Where Do You Want to Drive (On Our Brand Search Engine) Today?

Here's a superb example of front-loading a highly useful "where do you want to drive today" search engine right smack in the center of the front page of a prominent brand website.  Thanks to Noah Brier for bringing this my attention at Ad-Tech last week (he also blogged it on the Naked agency blog).  I'm still amazed at how few brands put search in the center of the consumer experience. What the VW brand appears to appreciate here is the extent to which search drives the overall consumer experience for auto buyers, and even how web 2.0 tools (e.g. tagging) are simplifying the consumer discovery process.  Importantly, if search works so well on Google, why not on the internal brand website?  Too many brands (inexcusably) fail to include search engines on the home page.  And among those who do provide search, all too often the search engine fires back blanks or irrelevant content on critical search queries, especially anything related to a current event (e.g. crisis, recall, breaking news).  In my recent ClickZ piece ("Servicing Search: A Better Ad Model"), I noted that brands need to think more critically about three key talk drivers and "controllables" in the brand service proposition: the invitation, the interface, and the interaction.   VW checks of the first two boxes in a really big way.  So next time you visit your brand website, follow these steps:

1. See if you can find the search engine in less than 10 seconds?
2. Type in obvious terms like "latest news" or "customer service" or "recent advertising" and see if anything relevant or useful shows up
3. Review the actual results and ask yourself "is this what I was really looking for"
4. If disappointed on all three fronts, send a memo to whoever with a link to the VW site