One of the benefits of running a creative agency and employing talented engineers and developers is you can enlist them to help you give loved ones pretty cool gifts.
Heseung Kim, president and CEO of Old City, Philadelphia-based firm Mighty Engine, wanted to give her mother something special for her 70th birthday last fall. So she had her agency create a website that featured stories and pictures from loved ones. The gift went over really well – not just with mom, but inside Mighty Engine’s inspiring sixth-floor space in the Creative Arts Building on Cuthbert St.
That experience, coupled with a former front-end developer’s idea at one of the company’s “Big Hairy Awesome Goal” sessions, gave birth to AnySentence.com, Mighty Engine’s latest creation that at best could prove to be a powerful marketing tool and at worst can be a fun and simple way for anybody to create their own webpage.
More than anything, AnySentence makes it easy to make one’s permanent mark on the internet without the commitment of maintaining a blog or user account. Users can log in to AnySentence.com via Facebook and choose from any number of domains that Mighty Engine has purchased, like “.isANewGraduate” or “.willBeRemembered” to personalize with someone’s name. You can then upload a photo and enter text, choose from at least three themes, click launch, and you’ve got yourself a web page with a highly personalized domain name. Other users can comment via Facebook as well.
“You don’t have to monitor it. It’s up,” says Kim. “One blog does not make you a blogger. AnySentence is for people who just want to make a statement. We’ll keep adding domains to it over time.”
Mighty Engine re-launched AnySentence.com earlier this week and immediately reached out to the Obama and Romney campaigns to inform them of their “.supportsObama” and “.supportsRomney” domains. The re-launch was strategic in that the Mighty Engine team felt the addition of a competitive element could make AnySentence far more powerful. As it stands, a “Showdown” dashboard on the AnySentence site provides an update on how many users created their own Obama and Romney pages (Obama is leading 70 percent to 30 percent). It’s not hard to imagine how such competitiveness could help the site take off in a big way.
“We want the campaigns to provide their support base with another way to show support,” Kim says. “You can give money, volunteer, but beyond that there’s not much else you can do. Now you can create a testimonial. That rich language of why people support someone's candidacy is often missing.”
Bragging rights among AnySentence users also come into play; there’s a Most Popular section of the site that displays the 10 most-viewed AnySentence sites.
Not that cat or bacon lovers needed another outlet to express their undying affection online, but Mighty Engine also included “.isTheBestCatEver” and “.cantLiveWithoutBacon” among the nine domains it currently makes available on AnySentence. It’s only a matter of time before “.isNotAfraidOfZombies” becomes an option.
The site was originally launched in time for Mother’s Day in the spring, and Mighty Engine’s “.isTheBestMomEver” domain proved so popular that one woman built six pages for her relatives.
“The best compliment we received was ‘Why hasn’t anybody done this before?’” says Kim.
Kim says her agency will eventually pitch AnySentence to businesses and other marketers looking to develop unique campaigns that connect with audiences. She also envisions civic engagement potential for the site. For Mighty Engine, which works with many nonprofits and large institutions (think Old City District, tourism groups and University City Science Center) throughout the region, building AnySentence was a way to create something for the sake of being innovative, and not just to meet a client’s needs. She believes this approach will help attract new business and keep the company on a forward track.
“There are so many things about the internet that are not being maximized or exploited in the right way,” says Kim. “Our intention with AnySentence is to retool some basic stuff about the internet, allow people to have fun, share and connect with one another. It also doesn't hurt to set up Mighty Engine for a new revenue stream, or at least some bragging rights.”
JOE PETRUCCI is managing editor of Keystone Edge. Send feedback here.