About This Website... By Captain D HOW DO YOU DESIGN a Website for a client whose ultimate aim is to reach fewer than a dozen people? That was the intriguing question raised by Sister Salsa's Jim Buddington recently when he described a site he wanted to accompany his regular site, SendSalsa.com. Buddington was envisioning a site that would enable users to contact grocers not currently carrying Sisters Salsa. The site would be designed not to persuade people to buy Sisters Salsa, but to ask grocers to stock this popular product. I knew that Buddington liked to have fun with his promotions. The quirky little ads he runs in Discover Downeast Maine With Captain D feature childlike, stick-figure drawings of people engaged in enjoying Sisters Salsa. The originals had, in fact, been done by a child of the company's previous owner. The ads are playfully cheerful and suggest that Sisters Salsa is the perfect accompaniment for casual good times. I felt that this was an effective approach to marketing salsa, and wanted the new site to be true to this spirit. I hit upon the idea of calling the site “Sisters Salsa Communications Central,” immediately setting it apart from the company’s other site. It would endeavor to engage users by suggesting what they could do to assist Sisters Salsa. I brought some of the company's drawings aboard. They suggested that users should tell others about Sisters Salsa, should demand it, and should appeal to potential customers’s pride of place. My idea was that these drawings should be changed regularly, keeping the site's content as fresh as its salsa. Finally, I invented Whatever-works Salsagrams, messages people could send to “recalcitrant grocers not currently stocking Sisters Salsa.” I tried to write messages that were a bit tongue-in-cheek, but that also might prove useful in persuading grocers that here was a product worthy of inclusion on their shelves. Each Salsagram takes a different approach in asking grocers to stock Sisters Salsa. Salsagram I was an appeal to "rational capitalism" while Salsagram II was addressed to Dear Wannebe Grocery Guy and was described as "insulting and hurtful." Salsagram III is "pitiful, blubbering" and Salsagram IV is a “plea for compassionate humanitarianism.” Hopefully, recipients would realize that these are all in fun. Drop-down menus enable users to send Salsagrams to Albertson's, Big Y Foods, Food Lion, Piggly Wiggly, Price Chopper, Publix Super Markets, Roche Bros., Shop & Save, Victory Supermarkets or Wegmans Food Market. We left open a way for users to write messages of their own. Following Buddington's suggested, I also included a way for users to thank grocers—most particularly Hannaford Bros. and Shaw's—for carrying Sisters Salsa. It will be interesting to see how this experiment works out. Sisters Salsa is a popular local Blue Hill institution, and area residents might readily take a sort of proprietary interest helping the company expand its marketing base. Finally, there is an excellent chance people will tend to remain loyal to a brand they have helped to promote. Return Home