ING Direct: I Need To Go Interactive Viral

ING Direct has launched an interactive viral commercial with guts in Belgium. The underlying thought? On the internet everything is for free, including going to the toilet and internet banking with ING.

In the press release one can read: “You need to go while surfing? Visit “I Need To Go”, the first toilets on the internet. Male or female, small or big dump: “I Need To Go” is free for all. And when exiting Madame Pipi has a small surprise for you …”

What ING Direct could have done better, is to run their micro-website ‘I need to go’ on the domain of ING Direct. Like: ingdirect.com/ineedtogo. Now ING Direct is missing many links to it’s main domain and that might cost them a higher Pagerank in Google. Yes Sir, SEM and SMO are integrated mostly.

But, I applaud ING Direct for their guts in this viral. Let’s just not forget that ING Direct is the world’s leading direct savings bank, is active in nine countries and has over 18 million customers worldwide.

It’s a member of ING, one of the largest financial services companies in the world. ING has over 112,000 employees operating in 50 countries with banking and insurance assets exceeding $600 billion. So ING Direct is not afraid to damage it’s brand. And I find that courageous. Don’t you?