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United recently announced that it’s joining Delta and American in creating a new Basic Economy fare class, one tier below Standard Economy. This no-frills tier cuts a few of the remaining “frills” of Standard Economy, like overhead bins and pre-assigned seats.
It’s a move to help the major airlines compete with discount airlines like Spirit and Frontier. Spirit advertises itself as “a cheap seat for a cheap-ass” and models after Ryanair which famously considered charging passengers £1 to use the inflight toilet.
A lot of brands offer a continuum of basic to premium, but I think there’s risk to brands that try to stretch this far, literally from “cheap-ass” to first-class. Many travel brands in particular follow a model of low base prices and constant aggressive upselling. But in the process, they can forget all about the impact on customer experience.
Rafat Ali of Skift described how travel brands market to customers as “hate-selling”....
Creatives, despair! With just six weeks left in 2015, the most shared ad of the year contains nothing but found footage, according to new data from Unruly—hilarious and adorable found footage, but found footage nonetheless.
But maybe that's OK. The spot, "Friends Furever" for Google's Android, caused a bit of consternation at first over at Droga5—the agency that created it, and which is known for creating some of the industry's most original advertising, not just slapping together funny clips it finds on the Internet.
But as David Droga said during an Advertising Week panel in September, you can't be too proud when it comes to creating something compellingly shareable....
Jesus Christ pulled off some pretty impressive brand stunts in his day: turning water into wine; healing the blind; feeding the multitude with the loaves and fishes. But when it came to one of the biggest stunts of His career, He turned to Montreal's 1one Production—at least, according to this "never-before-seen original footage" of Christ and his marketing team from a couple thousand years ago...
Some Internet memes rely on added sugar and mysterious ingredients to extend their shelf lives, as we discussed yesterday. Others, such as “Alex from Target,” are like French black truffles — not only are they wild, rare and out of the reach of most of us but they also require highly sensitive snouts to root them out.
Let’s get to the nut graf: “It turns out that Alex from Target is not a marketing ploy and he’s an actual, genuine person and bagger,” who just happened to be “fangirled” for his “super hot” looks while doing his job on the line in Texas, TMZ reported with all due exuberance yesterday.
In fact, according to TMZ’s blurb accompanying its video report, “Little Al's employer tells TMZ the Internet phenomenon is 100% genuine grassroots.”Lest you think this story is strictly for the tabloids, consider this revelation from the New York Times’ Leslie Kaufman: “The Alex phenomenon became the subject of news articles on the websites of Time, the Washington Post and CNN over the last two days. TheDallas Morning News tried furiously to confirm just which Target he worked for.”
And that’s nowhere near the half of it....
....BuzzFeed and VICE are leading the industry in rising above this stat. Jonah Peretti talked about how content and communication are merging, as people increasingly share content and visuals in lieu of their own words. Video and storytelling is the key for Eddy Moretti at VICE. He said “news media today is like a kids soccer game; everyone goes here, then everyone goes there. There is a lot of other stuff going on in the world, and today’s youth want to know about it. We are using video to tell those stories.”
There are well-publicized successes on the consumer side: KMart’s “Ship My Pants” and HelloFlo’s “First Moon Party” were provocative and hilarious, but also received nearly 10 million and 30 million views, respectively, and generates press from TIME to Mashable to The New York Times....
What's even cooler about gapingvoid is its stance on marketing. According to its website, gapingvoid believes that "Traditional advertising doesn’t work very well. Sure, it tries, and tries hard, but most of the time, it fails." Our thoughts exactly! Now that we're all caught up, let's take a look at gapingvoid's take on inbound marketing via the following 6 social objects....
Tired of toiling in the blogging trenches? Finally, a guide that is guaranteed to propel you to fame and fortune by Mars Dorian....
I am a self-proclaimed social media rockstar, without any credentials, so I feel more than qualified to present you with the Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Blogging Superstar. Warning: The following blog post will help you gain instant money & fame. This is guaranteed, or your money back, which you didn’t pay, so there’s no conflict of interest here....
A company called Powerful Yogurt is now selling what it calls "the first yogurt in the U.S. designed for a man's health and nutrition needs." The Sandwich Monday gang gives it a very manly taste test. Last week on Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me, we talked about a new yogurt for men, or brogurt, from a company called Powerful Yogurt. Here's what our panelist, comedian Jessi Klein, had to say about it: "If male yogurt marketing is anywhere near as annoying as female yogurt marketing, you are in for a treat. Every female yogurt commercial is basically like women in a wedding dress just petting a kitten and eating yogurt." Powerful sent us a crate of the stuff this week. It arrived as all manly products do, carried by a Navy Seal who then punches it into your face....
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Remember when you were a kid and you'd lose track of time doing your favorite thing?
That's what being in love with your work is like.
Of course, people like being employed (and the money that goes with it).
But there are other things that matter just as much, like connection, meaning, purpose, and the rest of the narrative....
In honor of the Food Issue, this week we're highlighting fabulous kitchen gadgets, including a selfie toaster, a DIY cheese kit, and a cutting board for the obsessive chef.
Move over, Jesus: With the Selfie Toaster from Burnt Impressions, anyone's face can be emblazoned on a slice of toast. After uploading your chosen selfie on the Vermont-based toaster company's website, you'll receive a toaster with a custom insert featuring an image of your glorious visage (or even that of your favorite celebrity—Kanye toast, anyone?). It's the perfect gift for "the person who has everything," or just a total narcissist....
Above: some young people in a car, yesterday.
No wonder we're the most narcissistic, self-entitled generation ever: people just won't stop talking about #millennials.
Here's the latest new heap of s*** that pokes and prods at the hapless, buried-in-sane #GenY #millennials who are so diverse, yet so easy to speak for—a new study from perpetually hip MTV, now the Voice Of Two Generations, saying that #millennials love driving and cars and "see car ownership as a way to craft their unique adult identity," which was an actual sentence spoken by an actual sentient human being with actual free will who makes more actual money than any #millennial ever will.
"The study said 82 percent of #millennials find buying or leasing a new car 'exciting,'" in the same way they find paying for coffee with a Vine of a Macklemore concert exciting. It goes on. "The study found 87 percent of #millennials said they enjoyed customizing things to make them unique.
The study found 72 percent would rather give up texting for a week than surrender their cars. The study found 72 percent of #millennials enjoy the smell of their own farts. The study found 102 percent of #millennials think Edward Snowden is a slang word for a new type of ecstasy. The study found 369 percent of #millennials would rather give up the use of their testicles than give up the chance to use #hashtags to search for #CocaColaLife coupons on #Ello."...
Ever feel like real-time marketing is all about being first, and not about being good?
You're not alone.
John St., the Toronto agency that regularly produces scathing parody videos about the ad business, just released the hilarious video below about the breakneck pace of marketing today—and how every brand feels the need to react to real-time events within minutes.
As it did with Catvertising™, John St. is now pretending to be running a whole new dedicated unit called Reactvertising™, where it goes to absurd lengths to make sure its clients are clued into current events 24/7 and can react within seconds—indeed, knee-jerk-like—to breaking news....
Done well, content marketing is hard, challenging work. It’s no surprise then that three of today’s top content marketers include a former comedian, a successful journalist and an agency strategist. We sat down with Tim Washer of Cisco, Stephanie Losee of Dell and Stacy Minero of Twitter to hear their secrets to exceptional content.
Every brand should learn to be funny
Humor plays the same role in content marketing that it does in entertainment—it helps the company (essentially the content creators) stand out, get noticed and build an audience. From the audience standpoint, it makes the content interesting, easier to understand and overall more exciting.
If a brand can’t find humor, it is a perception problem. Brands can be funny, but they often don’t perceive themselves that way. In that case, the brands just aren’t looking at things the right way....
...Telling the public what they want is like teaching a cat to play golf. Cats don’t like to play golf. Cats like to do cat things. The public likes do public things. And what does the public like to do? Put French fries in its burgers. In fact, the public has been sticking French fries in its burgers since the 1970s at least, and probably long before then.
Burger King, exercising our sage advice that it is always a good idea to listen to the public, to study the public, to talk to the public and hold the public’s hand and ask if everything is okay, and then go back to corporate headquarters and start brainstorming PR strategies and marketing campaigns. The public will show you what they want; brands just have to pay attention.
And that’s why we can say with complete confidence that Burger King has managed to implement one of the greatest and most profoundly simple PR strategies ever seen on the planet earth....
The science of content marketing is much bigger than publishing an occasional blog. Custom content has grown into a 43.9 billion dollar industry, and even skeptics have to admit that it’s serious business. The best content marketers are wizards who are able to blend writing, multi-media content, PR, social media, and networking into a comprehensive online presence. It’s hard work, and there’s no room at the top for branded messaging riddled with content marketing mistakes. To both amuse and inspire your quest for excellence, we’ve curated some cartoons which brilliantly illustrate some of the most common pitfalls:
How would "Seinfeld" play out in the 21st Century? A new Twitter account shows you. The Twitter account Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) popped up Sunday evening, imagining characters of the legendary sitcom living in the age of social media. What would edgy Elaine write on Yelp to pan a nasty restaurant? How would brusque Kramer interact with employees at the Apple store? What would neurotic George’s profile look like on an online dating website? By Monday afternoon, it had more than 28,000 followers – and seemingly everyone was getting in on the game.... [Simple awesomeness and another wasted 10 minutes to your day LOL ~ Jeff]
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![How to Make Marketing That People Love [Gapingvoid Cartoons] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/JjkwG6ojGO_0LsBt_m6G2jl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
I hope "hate-selling" is not a trend for 2017? Marketers beware of unintended messaging and impact.