first glance of the Ungrateful Bastards site. I think it's also worth considering who the work is coming from. If there was a college freshman behind this site I'd hold it to a bit different standard than a global ad empire.

The Usability
Finally, users have to be able to use the site they're at. Besides the aforementioned categorization confusion (which could have been intentional) I found frustration in clicking the button like objects on the site that were not in fact clickable buttons but rather fancy containers for the text which was the actual link. I'd also question the use of flash on the site in a seemingly uneccesary way. I know agencies love flash, but many users do not. Could another technology have accomplished the same thing (a countdown and a animated fireplace?) Also, I'm assuming the crackling sound emitted from the fireplace is for the kitsch effect but it's seriously annoying and cannot be disabled. If you're going to go kitsch go 100% or don't go at all.

The Bottom Line
I'm probably taking this whole thing too seriously but this is a symptom of a larger issue: how traditional agencies (and even digital ones) adjust to the new environment they operate in. If Y&R / VML had thought about their users a little more would this whole thing have been a lot better? It's hard to say what happened behind closed doors. If you're listening out there Y&R / VML, I think you know what I want to find in my inbox stocking next year.