honeyshed

HONEYSHED is as David Droga of droga5 describes it “…MTV meets QVC” and its all over the web (in marketing and advertising blogs). The sponsored products are brought to you by girls and hipsters in entertaining fashion. And at first glance it seems like a brilliant way to get advertisers to come to you.

Concepted by droga5 - a super talented shop known for creating buzz and thinking differently. Video by smuggler - known for doing edgy work themselves (remember mark ecko tagging air force one?). Site by digitas and bank rolled by Publicis Groupe… $25M initially according to this FastCompany back story.

Honeyshed has a nitch market with their trend spotted products. Its entertaining, even if it is sponsored. It offers value in ad revenue, analytics, and potential new business opportunities pouring out of the brand relationships it brings.

I have three thoughts about it all.
1) Honeyshed may have shot themselves in the foot when the beta site hit all the advertising and marketing blogs… although, the poor reviews might actually drive more traffic to see what all the negative sentiments are about.
2) Although the strategy is digitally centered, they may need to tap other channels and media placements (I haven’t seen a media plan, so this is speculation) to help drive traffic to the site. 150 twitter followers and facebook friends probably isn’t going to cut it.
3) Its cool that they jumped in with both feet, but seems like they could have prototyped something at a smaller scale to see if it would test - this goes for the interface too. because although it was in beta for a year the end product is still a little clunky.

Good luck honeyshed, its nice to see a group thinking entrepreneurially about their business - creating new platforms and value for brands beyond a traditional model.