Just saw the new Vodafone 360 advert advertising the 360 service and it does so by talking about a bunch of redheads getting together. It’s a good, fun minute and seamlessly shows off everything 360 can do. But there’s one huge, MASSIVE missed opportunity…

It’s either a missed chance or they’ve bottled it when it comes to redheads. Watch the video and see if you can guess what it is…

Now it’s a well-made video: fun, quirky, imaginative and informative (though at the end I was wondering what handset the advert was for) but what was the first link I went looking for as I came off the advert? No, it wasn’t for Vodafone or 360 but www.redheadsunited.net but here’s what you get if you click on that link:

If you go googling, you do get a flickr feed, but it’s nothing to do with the campaign sadly.

To me, that’s a missed gift. They could have set that up and had fun – even playing it straight – as it would have been a great day of getting a section of the marketplace to come to a site.

This is where marketing needs to go

I’m sure there are people wondering why Vodafone would do it. But this is where marketing needs to go – reaching out with sites that are not directly about the product but tied in (the colour matches the Vodafone corporate colour). Look at the success of Compare the Meerkat for Compare the Market.

Consumers want to be engaged in entertaining ways and a Facebook for Redheads could have been fantastic and hilarious while brand building.