Arun

Adventures of a "Click Here" button


Most people in the advertising world would know what feedback does to an ad. It makes the ad more innovative and intuitive (to be read as "horrible"). We interviewed a "Click Here" button on a 300x250 pixel banner ad recently and the it had lot to tell. The interview had just one question (since it was a loooooooong answer, we had to cut it short). We asked the button:
Q: Hey "Click here"! How's life?
Ans: Sucks big time, man! I don't know what it is to be ME anymore. My life started out quite well in the hands of a pretty good artist. He gave me great shades, a splendid build, bold colours and my name - "Click Here" (in sentence case).Things looked good when I went into my first day on a grey-ish banner. We blended well in greyness and everything seemed... cool! I was basking in my aura, when I was picked up in the banner and whizzed off through the information superhighway to several mailboxes across the world. I saw light as my parent was woken up and played to the final frame, where "yours truly" sat looking handsome! The human (who looked blurry eyed and drunk, by the way) looked at me and growled. He uttered something like - "This button looks tacky..and..umm.. out-of-place. It must be changed." My rectangles and gradients grew heavy as I was shut off. I didn't know what happened till...this other guy saw me- A very elderly British man, I guess. He commented - "The banner is ok.The button is ok too, but, it needs some improvement..." He went on for an hour almost and kept replaying my dad a hundred times, till, my colours spun and I felt ooozie!
In a nutshell, out of the 20-30 people who saw me, there was just a single lady who kinda liked me. The rest had the same comment - "tacky, needs brighter colours, needs improvement...blah blah blah.." After about 3 days of circling around, I was taken back to the good artist who created me. Once again, my life was opened, ready to be changed...and.. PhotoShop is a lovely tool!
The good artist was kinda angry at all the feedback he got..or.. he had a tough life. He choked me with lots of colours and roughened me up with some really surreal texture. My new "look" had to be looked at again..more seriously. He poked at me with those brushes and pens and pencils..you name it! Cut a bit off me and added new bits. I became shiny for a minute and for the next minute I was all messed up. After about an hour of "button-handling", he called another person to stare at me and do more violent things. For about 2 minutes everything was almost transparent about me. The two people quenched their artistic thirst and took me places showing me off. Well, the new look (I am not even going to start on it!) was accepted by the "internals" they said. Personally, I think the "new look" was awful, terrible, not even close to being a real button! My body had lost its colour and my name was displayed boldly - "CLICK HERE" (this time it was all in uppercase) Once more I made my way through the information super highway and found the same kind of snarls and grunts and a hoard of complaints. Aren't people ever satisfied? But, this time it was a new ball game. This time it was all about rearrangement. They thought things didn't "fit in" or was "not in place". DUHHH!
Here we go again! this time, I wasn't going to get the Photoshop treatment. It was going to be the whole thing. Dad was changing colours, the textmates were moved and I was being hassled. In 5 minutes, my location was changed between frames 1 and 250!!! 15 seconds of relocation! Finally, I was released..or..atleast I thought. A copywiter came up with "new copy". He wanted to fit in some 5 new lines in the frame that I lived. Between my X and Ys, I couldn't calculate how it could happen! I was also renamed from simple old "Click Here" to "More details", "Find out how", "Go", "Learn more"...the circus started again...
NOTE: Sorry, but this interview had to stop coz someone just deleted the button!



(On the internet)