Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Houston Rockets Browser Toolbar and Widgets


The Houston Rockets (the NBA's Houston franchise) have just made available a Rockets based web browser toolbar and a "Countdown to Home Opener" widget. The toolbar comprises of links to the teams homepage as well as several other related links. Also, the Yahoo! powered toolbar has a search engine built in. The widget consists of a graphic of the star players as well as countdown timer to the teams home opener for the 2007-2008. Both the toolbar and widget are free for download.

With regards PR, the toolbar and the widget are great ways of keeping their organization visible to their public. By offering these new applications at this time (it is the NBA's off-season) the organization is bringing themselves back into their public’s consciousness and letting them know that the new season is just around the corner. I feel that other organizations (not just sports but many other industries) could benefit from offering such applications to their specific publics. I was made aware of the Rockets toolbar and widget by a email newsletter that I subscribe. Usint the email newsletter as mode for making aware, the probability of your public actually using the new apps is higher since they have already shown that they are interested in the organization because they have signed up for the email newsletter. What do you guys think? Is offering new web applications such as the toolbar and widget useful or just a waste of time? You don't need to think about it only from a sports perspective, think about what other non-web based organizations (besides Yahoo!, Google, etc.) might be able to use such web apps to keep themselves in their publics consciousness.

1 comment:

Megan said...

Great example and observations. I agree that we'll see many more companies using such widgets in the future as a way of keeping themselves in the minds of their public. It seems that this is a good move, especially for the publics that really care about the company or product (I'm thinking about Apple-freaks). A relatively cheap, easy way to keep your company at the forefront of their minds.