It was bound to happen. A weblog, which is supposedly personal and unprofessional by nature, produced for a company entirely by professionals, every word scrutinised so as not to cause offence and to promote the product in the best light, every post researched, planned and approved. I am just waiting for the first celebrity blog run wholly by their PR company. Maybe it’s already happened and I’ve missed it.
I first entered Raging Cow unaware that it was a Dr. Pepper marketing campaign, after the name jumped out at me and made me chuckle [Raging Bull is not my favourite film]. When I found out that it was an advertising campaign I was interested. For the record, I don’t like Dr. Pepper, and Raging Cow, the drink, hasn’t been released in the UK, so I dove back into the site to see how it stood alone- as a weblog. After all, this site will have been planned, designed and written by professionals, [and caused a hell of a lot of controversy] so it ought to be good.
As for the writing, if you like My Trailer Is Bigger Than Your Trailer, you’ll like Raging Cow. It follows a very similar writing style: quirky cow let loose in the world, logs her experiences and unique perspective on what she finds. Some posts are less subtle than others in the “buy our product” campaign. Take week one, for example, “Hey, our milk – it’s for everyone. But it’s just the same old thing, day after day after day. We’re just looking for a little variety. A little pizzazz. A little extra. A little … something …” Hmm, I wonder what that could be?
The design, as you’d expect, is attractive and fun, but took a long time to load. Once it did fully load it fell down where attempts had been made to make it fit in with other blogs out there. The link buttons [to the sites of the bloggers picked to test the product] crammed into the right-hand column didn’t sit well with the rest of the layout’s clean lines and cartoonish images. Aside from that, it’s simple enough to navigate.
There are three reasons to visit Raging Cow. One is to see what all the hype and controversy is about, the second to see what happens when a big company takes on a weblog, and the third is because they did an okay job and it’s a humorous read [if you can get past the obvious plugs for the product every post]. This is the first time I’ve ever said this, but due to those three reasons, this a must-see weblog.Raging Cow