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/