Press For the Agency

Marketing as Easy as Counting to Five

This article is courtesy of The Vancouver Sun (download the original).

 

Design firm’s website powered by public’s fondness for making lists.

 

We all know about David Letterman’s Top 10 list, right?

 

Well, a Vancouver-based interactive design firm is betting big on its own Top Five list.

Called MakeFive, the website idea by smashLAB is based on the simple notion that there’s a Top Five list for just about anything.

 

Anyone with an opinion can participate and create a list online, and users can connect with others who have similar interests.

 

People make a list of anything they want — everything from the best tech sites to the best use of lottery winnings or the best designers of all time. For that matter, the list could focus on negative things such as the worst movies of 2007, the worst cars for the environment or the worst high school experience. Then they and others vote for the top five items they believe should make the list.

 

“In January, we’ll see 60,000 visitors to the site,” smashLAB co-founder Eric Karjaluoto said in an interview Tuesday. “We have 1,425 members and they can vote on topics, add content, create their own lists. It can adapt to anything. And [the lists] are always in flux. They’re changing all the time. And people can comment back and forth.”

 

Karjaluoto said the founders started building the site in 2007 and it has been updated and improved since then. “Every month we see traffic double. And we have roughly 2,100 categories now.”

 

Although smashLAB has invested roughly $500,000 in the site, Karjaluoto said profits — dependent on ads — have so far been minimal. “We’re still in a building mode. But there’s a lot of promise. Our best measure of success is, we now have people who use the site for eight-hour periods. That blows us away. We’re building up our usership list.”

 

Karjaluoto said the company is hoping eventually to attract millions of visitors to the site, which would translate into much more advertising revenue.

 

He said MakeFive is also hoping to make money by building content around brand placement — and charging a fee to the brand owner. “For example, if Harley-Davidson wanted people to create their own commercial for Harley- Davidson, [the commercials] would be uploaded and people would vote for the best. Instead of a passive ad, it engages people with the brand.

 

“Or there could be the best pizza in Vancouver. If [a pizza company] was voted No. 3, for a cost they could add their menu to the page. That’s what we’re looking at to generate revenue.” As well, he added: “Our strategy in this financial climate is to keep costs low, refine the service and finance through our existing consulting work.”

 

Karjaluoto has his own Top Five list of the best lists on MakeFive: Best random acts of kindness, what to do with a lottery win, greatest movies you’ve never seen, what you’d do if you were 17 again and knew what you knew now, and features that you’d like to see on MakeFive.

 

“[The final one] is mine, but I still love it,” added Karjaluoto. “We’re using MakeFive as a method of determining what users want out of the site. It was the fastest and best way that we’ve employed to collect real user feedback fast.”