Rant: Official Nerf Q+A on Tumblr. Answers the questions noone cares about.

Nerf Q+A. Answers the questions noone cares about.

 The official Nerf Tumblr page is supposed to be a Q+A where "You Ask, Nerf answers". It boasts "Almost everything you could know about your favourite brand in one spot" How it works is you have to ask your questions on the official Facebook page, ensuring you've adhered to all the rules they set, and then every week they choose 3 (yes.. a measly THREE) questions they WANT to answer and then post them up on the Q+A.

Call me cynical, but you'd learn more about your "favourite brand" from 2 minutes on Google:)


What I always hate about "official pages" for products is they're often out of date. The information available from official sources isn't really what genuine fans want to read, but marketing departments continue to try and control their customers using outdated methods. The idea of having social media in your marketing is to include and involve your customers, seeking feedback (good AND bad), and to realise that information moves so rapidly that it is impossible to control once it's made it into the public arena. I always laugh at US television show "official" websites that detect my IP that I'm not in the US and therefore I cannot view their information. Buddy, your information is already out of date compared to the dozens of fan sites out there who have considerably more news and in depth content.. and probably use less bandwidth too. SO cool, I won't visit your site- no harm done. Or... you could have allowed me from the start and given me the information I wanted so I wouldn't NEED to trawl the internet for the information I need and thus become more interested in rumours, leaks and gossip. Eh? no? not listening? meh!

If you're going to allow people to ask you questions on a worldwide channel like Facebook, limiting it to ONE topic, and selecting only 3 questions is not going to please anyone (other than perhaps the 3 kids' questions that got selected and can get bragging rights to.. noone who cares). More so, selecting 3 questions that anyone with a web browser could answer and then adding dorky outdated marketing spiel like "We can’t give away everything just yet" just makes me shake my head. You give nothing away!

And.. you wanna know how cool "official information" can be? Check out our official Australian Nerf website. You'll learn more about the new upcoming blasters. For 2009. I can't wait! :)