Using USB devices for marketing collateral 2

[chriscboy]

Hi All,

Our marketing department are investigating using some USB devices as marketing collateral. These "things" are basically a piece of folded card with product info on and inside is a USB key which you can pull out and plug into your PC or laptop.

The USB key then launches a website which contains further information about our products. You cannot write anything to the USB key.

Now its a great marketing idea, but I am wondering about the IT implications as all our customers are either universites or corporations. Would these devices cause problems with USB security policies at corporations?

If you work at a corporation what is your stand on these types of devices? I understand the issues with regarding data loss of USB harddisks but these things are readonly.

Is our marketing department safe to use this, or should they abandon the idea?

Any thoughts or ideas welcome!

 

[lionelhill]

It's a really silly idea, but you are far from alone in doing it.

(1) many Universities etc. are environmentally aware. This is yet another piece of electronic rubbish and plastic that will have to be thrown away. It doesn't make your company look good.

(2) At first sight, everyone will think "Wow! A free USB memory stick". Then they'll find they can't use it, and they'll try to prise the end off it to see if there's anything they can poke to make it work, and they'll end up sticking a pair of scissors in their finger, and it still won't work, and they'll get frustrated and HATE your company for months for wasting their time.

If you must hand out USB sticks, put your company logo on the side and make them work properly. That way you will have an advert in everyone's pocket for a while, even if they just delete your files.

I speak from experience: a company recently threw these wretched things at us, exactly as you are planning, and what I described is pretty much what I saw amongst my coworkers here. Except no one actually drew blood with the scissors.

Incidentally, by the time I'd finished trying to get the USB stick to work as a writeable thing, it was so mangled it didn't work at all, so I have no idea what marketing text was on it anyway. I don't know anyone who actually read the files that were supplied.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

I don't know what you're marketing (for developers, general users etc.) but in addition to the points raised by lionelhill (which I totally agree with) alot of general workers have their USB ports disabled (this is the case for the general workers where I work) so they wouldn't be able to use it even if they wanted to.

Andy
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[green]' Signature removed for testing purposes.[/green]

http://lessthandot.com

 

[chriscboy]

Thanks for your answers. I think I have given our Marketing Manager some food for thought!!

 

[Demonpiggies]

Ummm... a USB business card is actually a good and novel idea which the GRAPHIC DESIGN community has made theirs. Chriscboy you should do some research on how graphic designers are designing theirs. Every year (I think) there are a few magazines for graphic designers and a few art magazines (whose demographic is graphic designers, and are mostly European magazines) do huge articles on business cards and go out of their way to show innovative cards. I remember last year they showed a small web consultant group's and the card was basically an old circuit. I'm pretty sure that it was installable but forgot what it could do but it was a pretty neat idea. This is also considering that they made it themselves from OLD components. I've been trying to come up with a feasible way to do what you're doing but being without a budget to do something like that for myself I've almost abandoned the idea...
My 2 cents is that the drive you are using SHOULD have such little memory that it would not be worth trying to break into it. Also the drive itself should be the card not a card and a drive. I've learned to keep these kinds of things simple but also considering I'm an engineer and not in marketing I may be wrong...

 

[Diancecht]

An USB launching a website would be a virus for me ...

Cheers,
Dian

 

[traingamer]

At our (Fortune 200) company all storage devices on USB ports are completely blocked for security reasons.

Greg
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Kierkegaard