Leni the Pug Marketer

Ok, so I like this site. It's promoting a new age "Twas the Night Before Christmas" story about the Christmas adventures of a pug and his crew of canines.

http://www.lenithepug.com/

So many things about it tickle my fancy - the navigation across the bottom - how when you hover over each menu item, popcorn flies out and when you click a different character pops up. I like how it shows all the behind the scenes work that went into the illustration. I like how there's music - and music that so perfectly embodies the ugly cuteness of a pug.

However, how effective is this really, from a marketing perspective? The work that went into building this site is pretty immense. All to sell one book. Yes, a book that is made of paper and printed with ink, that takes up space and is made of matter. I don't question the effectiveness of it in giving viewers/potential readers a sense of what the book is about, but think about the drop off! How much traffic will something like this generate? It's not borderline racy, funny, or controversial enough to warrant viral forwarding. The micro-site was advertised on a bunch of Christian websites - how many people will click on those ads, go to the site, click through and then decide, yes I'm going to order this book for $34.95? The drop off seems pretty significant to me.

I guess I'm just lamenting what seems to me a slightly ineffective effort (a possibly large effort at that) to market a book, which clearly benefits from an interactive site with music and cool animations.

Then again, I do admire this for how it screams labor of love - that's not something I can say often goes into my cost-benefit analysis.