Guinness have setup a blog run by their marketing team.
But before you click on the link to go and have a look you better stop for a second.
If you are not in the UK you cannot view the blog (or at least they don't want you to view it)
They've put up a "nice" barrier page that stops you accessing the site unless you provide your age and state that you are in England, Scotland or Wales. Supposedly they are concerned about the legal issues of making the content available.
From a marketing point of view I see a number of issues with this. Unless they are going to give me very valuable content why would I bother filling out the form? If they are forcing everyone to fill it out have they set it up so that the search engine spiders can get in directly?
The age and country check is laughable. I was blocked the first time when I told the truth, but by simply using my browser's back button and changing my country I was able to get in.
It's also more than a bit insulting that Irish citizens cannot view a blog about one of the quintessential Irish products. (Yes I know the company isn't Irish anymore)
Other people have also been commenting on the new blog...
Guinness Blog
6 Comments
Rate This Blog
Categories
- Cinema (105)
- Domains & Hosting (19)
- General (108)
- Harry Potter (17)
- Linguistics (28)
- Podcasting (21)
- Techie :: Techno :: (633)
- Thoughts :: Pensieri :: (250)
- Work :: Lavoro :: (96)
- accessibility (17)
- adsense (2)
- adwords (15)
- amazon (9)
- apache (4)
- apple (33)
- audio (2)
- barcamp (6)
- blacknight (51)
- blogging (59)
- books (15)
- cool (84)
- copyright (4)
- data retention (2)
- design (16)
- ebay (12)
- ecommerce (57)
- events (14)
- gaming (3)
- google (28)
- humour (78)
- iedr (9)
- iia (27)
- interviews (3)
- jaiku (3)
- linksys (4)
- marketing (34)
- microsoft (11)
- movabletype (13)
- paypal (3)
- philately (4)
- phones (7)
- photography (27)
- rant (16)
- ripe (6)
- security (8)
- seo (22)
- skycon (4)
- technoratifeedback (3)
- travel (12)
- tv (3)
- twitter (7)
- weird (6)
- wordpress (7)
- yahoo (2)
Monthly Archives
- December 2008 (25)
- November 2008 (24)
- October 2008 (10)
- September 2008 (14)
- August 2008 (29)
- July 2008 (24)
- June 2008 (19)
- May 2008 (36)
- April 2008 (43)
- March 2008 (41)
- February 2008 (51)
- January 2008 (35)
- December 2007 (22)
- November 2007 (21)
- October 2007 (42)
- September 2007 (71)
- August 2007 (61)
- July 2007 (39)
- June 2007 (37)
- May 2007 (41)
- April 2007 (39)
- March 2007 (63)
- February 2007 (47)
- January 2007 (82)
- December 2006 (25)
- November 2006 (34)
- October 2006 (28)
- September 2006 (36)
- August 2006 (40)
- July 2006 (31)
- June 2006 (45)
- May 2006 (47)
- April 2006 (40)
- March 2006 (39)
- February 2006 (54)
- January 2006 (63)
- December 2005 (38)
- November 2005 (61)
- October 2005 (68)
- September 2005 (46)
- August 2005 (54)
- July 2005 (85)
- June 2005 (25)
- May 2005 (20)
- April 2005 (18)
- March 2005 (19)
- February 2005 (13)
- January 2005 (15)
- December 2004 (9)
- November 2004 (14)
- October 2004 (13)
- September 2004 (11)
- August 2004 (23)
- July 2004 (7)
- June 2004 (1)
- May 2004 (1)
- April 2004 (2)
- March 2004 (5)
- February 2004 (2)
- January 2004 (10)
- December 2003 (8)
- November 2003 (4)
OpenID accepted here
Learn more about OpenID
Search
About this Entry
This page contains a single entry by Michele Neylon published on February 18, 2006 2:11 PM.
Don’t complain about spam was the previous entry in this blog.
Ubuntu Development - Flight 4 is the next entry in this blog.
Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Odd. I had no problem when I put my location as Ireland when I tried it earlier in the week
OK, so I live in NI, technically the UK of course, yet the only options are england scotland and wales. I live in none of these places. Can they really be so stupid?
Don - I don't see any option to choose Ireland.
Phil - It would seem so
Hmmm. They must have changed it since I first visited. I saw the link on Hugh's site not long after he posted it, and there were a long list of countries in a drop down box - with England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland at the very top. I only tried the Ireland option and it worked.
At elast you can lie and get past the landingpage, I've encountered more serious problems...
http://www.ambrand.com/2006/02/11/the-it-crowd-and-geoip/
All very interesting . . . but it's Friday! Nearly finished work and I'm going for a pint! (of Guinness of course).