Terminal 5

Last week I read an article on WSJ about British Airways using innovative approach to improve their bad PR about their new Terminal 5 in London. When BA opened terminal 5 it was a disaster missed baggage, long wait times for check in etc. There was huge bad PR from that opening of Terminal 5. Now BA is planning to overcome that image by running daily ads in newspapers and Radio.
The strange thing about these ads are they are created everyday and then published in the paper the next day. I may not have exact times here correct but it is like they take pictures of real passengers at Terminal 5 during the day from 6:00 AM to Noon with the amount of time it took for that passenger to go through check in or collect baggage etc. In the afternoon the ad agency collects all pictures and creates ad campaign by 4:00pm. Then they are submitted to BA authorities for review and a particular ad is selected by 5:00pm. Then they are sent to paper and radio for publication the next day.
This strategy for dynamic (or almost dynamic) ad creation is is really innovative but at the same time could be difficult to continue maintain the service levels everyday.
On a bad day it may not be able to create an ad and it may be noticeable by customers when they see an ad being repeated or if they do not see the ad at all.
But if everything goes smooth then it obviously creates good word of mouth because the passengers themselves are involved and its very fresh ad campaign.
I think it creates lot of pressure on the ad agency who is creating the ad, in these days when an ad takes at least a week to create it is really challenging to have less than 20 hrs workaround on the ads. All the best to the ad agency!!

Advertising in Social networking

Latest TechnologyReview magazine had cover story about social networking sites making money. Till today advertisers couldn't figure out a successful way to make money by advertising on these social networking sites. Interesting quote from the article is :
"For social-networking sites, targeting will necessarily entail getting "between" users, as Seth Goldstein put it. You come to a social network because you are interested in your friends; ergo, the thinking goes, in order to get your attention, advertisers need to let you know what your friends are buying or thinking about buying, or they must somehow get you to send each other ads. It's either a beautiful idea or a creepy one, depending on whether you're an ad executive or the user of a social network."

How cool it would be to know what your friends bought and get some ads or discount coupons on your myspace or facebook. But you need to be very careful about how many ads you put in there and how you get the data. One solution I can think off is that when a person buys something on the internet or in the store, the store sends the person a link to the item he bought so that he could share that link with his friends in myspace or facebook. His friends can review the item and if they like they can buy the same item or any other product. Kind of referral program but its just that its is again user generated email content and because the email link is being sent by their friend, people are more likely to click on the link than if the link was sent through some automated software. The person who refers the program may also get some additional discounts for future purchases.
By using this program,
1) you are sending out targeted advertisements because the person would send the link to his friends who he believes would be interested in the product.
2) Most likely the person receiving the link would be interested and would click the link. So its cheaper in advertising terms $0.00 CPM.
3) Both the receiving and sending parties have incentive so both are more likely to make a purchase or at least review the product.

There are software tools that the magazine talks about in the article, the softwares are cool and interesting.
Another interesting that I found is how the article relates these social networking sites to the dot com era of lycos, compuserve etc : http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/20922/page7/

Changes in Advertisement industry in India

These days the ads in India are getting very interesting, traditionally they just have been focused on family, kids etc no matter if the ad is for a soap or a car, recently the ads that are created are created with a concept behind it, one of them is to create a story like a serial such as a couple break up and then the ad goes on to ask viewers to text back asking if the couple would join together or not and they start showing some additional information in the ad. This creates what I believe as a followership for the ad and people start watching the ad and I also think its a nice mechanism to track how many people are watching the ad and get some data out of it.

Though the ad may no longer be relevant to the product but it just creates a buzz in the market and probably the creators are hoping that this buzz would generate some sales for the product lets see how that works. I doubt if any data that they collect would help in analyzing the amount of sales it generates.

On the other side there are ad's that are showing the social value that their product is creating and also have a sense of emotion to the ad and to the product. I believe these ads are really strong and can effectively generate sales and buzz in the market. Couple of ads that stand out are:





These ads not only portray an image of social benefit by using the idea service but they also create that emotional bondage in terms of the characters thus creating a lasting memory in the viewers. What an Idea!!!

Motorola finally showed turnaround today and posted $0.02 revenue per share. Hopefully we will see some turnaround by the end of the year once we start shipping new products and improve cash flow on the other two business segments. There was an interesting post on fortune today questioning the split, what if Motorola turns around would Motorola still continue with the split, lets watch out.

Talking about Motorola here's an interesting ad to watch:

Restarting my Blog

My friend Vinay has sent me an email request and reminded me of my resolution, now I think its high time I should start posting often in my blog.

SLC trip over Christmas Break

We went on a week holiday to SLC to meet the Brahma Boys gang and also other members. It was a very exciting and fun trip. We enjoyed Skiing on the mountains of Alta resort and then we had Racquet ball championship of the brahma boys. Sireesh won the Racquet ball championship I was out in the first round itself with a score of 21-3. Well I need to practice on my Racquet ball skills, but Racquet ball is a very costly sport, it costs you to rent a court and then you also need to have membership.

Skiing was good, It was my second skiing experience, luckily I didn't fall this time and this time I also learned to hold the rope and go up the slope instead of carrying the ski's on my shoulder.

In case you are wondering who are brahma boys, its a group of which I am a member too who are fans of Brahmanandam the great telugu comedian. Here is the picture of Brahma Boys.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year 2008. One of my New Year's resolution is to start my own blog and record the things and start discussing about few topics that I am interested with the outside world.

Lets see how far I will be successful in posting information to this blog. I will try to update it daily.