If you happen to see a show and see a comedian that you really like (or really hate), odds are you’ll visit their website. What you’ll find is pretty much the same: news, their best clips of them performing, merchandise (if they’re big enough to have any), blog and links to their podcast (as nearly every comedian has a podcast these days). In essence, comedians are trying to reach you on their site through every way they can so you can watch, listen, read, follow, and, hopefully, pay to go see them live.
Jerry Seinfeld’s brand new JerrySeinfeld.com ultra sleek, clean (so clean and sleek, it feels like a reference to his legendary delivery) eschews the multi-sensory attack for an incredibly simple site that only has clips of Seinfeld doing stand-up over the years, tour dates and an explanation for why the site was built this way. In fact, the site is made even more simple by not having a giant catalog of every bit that Seinfeld has ever done. There’s only three jokes that you can watch on any given day, the names of which are previewed at the bottomed of the page. This way, he lets the material — and the material, only — speak for itself. It’s pretty much how a comedian’s marketing strategy should be.
Seinfeld doesn’t bother with a blog, news, or any number of things that he surely has a hand in. Whether you’re a long time fan or someone just discovering Seinfeld, you can watch for the first time or reminisce about his appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, see where he’s playing to see if you can buy tickets; the information exchange ends there. In fact, if you try to share this on your Facebook wall, you can only share a link to landing page, as opposed to specific clips.
The one amazing thing on Seinfeld’s site that utilizes the far-reaching arm of the many platforms of social networking is the share function on his site. Through the button, you can share not only through Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, but several other sites that are nowhere near as popular such as Throwpile. Most other comedians websites only utilize a direct linkage to those big three sites and maybe MySpace whereas Seinfeld makes an effort to reach out to all audiences that possibly can– via the Internet.
But Seinfeld is in a rare class of comedian where he could make such a site and have that much material to realistically generate something so simple and yet so ambitious at the same time. It’s also why Seinfeld can charge at least $82 for a show in Portland, Maine (check it, it’s on the site).
