I’m sitting in the Myrtle Beach airport waiting for my delayed flight.  Winding down after 3 days attending the 2nd annual Global Marketing Summit.  LOTS more on that in upcoming posts. 

Being delayed and possibly getting stranded in Washington tonight (I’m on stand by) is the “Bad.”  On the flight(s) down here I was shown both the “Good” and the “Ugly.” 

As I was boarding my connecting flight from Charleston to Myrtle Beach I was shown a FABULOUS example of self-motivated, high-touch customer service.  A gentleman by the name of Niles was the ticketing agent.  As he took the ticket from each person, he did something that I’ve never seen before.  He quickly and deftly noted the name of every person and thanked them by name.  Simple…not in the book…rarely a step agents will take the time to do…HUGE impact on me. Bravo Niles!!  When I get back, I’ll be calling to find out the name of your supervisor and to write a message to United Airlines management.

Here comes the “Ugly.”  Still warm with the glow of Nile’s customer service, I strapped myself into seat 4C …€” the first row in coach with lots of leg room.  Comfy (but captive), I was slapped with a pitch by one of the flight attendants (over the intercom) to sign up for a Visa Card.  WHAT THE …?  Miffed only begins to describe how I was feeling.

When I contact United/US Air, I’ll suggest they visit one of their employees in Charlotte to take a lesson in what makes good customer service!

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Watch the Academy Awards tomorrow night and keep an eye on the tube during the commercials. Bank of America is unveiling its new brand strategy, including a new tagline. The company’s previous tagline, “Higher Standards”, is being removed from all of their national advertising.

Want to guess if the new tagline will follow these rules?

…€¢ Super short
…€¢ LOTS of information/emotion
…€¢ Oriented to the corporate brand
…€¢ NOT oriented to the banks products/services

Expect BofA’s relatively new agency (The Omnicom Group - as of August 2005) to come up with a good one. I know I’m definitely more excited about this than if Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) wins the award for “Best Adapted Screenplay”.

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A wonderfully unique application of an old idea! DNScoop.com gives you the scoop on what’s going on with your domain name… with some interesting twists. Finding out how old your site is, getting your Alexa ranking, getting your Google Page Rank … these are all old ideas (in Internet years). DNScoop, however, takes this info to the next level and puts a roughly objective dollar value on page advertising AND the site itself, based on all of the above info. Is it accurate? … maybe not, says Seth Godin … but it is, indeed, interesting.

The beautifully clean home page layout (a la Google), uses one of Seth’s most important axioms …€” giving the user a single “banana” (from his book Big Red Fez). BUT, the clean layout and unique content are tainted by some pretty bad copy. My favorite is the sentence that tells us the tools are offered in “one convent package.” Hmmmmm. Seth’s link and a prominent Digg link sent the shared hosting over the edge where the site wasn’t accessible.

Will these issues dramatically decrease the site’s ability to become popular? … not likely. However, if the company is going to seriously develop itself, and its brand, to become a powerhouse web presence, it should take every step to fix these problems now.

Hey DNScoop team … We wish you all the luck in the world!! You’ve got a great idea, a great site and LOTS of potential!

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My post about GMs assembly line robot was misunderstood by some which led to my clarification that I don’t endorse GM’s decision to create such an ad … but do encourage that type of bold, emotion-based ad development strategy. They just picked the wrong emotion to tap into …€” suicide, dispair, fear.

Now consider;

• VW Polo: Suicide Bomber
• Electrolux: Suicide Jumper
• VW: Suicide Jumper
• Career Builder: Cliff Jumping
• Levi’s Jeans: Train Track Girl
• Washington Mutual: Mass Suicide Jumpers
• Bridgestone Tires: Dog Suicide
  

Let’s consider that this trend may NOT be mass hysteria. There may be a logical reason for all of these commercials … whether we agree with it or not. Case in point; In September of 2005 VW fired long time Boston agency Arnold Worldwide and signed up (hopefully more aggressive) Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami. CP+B is known for taking these kinds of “in your face” risks in the development of ad campaigns. There’s no such thing as “bad press”, right?! As long as the ad gets talked about, it’s a sound approach. That’s dangerously logical.

As much as we believe in a hyper-aggressive, jolting approach (as one possible strategy), we also think the emotions you shock with are as important as the shock-value itself. Take another look at a CP+B classic;

VW Jetta: Safe Happens ad campaign

The emotion is “relief” …€” all summed up in the words cut off at the end of the commercial “HOLY SH..!” This shocker ad celebrates life … it doesn’t dwell on the darker side of suicide. Big difference, don’t you think?

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Interactive, Flash-based animations have been around for years. Turning them into viral marketing fun and having a creative idea explode onto the world of the consumer is a recent thing.

This past holiday season we had Office Max’s “Go Elf Yourself” video (sadly, no longer available). And, now we have the Guinness Beer “A Short Film Called Hands“. VERY soon the quirky fun of these little ditties will wear off and we’ll all need to take it up a notch. Until then, let your hands fiddle.

Marketing tip: Can YOU think of a viral idea that can be spun into a cute little interactive game like this? If so, you’d better do it SOON before the wave passes you by.

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When designing logos for a client, I always explain that simplicity in design is tough. It’s much harder to pull off a simple, elegant design than it is to create a complex one. In a similar vein, marketing and advertising concepts are the same. Simple; hard. Complex; easy.

A couple of weeks ago, Lani Voivod wrote this scathing comparison of Toshiba’s magazine ad to the popular “I’m a PC, and I’m a Mac” ad campaign. This morning, after finding this post at Scootinger.net, from a 1996(!) MacAddict Magazine ad, I start to wonder. Are either, or both, of the new ads a blatant rip-off? … or is it a coincidental use of a similar, simple idea? The world may never know.

Important note; If you’re going to create “simple”, pay particular attention to the possibility that your idea isn’t new. In fact, it may be so “NOT new” that it crosses the line of trademark infringement.

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More on the recent happenings in the Coke-Pepsi battle. In my last post I talked about the impact of DVRs on commercial viewing and that advertisers need to embrace creative approaches, evangelism and customer care. Late last week I compared the brand consistency seen in the latest commercials produced by Coke and Pepsi. Let’s mash these two ideas together, shall we?

Pepsi recently launched a couple of new marketing strategies;

• Under-the-cap promotions that link the product with microsites giving away daily prizes.
• Prize code distribution via eNewsletters (Pepsi Xtras and Dewsletter) and Instant Messaging
• A variety of different treatments to new can labels

Coke … nothing new that I can find

Here comes a HUUUUUGE “however”. If you’re going to create an effective online marketing campaign (Pepsi), you have to make sure ’stuff’ like this doesn’t happen!!! Granted, this happened in 2000 and I shouldn’t even really compare recent good stuff with these older online events, it’s always a good thing to revisit the lessons of the past.

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