How can Omnicom, a holding company with revenue in excess of $14,000 million, with legal power that I cannot begin to imagine, not manage to get their cookie notice to work?
It starts well, and looks friendly enough, even for a massive and totally interrupting modal…
But on clicking their Learn More link you currently (at 9am BST 7 July 2015) end up here…
Out of curiosity I had a little search for the notice myself and ended up on the Omnicom Group Inc: Online Privacy Notice page…
Which started well…
But didn’t end as well…
Information about our cookie practices in the European Union is available at [insert link to Cookie Notice ONLY FOR THE EU VERSIONS]. To the extent required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent before collecting information using cookies or similar automated means.
A direction note, probably from the legal team, left in the, probably Word Doc, has been left in the copy and pasted text.
To some extent I see the fact above about them being a multi million dollar operation means that they might drop the ball on some of the smaller and annoying and effectively worthless details (I’m still to hear of any human that has gained any value from cookie notices on websites), but there’s a part of me that can’t stop expecting more from the big players.
I actually came across another example of this same feeling when logging back into Tumblr to post this…
How can they be doing the old ‘log in’ and ‘sign up’ mix up on the same page, in two buttons, that are right next to each other? Isn’t that UI and copywriting for the web 101?
The thing with this example, because it’s someone that’s the size of Tumblr, is that I feel myself starting to doubt my own conviction. Maybe this argument has been settled and this is now deemed correct. Use both ‘sign up’ and ‘log in’. Obviously? Have a cookie notice pop up, link and page of legals, but don’t make them link anywhere. Whatever?
Running an SME puts you in an odd position of always expecting more from big businesses and being surprised every time that they fail or make what seem like obvious mistakes.
It feels a little like always idolising an older sibling and thinking they’re infallible, while being unable to recognise that you’re only 4 years old and they’re only 8. You’re probably wrong at this stage, but you can’t help but feel you’re right. Surely, they’re so big and experienced, they must be perfect. How can little old me question their might?
Documenteering 