What to Do With 250 Million Unused Billboards
With all the stories lately about the airlines, one may have been overlooked earlier this week. Delta announced it was placing ads to its boarding passes, as a way to increase revenue in addition to bag fees, meal and drink fees, and fuel surcharges (not to mention the increased price of tickets). Airlines have experimented with advertising before. Some have placed ads on meal carts, overhead bins, and even the outside of planes. What struck me about the story, however, was a quote from the CEO of the technology company behind creating the ads, Sojern Inc.
Gordon Whitten was quoted in the Wall Street Journal and other publications saying “Here are 250 million billboards per year that were sitting there…with nothing on them.” I understand that marketers need to find new ways to reach customers, but to me this isn’t the avenue they should be choosing. After being nickel-and-dimed by the airlines, the last thing I want to see when I print my ticket is advertising. It’s bad enough having to pay for pillows, food, drinks, and headphones (I’m convinced they would charge for seat cushions if they could replace all their seats with wooden chairs), but ads on the ticket itself is just petty.
Unfortunately, what choice do we have but to accept it, just like the recent wave of airlines charging for the first checked bag? It’s too expensive to drive, the US lacks a real national rail system (Amtrak is often more expensive than driving), so other than staying home consumers really have no choice and the airlines know it.
My solution would be to just raise ticket prices and get rid of all the annoying fees (and now ads). These companies should charge people upfront, rather than hoping to make a quick buck off everything from blankets to peanuts. If the prices are high enough for people to choose another option, then maybe the airline should go out of business. Why should consumers sacrifice service and basic amenities so that airlines can appear to keep their prices low?
I don’t consider the ticket I paid hundreds of dollars for an unused billboard, so why should the airlines? What do you think?
Related Entries
Jeremy
no issues with what you say at all
ticket/boarding pass advertising however is as old as the hills
nobody pays much attention to it either way
and its cost per thousand is reflective of that.
but if the boarding pass stub contained the clue to the first part of a treasure hunt campaign...
for example, this campaign from McDonald's "The Lost Ring" coinciding with the Bejing Olympics.
http://olympics.wikibruce.com/Beginners_Guide
.Cheers
Miro
Miro-
Your point is well taken. I think there is a market for giving passengers information about local attractions, restaurants, etc... However, I wouldn't do it on the ticket itself.
I understand that advertisers want guarantees that customers will see their ad (everyone has to have their ticket with them upon boarding), but this isn't the way to go about it.
This may be one of the reasons ads in general are losing their effectiveness; everywhere you look there's someone selling something. Maybe it's just because I've never worked in a marketing department and I tend to look at things from a consumer's perspective, but to me placing an ad on a ticket, which you require me to have and look at in order to travel with your airline, is out of bounds.
Jeremy
In a previous life, 5 years ago, I headed up the program development/marketing for a startup that sought to introduce marketing campaign programs like you’ve outlined into a Canadian charter airline.
From our (my) thinking at the time – we were very sensitive to being too intrusive. What we were trying to accomplish was to create the conditions for a successful opening overture to a captive audience that (in our particular case) was in vacation mode, and use that special window of opportunity to make headway that would normally not be possible in the other 51 weeks of the year.
That being said, advertising intrusiveness is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. Just look at the messaging one is exposed to at any sporting event, or your recent trip to NASCAR for that matter (is there really a car under all those logos?). How many people complain about these things?
Messaging creep is an unavoidable outcome of our business environment. Top of mind awareness programs and purchase offerings will increase exponentially as we fully enter the mobile marketing/GPS proximity advertising realm.
But what smarter marketers will come to recognize (once again) is that quality and relevancy of the message trumps quantity.
To your point about the airlines – unfortunately they need all the revenue sources they can get their hands on – because consumers rarely extend a warm embrace to any price increase.
Based on my past experience, the smarter thing here would be to position these advertising vehicles as part of an in flight campaign with multiple touch points in the cabin (video, audio, cabin announcements, collateral, menu tray, bulkhead, sampling, even involving the flight crew). At this point, with some creative executions – the advertising transforms from being considered spam to becoming relevant and engaging and when done really well - can be a valued part of the flight experience - even extended into post flight. This type of value-added approach is also able to command a higher advertising premium as a result.
Cheers
Miro
The airlines have the rare circumstances to improve efficiency while making life better for customers - with fast turnaround and boarding of their aircraft. Unfortunately, their inability to grasp this (evidenced by the bag charges, which drive more baggage into the overhead bins, which slows disembarkation and impedes turnaround)is on display daily at an airport near you.
Ads on boarding passes are yet more evidence of the airlines' failure of imagination.
Marji-
I definitely agree that if it were done the right way it could be useful to customers. However, I think in this case the airlines are thinking purely about how to make some extra cash, rather than about how to help their customers.
Unfortunately companies like Delta have lost their benefit of a doubt when it comes to things like this (at least as far as I'm concerned) because of all the times they've put easy revenue ahead of the customer experience.
Jeremy,
I agree that using the boarding pass for mass advertising is annoying and adds no value. However, if the airline used the information they have about me to customize a message that would add value to my travel - it might differentiate my relationship with the airline. Heck, they know where I am going -- and when I am going -- maybe they can customize an offer for a local hotel, restaurant, retail outlet, yoga studio...
If they thought about it the right way -- they could actually create a new source of revenue with a variety of partners.