..and the Ugly

The worst website I've seen in a while.

Welcome to 

http://www.dole.com

• It takes forever to load, and simply moving your mouse moves the whole scene around.
• The creepy real-people-in-a-cartoon-background all speak at you, often freezing
• If they attempt to list their products anywhere, I couldn't find it. 
• They place way, way, way too much emphasis on all this health and nutritional stuff. Does Dole really need a section for men's health, one for women's health and a different one for fitness and prevention?
• None of the "blog-type" sections has been updated since 2008. Most updates were in 2005 (I'm assuming this was when the site was made.
• There's a whole bunch of videos hidden under "Dole TV" which cannot be found elsewhere on the Internet (hint: Youtube channel anyone?)
• The Super Kids section is overstuffed with games, comics, music and a lot of other budget intensive things that I'm sure no kids really visit anyway. 
• It is impossible to navigate your way around simply to anything. Click on pink-shirt-lady, then the package-of-fruits-with-halo, then the banana, then the banana again to reach the page that gives you nutritional information about fruits and veggies.
• Did I mention clutter? It's overflowing with content. I feel overwhelmed and overloaded and just simply don't have the patience...

the Bad

A half serving of vegetable for dinner? Mixed in with all the wonderful processed Kraft Dinner ingredients?

And when compared to the regular Kraft Dinner,

KD Smart has:

12% more saturated fat

9% more sodium

12% more sugar

4% less protein

(Thank you Weighty Matters for the information)

the Good

I've been hearing a lot of negative things about food advertising lately: dishonesty about ingredients, marketing to children, glossing over the important health details etc.
Maybe they could take a page out of the Ontario Government's (low-budget) books?

"Wedding-Casual"

"Casual," quirky wedding gowns, courtesy of hipster favourite Urban Outfitters has recently launched:

Try: Hugs, Humps, Meets, Is, Tickles, Loves, Cooks, Phones

One of the most innovative ways to get a viewer to interact with an advertisement that I've ever seen. While the average viewing time for an ad online is 30 seconds, I personally spent 10 minutes playing with it without getting bored. Not to mention the amount of interactivity and creativity necessary on the part of the viewer means they'll remember the ad sure!

CLICK TO SEE SUPER AWESOME ADVERTISEMENT: HUNTER SHOOTS BEAR.

I can't decide if Hunter Tickles Bear or Hunter Humps Bear is my favourite!

My only concern: Does the brand message get lost in the process? Even after 10 minutes, I couldn't remember what brand of white-out this was for. Thoughts?

A New Commitment!

After taking a month off or so to think through the blog idea and even trying out Tumblr, here's what I've come to:

I'd really like to blog more frequently, so keep your eye out over the new few weeks for a Brandwashed overdose.

<3