Tattoo Highway is one of A&E’s new shows and as part of an effort to get the tat-roadtrip themed program off the ground they tatted out TVGuide dot com‘s logo. See image.
Yet another step in the “collaboration” direction, no? We aren’t sure this is in any way effective, mostly because the logo is one of the most inane aspects of any Web page. Think for a moment about the nature of going to a Web site. You either:
A) Visit TVGuide independently, let’s say twice a month, and simply type the URL into your inter Webs and probably don’t ever look at the logo.
B) Are sent to the site by a friend or from another Web site, but rather than scour the page for a logo you look at the URL bar because you know that every time you look up there, in that spot, you’ll know what site you’re at — no logo needed, thanks.
C) Have TVGuide’s content published in your RSS. Here again, you know what you’re looking at so you don’t really “need” to look at the logo.
Well OK, I’m confident in saying that a fair number of visitors to TVGuide dot com click the logo to go back to the homepage. But does navigation count as “traffic”? In the grand scheme, no — it’s a pageview, not a unique visitor. But there’s probably enough folks clicking that logo (though it’ll be harder for them to find, for the next 24 hours) that the sales team was able to rationalize selling the space.
Presumably the logo takeover felt to TVGuide like they were somehow letting advertisers in on the editorial side of the fence, thereby providing something their competitors weren’t. For a long time every part of the magazine/newspaper was considered sacred, but now that it’s getting tough to sell banners, it’s time to creep in on the “editorial”.
And inevitably TVGuide will sell this thing because their sales team is probably pretty good and they’ll say, “we have this great new property that nobody else has thought to use, send your checks to…”