Synergistic Insidious

I've long had warm feelings for IHOP, aka, the International House of Pancakes chain, as they...

  • Generally have a low-key vibe.

  • Serve breakfast food always, and I love breakfast food. It's criminally underrated for after-drinking, which isn't to say Taco Bell and Pizza don't have their place, but don't underestimate how much alcohol french toast or a tall stack can soak up.

  • They've got whole little rows of syrups no sane person would ever seek out (boysenberry?) but you give them a shot because they're there anyways.

  • Many, if not all, of the franchises are open 24 hours. I love me my little diners, but they're often closed at 2am.

  • They don't just bring you a cup of coffee, they bring you a little pot. I loves me my coffee with my cigarettes and pie when much conversation and planning is going down on napkins. You ever want to pick my brain on something, offerings of beer or coffee and pie have a habit of getting me there.

  • They're often a little cleaner than your average Denny's.

I don't completely remember what the deal was that caused me to end up at their site about a month ago, but I believe I was trying to talk someone into going for pie and coffee and conversation and cigarettes. IHOP can rock for that, and whatever the reason, I ended up at their site and saw it was pretty much taken over with Hurricane stuff from New Orleans.

Not just donation links, but actively trying to get their employees that may have been displaced info on where they needed to go to register for help, and info on where they could try to get employment at a franchise where they ended up. I snapped the shot because it jogged my head a bit. They basically shoved all their normal content for consumers so far below the fold that the site had become geared towards helping their employees first and foremost as well as throwing consumers towards donation links -- at the very least keeping Katrina in their minds.

Pretty cool, but just about every corporate site went 100% Katrina come the next day. It's the kind of thing I'd normally make a snapshot of (hence my messy desktop), along with a mental note to follow up on it and maybe post about it, but never actually do. Anywho, this morning I was clearing out my Desktop and found it, because if you don't it gets dead slow in Tiger, and went and checked their site -- it's still all about the big storm.

In all fairness, I do know why. Sometimes one can just get overexposed to tech, and needs to focus on anything else that's convenient.

This isn't helped when one checks their feeds and its all "iPod rules, the other guys drool" and uh, all things iPod.

"Mac" bloggers, you're killing yourself slowly when your ratio of iPod to Mac posts is 3 to 1..

Then, and I don't really know why, but I got curious and started pinging around. Denny's website -- a diner franchise in the same vein -- has really prominent hurricane stuff, although they have their food above it.

Places like McDonalds and Walmart have prominent links for donating and other relief efforts, but most technology companies seem to have dropped it. I.E., ibm.com, microsoft.com, msn.com, dell.com (Dell does have donate links on inside pages, like say when you hit the home office buying deally), and sony.com are sans relief links, while Gateway has a rather prominent section on their site still.

Apple's website actually has a little link, which you can sorta make out in this screencap...

I actually thought Apple didn't have a link, but went back to double check because I knew I'd never hear the end of it if they did have one. Once I did see it, I got annoyed, then pissed, then sad, all the while wondering if I had any right to be.

As an aside, one of the things that fascinated me about this is the idea that with a certain amount of traffic, screen real estate is worth cash, especially to tech companies that are endeavoring to sell something to you. Think of it like shelf space on a book store -- that stuff is all laid out intentionally, with big seller stuff right there when you're coming in, and el-cheapo-gotta-move-it stuff right there on your way to checking out in the hopes that you'll pick it up on impulse. It works the same way with screen real estate, with stuff above the fold being worth more, etc.

This stuff all gets computed via spreadsheet for the marketing folks to work their magic, and what's featured on the front pages of these are generally there for a reason. When the hurricane stuff hit, sure a lot of companies had altruistic motives for blanking their sites for donations, but they also had PR in the equation: "If everyone is doing it, and we don't, someone somewhere will pick it up, and we'll look like asshats."

Fascinating stuff, but equally weird is that the whole equation has to be run again to decide when they should take it down, or slowly phase it out to something there but not quite as prominent, to a little link somewhere, to gone. Someone, somewhere has to decide when the cash that could be funneled -- and the PR benefits -- is now not outweighed by what the company can generate by reclaiming that space. This isn't my problem, as that kinda has to happen, otherwise there'd still be donation links for the last disasters around everywhere.

No, what's making me queasy is the link itself: Donate in ITunes.

It's not the fact that you can donate if you have an iTunes Music Store account, that's great -- make it as convenient as possible. My issue is with the thought process that led them to suggesting you send it via a gift card in their service instead of also linking directly to the RC donation page. I'm all about synergistic effects, where you try to use momentum from one thing to benefit another indirectly, but this does make me a little queasy.

Not really angry, and I guess not even really annoyed, just queasy, and I'm wishing they would have just taken it down instead of this last phase.

yummy alcohol posted button Posted by drunkenbatman
    October 10, 2005, at 10:51 AM


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