Marketing Pilgrim

No word yet on whether champagne supernovae were served at red carpet event.*

Microsoft’s latest last-ditch-looking effort actually looks pretty good, as BoomTown notes. Today they unveil a new celebrity site, Wonderwall, with subtle MSN branding, a cool layout and plenty of ad space.

The site was designed by BermanBraun Interactive. Its main showcase, shown above, is pretty cool—a side-to-side scrolling “wall” grid of celebrity photos with headlines. Mouseover the headlines and short story excerpts pop up. Click on these, and
what I can only assume is the eponymous “wonderwall” splits open to add the full story, also side-to-side scrolling, in the middle of the wall:

Below are short lists of recent headlines, features and celebrities.

BoomTown notes that MSN’s timing is decent, too, premiering the site the week before the Grammys, a pretty good time for celebrity gossip (and source of red carpet photos).

Of course, Wonderwall will be facing stiff competition in the celeb gossip arena, with more established sites like TMZ and Perez Hilton already among the most popular on the web. It does have one advantage, though: MSN has plenty of traffic to leverage into another celeb gossip site, so it’s not like they’re starting from scratch.

I doubt that Wonderwall is intended to revive Microsoft’s online fortunes, but with a cool design and decent crosspromotion, it has the potential to become if not one of the top celebrity sites, still a strong contender in that category.

Now, feel free to insert your favorite Oasis joke* here.

*Scratching your head? Check out this oldie-but-goodie: