American Airlines – Putting you first, in First?

This lovely TV spot for travelling First Class on American Airlines, the latest incarnation of a campaign featuring Kevin Spacey, emphasises individuality above all else. Great iAds have been appearing for this recently in iPad apps for The Economist and The Financial Times. It’s disappointing then, upon arriving at the AA site, to be greeted with a data-heavy template that seems like it’s stuck in 2003, and the only mention of the campaign – ‘The Individual’, takes you to an unsatisfying pop-up microsite. This microsite URL is ‘The Individual Flyer’. Why not call the whole campaign that, as typing in ‘The Individual’ reveals no immediate organic or paid results for AA. What is worse, when you Google ‘The Individual Flyer’, the first hit on Google is for the mobile site. Similar in its failure to equate luxury with excellence in all fields is the newly launched – and undeniably beautiful – Four Seasons website, which, at a gigantic cost of $18m, attracted a withering review from eConsultancy.

“I want [a product] that treats me like me, whoever I happen to be”, Spacey intones. It’s no recent phenomenon that brands are trying to tailor their offering to every consumers’ whim, but what this ad hints at is that economies of scale just won’t work for luxury products and experiences. Unfortunately the digital agency who worked on the AA site have economised, and the site itself, much like Zeitgeist on a long-haul flight, is in need of an upgrade.

Selling ‘Toy Story 3’

Orson Welles once said “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story”. Many pundits thought that a third iteration of the popular ‘Toy Story’ franchise would be a step too far; could a film released eleven years after its predecessor still pull in the crowds? Any such questions were swiftly forgotten about when the film grossed a record-breaking $110+m in its opening weekend in the US, and held it’s number one spot this weekend just passed as well.

Apart from the enduring popularity of the series, as well as studio Pixar’s seemingly unending run of stellar films, the film (which has yet to be released in the UK to avoid clashing with the World Cup) surely owes some of its success to an excellent marketing campaign. As well as simple things like the teaser trailer, which handily features the ‘Toy Story 3’ logo in the middle of the clip (the image YouTube then uses as a thumbnail), and releasing apps for the iPhone et al., there are three examples in particular that Zeitgeist will be focussing on in this article.

The first example was intended to build some viral buzz around the film by releasing various videos on YouTube. These videos were commercials that featured old toys from the ’80s that appear in ‘Toy Story 3′, such as the Lots-o’-Huggin’ bear. The catch is that these commercials are fake, because the product itself exists purely in the film. The video however is so realistic, from the VHS-like video quality to the ’80s music, voiceover and clothing, it blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality, and takes you into the ‘Toy Story’ universe. As Mashable writes, “Thus far, Disney and Pixar have heavily marketed the film across different demographics, but there has a been a strong viral push to grab the attention of people in their mid-to-late twenties. For that reason, creating an ’80s-esque toy commercial makes a lot of sense, because we’re a generation that is obsessed with recollecting our past and relishing what once was.”

SEO has been under the microscope as well, to great effect thanks to Google and Twitter. eConsultancy ran an article on the film’s promoted Twitter presence, saying “the placement is great branding for the Toy Story franchise”. It’s presence was on the Promoted Trends slot, which brands have to “win” to be lucky enough to feature on. The article continues, “media mentions of its Twitter purchase are also working out to its benefit.” For Google’s part, the film jumped on the Search Stories bandwagon, creating a fun video of what results the user (in this case characters from the ‘Toy Story’ films) get when they type in certain words on the search engine.

Lastly and most impressively (because it is such a simple thought), there was the fantastic idea of allowing people to buy tickets to the film through Facebook. This is a first, and a great step. For too long, generic thinking has operated along the lines of “We’ll put together a site, make some great content, make it really engaging, and people will come to visit the site.” This example represents a shift to thinking more along the lines of “Let’s bring this content and functionality to where they already are.” It’s just a simple and superb idea, no doubt the first in a long line of such promotions from all the studios. One marketing head from a rival studio told Zeitgeist they were “all over Facebook now”.

Overall, great thinking and great execution have led to several promotions that not only make the consumer feel closer to the brand, but also, as with the latter example, help lead to direct monetisation.

Microsoft and Google

From the August Zeitgeist…

Tensions between Microsoft and Google have long been simmering; here we look at Microsoft’s recent moves and effects they are having on its brand.

On 29th July, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced a search deal in an attempt to compete with Google, though it seems a fair bet to say the latter will benefit in the short-term as the two companies spend time integrating. Microsoft is talking up its upcoming operating system, unimaginatively titled “Windows 7” and promoting its new Internet Explorer with a graphic commercial, that anyone watching won’t soon forget, although it’s unclear what Microsoft is trying to say about its brand or audience here.

Windows Vista has proved a disappointment; Reuters reported that many companies thought it “unstable”. The newswire service now reports that according to a recent survey, 60% of companies surveyed will not be upgrading to Windows 7.

On July 8th, TechCrunch led with “Google drops a nuclear bomb on Microsoft. And it’s made of Chrome”. In 2010 Google will launch an open-source, lightweight OS – at first on netbooks – in an “attempt to re-think what operating systems should be”. Google pointedly note that current Oss “that browsers run on were designed in an era when there was no web”, makes it even more painful. TechCrunch points out, “What Google is doing is not recreating a new kind of OS, they’re creating the best way to not need one at all”.

The ever-impartial Bill Gates is quoted in Brand Republic saying the Chrome OS is “nothing new”, noting that the fact that Chrome is both an operating system and a browser shows how broad the term ‘browser’ has become.

“The more vague they are, the more interesting it is… It just shows the word browser has become a truly meaningless word… In large part, it’s more an abuse of terminology than a real change.”

Perhaps product differentiation rather than pedantry would have benefitted Microsoft’s brand more? The battle of browsers, operating systems, and words, continues.

The new search deal means that strategies for digital campaigns must now increasingly be thought of in the context of Bing/Yahoo! algorithms and SEO, as well as Google. It also gives clients more choice and flexibility, as Sir Martin Sorrell noted: “It is very welcome for our clients as it brings more balance to the search marketplace and may moderate pricing.”