Category: Marketing

 If your company is forced to attend tradeshows, eventually you have to settle on what kind of chotchke you need to hand out.  This conversation usually goes like this:

Boss: What are we giving away?
You: How much do you want to spend?
Boss:  Not much.  I want all our best leads and customers to get something really cool so they’ll remember us, but I don’t want random people to get anything from us for free.
You: So cool, but kid of secret.
Boss: Exactly.  But something they can use over and over when they get back home.  
You: Like a pen, USB key, mouse pad, etc…
Boss: Like that, but different.  This makes sense right?  Ok, let me know what you come up with.

Well, I saw two useful chotckes at CTIA yesterday, and thought I would pass them along.

1. Laptop screen cleaning cloth thingy –  I never seem to have one of these, so every day from now on I will be thanking vsnax.com for my clean screen.
2. Pocket size notebook – Thanks to Ontela.com, I was able to ditch my bag and just walk around the show floor with a notebook I could fit in my back pocket, and write down things or companies I wanted to follow up with when I got home.  It kept me from having to grab any collateral 

I’ve heard people ask a lot of questions about the byzantine world of airline pricing.   The process is so bizarre, that an entire company (Farecast.com) was built to help consumers decide the best time to purchase.   That company was then bought by Microsoft for millions.

But WCBSTV.com reports that now JetBlue brings us a promotion, that if successful, could break the model.   The airline is auctioning off more than 300 roundtrip flights and six vacation packages this week on eBay, with opening bids set between 5 and 10 cents.   The flights are to more than 20 destinations, including four “mystery” JetBlue Getaways Vacation packages to undisclosed locations.

If implemented on a wider basis, those who want to fly the most will pay the most fot eh ticket.   There would be potentially no ceiling on highly sought after flights – but potentially no floor either.   I think the interesting thing will be to see what amount of “bargain buys” would go unused.   If I can lock down a $40 flight to LA for 3 months from now, I would gladly pay the pittance.   But who knows when November rolls around if I use it or not.   Anytway, this is an interesting promotion to watch.

Remember when Metallica was visiting Napster, trying to get music downloaders fined?  Well apparently even guys with that kind of conviction can be swayed.

Wired reports that the band launched a promotion on YouTube featuring their favorite Metallica cover songs on the site. Drummer Lars Ulrich introduces
their selections.  They have their own channel, called MetallicaTV.

I don’t have too much of a take on this, other than I think it’s always encouraging when stalwart opponents of common sense eventually come around.  I’d love to give my feedback on the site from a social media perspective…..but I can’t get the channel to work in Google Chrome.  It all shows up fine, but no videos wiil play.   Is this common for other people, or just me?

Hey, it’s a slow news week since all of the Marketing world is on vacation.  And I’m still tired from a fun weekend in Oregon.  But I know the rules of blogging say I need to post something tout suite…so here’s what you get for this Tuesday’s entry.  To connect it to marketing, let’s call it a story on how every detail on your packaging or direct mail piece is important.

“In 1878 the French had acquired rights to construct a canal across the
Isthmus of Panama. For numerous reasons, the project failed. However, a
young French engineer, Philippe Jean Bunau-Varilla, still believed that
a canal could be built in Panama. Unable to get any action on the
project in France, Bunau-Varilla went to Washington, D.C., to see if he
could interest any congressmen in the venture. There he found that a
bill was pending to build a canal through Nicaragua, not Panama,
especially since the existence of Lake Nicaragua would cut the costs of
construction. “Bunau-Varilla promptly became a one-man lobby. He
obtained several hundred Nicaraguan postage stamps, which showed a
picture of one of the country’s small volcanoes in full eruption.
Bunau-Varilla wrote a brief letter to each congressman, asking, in
effect, if it was really wise to build a canal–at great cost to the
American taxpayers–through a country which was filled with active
volcanoes. With each letter went one of the Nicaraguan stamps. The
congressmen read the letter, looked at the stamp, and decided not to
vote funds for a canal through Nicaragua.” Two years later, in 1904,
Congress approved the canal project for Panama.”

Of course, this story could also be titled, “Apparently U.S. Congressmen are no smarter or dumber than those of 130 years ago.”

I may be completely wrong in this, but I think  Alaska Airlines is capitalizing on a way to get us stubborn Americans to travel more.

Last week you may have seen my 14 million word play-by-play on the Vineman Triathlon in Healdsburg, CA. Because of my pride in the fact that Rich had finished the race, I kept last week’s posts to a minimum so the story would stay on top.

But there was another personal story from that trip I wanted to write about. In order to get to California wine country, I did not have to go through megalopolis SFO, or the dingy Oakland Airport, or even the small and semi-charming Sacramento runways. I was able to fly from Seattle, directly into the little berg of Santa Rosa on a Horizon Airlines turbo prop.

Santa Rosa is a mere 15 minutes from Healdsburg and I went down Thursday on the extremely convenient 5:55pm flight. The airport has one “gate” if you can even call it that, so getting in and out was a breeze. To add to its charm, it’s named after Charles M Schulz and has famous Peanuts comics on the walls.

Returning home was even better. I headed home Sunday on the even more convenient 8:35pm flight. Since only one plane leaves every hour or two, and each plane is only a 70-80 seat turbo prop, you have no check-in or security pressure. You get to the airport about 30 minutes early, watch the plane arrive, wait for everyone else to go through security, then jump through yourself. This convenience allowed me to see another old friend of mine who lives in Healdsburg mine on Sunday afternoon, cruise to the airport about 8:00 for the 8:35 flight, hang out on the airport patio with my friend until it was time to leave and never feel an ounce of pressure.

This made me think about what I like and hate about air travel. Traveling from SeaTac or SFO is a jarring experience. It takes hours to check in. But I positively loved the freedom afforded me on this Santa Rosa flight. Why can’t we have more regional airports, say in Everett, North Bend, Olympia, etc..that only take me to other small tourist towns so I can have a long weekend without feeling like I’m crossing the Russian border? I don’t know the economics, but I hope it doesn’t cost that much to run a tiny one gate airport.

Ironically, I was sitting in the Santa Rosa airport thinking about all this, when I saw another old Seattle friend of mine, a former co-worker who had come down from Seattle on the same flight I was about to board to head back home. I couldn’t believe that the world was so small that in the Santa Rosa airport, I could see someone else from Seattle. But obviously I am not the only one to appreciate flying into a place like Santa Rosa.

Alaska/Horizon has the right idea – in a world of chaos, we want to travel places where it’s easy. I hope to see them pick more “single gate” airports leading to tourist cities I want to explore.