The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial
IT'S TIME WE BRANCHED OUT
EDITORIAL - May 07, 2007
The Town of Princeton has a new website.
It's actually a very attractive online snapshot of what you may expect to see in and around our little town with easy to locate navigation tools and some mighty fine photos to help tell the story about what we are all about in Princeton.
With all due respect to the designer Jay did a great job, a really great job we decided it would be fun to see what the twisted minds at our office would have come up with if we were awarded a contract to design a new Town of Princeton website.
First of all, we would ask for no less than $100,000.00.
We're not sure why as our experience with website design would be worth far less than that, but for easy math $100,000.00 just sounded right. Lots of zeros sounds big!
It would also be enough for us to fill our tank with gas and drive to somewhere like Keremeos for a day to daydream about what we would put in this website thing and also consider whether or not we did the right thing by charging $100,000.00.
Then we'd decide to probably change the web address to something else.
Sure, we like the simplicity of Princeton.ca, but would have gone for something jazzier like ThisAintPenticton.ca or NextToTheOkanaganValley.ca. We would most definitely have steered away from BeyondHope.ca but on second thought that could work.
Okay, there you have it. Our new town website would be called BeyondHope.ca and would have cost us a tank of gas to get to this point.
Then we'd use some reverse physiology to sell the community much like that cough syrup that tastes like crap does in their advertising only we wouldn't say Princeton tastes like crap because it doesn't. We'd have our BeyondHope.ca homepage as a completely black screen. Slowly you hear the sound of a ticking clock.
TICKS TICKS TICKS getting louder and louder until it starts to make your computer vibrate the desk it's sitting on and the ticking ends with a blood curdling scream and then silence.
Awkward silence for a few seconds and just when you think there's nothing on the website a deep, dark Darth Vader-type voice would say, "Come with me (long pause) Beyond Hope."
Then in a flash the black screen spews hundreds of images in less than thirty seconds. There are photos of local scenery, local landmarks, local events, occasions, celebrations and people. Maybe slip in a subliminal frame every so often that says "YOU CAN GET MORE THAN GAS IN PRINCETON" to plant the seed in the subconscious mind.
You'll know this little gem is working the next tme someone says, "I didn't know there was more than just gas stations here." Admit it, you'll hear that at least a dozen times this Summer. Remember where that came from a visit to BeyondHope.ca! Then Darth Vader says, "The only way to see beyond Hope is to get beyond Hope."
Then the screen fades to black and in teeny tiny yellow letters in the very centre of the screen are words so small you can't read them. You strain to make it out and slowly the words grow in size as if moving closer towards you.
Soon you can read one simple phrase: "Princeton, BC. Find out what's really beyond Hope."
Hey, it's a form of marketing by turning a negative into a positive and oddly enough, it's a pretty successful method.
Probably not worth $100,000.00 but we'd like think being beyond Hope is worth far more than that.
