I listen to Newstalk most days while at work. Over the past 3 weeks or more I’ve heard the advertisement for Ben Dunne’s latest venture ‘BenDunne.com‘ at least 5 times a day.

The ad itself is yet another classic from the Ben Dunne school of advertising – the man himself telling us about his latest product/service over some background music. Simple, slightly comedic (the Tom Dunne show on Newstalk goes so far as to make parodies of them for use as advertising of their own show) and repeated A LOT.

This latest campaign for his latest venture – BenDunne.com – has had me a bit baffled from the start. First off, the website seems to be proposing to offer a service similar to DoneDeal.ie or BuyAndSell.ie. No mean feat going up against established websites like that but then add on the specialist online outlets such as Daft.ie, Adverts.ie and Carzone.ie and you’ve got quite the challenge on your hands.

I had a look at BenDunne.com. As pointed out on the radio ad, the website is due to launch on Monday 19th so I wasn’t expecting more than a simple landing page with the launch date and maybe a newsletter sign-up form. Wrong – I found a JPEG of the proposed homepage. For the not-so-web-savvy I can imagine it must have been a little confusing to say the least if you tried clicking on links and buttons with nothing happening.

Fail #1: Putting up a flat graphic of your proposed homepage is a ridiculous idea – visitors will think your website simply doesn’t work and are less likely to return or recommend it.

Last week the radio ad altered slightly as we approached launch date. So has the website. It is now a blank blue page (as above).

Fail  #2: A blank page is the only thing worse than a flat graphic of your website design as your homepage, particularly when you’re advertising the website heavily on national radio.

So it’s one day past launch date and all that BenDunne.com has to offer is a serene shade of blue capturing some Google Analytics stats.

“If Dunne can’t do it, it can’t be done”

THE classic quote from Mr. Ben Dunne himself. I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of website/product/service gets launched if ever it happens. Will it prove his immortal words right or will he be eating them?