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AirTran Brings Insanely Obnoxious Seat-Back Advertising To The US
Seat-back ads have finally arrived in the US, with low cost carrier AirTran being the first to embrace what is already beloved onboard European LCCs like Ryanair and EasyJet.
Soon, passengers on all AirTran flights will be confronted for the entire trip by a 2.5" by 9" poster, sitting a few feet from their eyes, trying to worm its way into their eyeballs. It will be present on all 138 jets, and the first advertiser is an odd one: Mother Nature Network, a "one-stop resource and an everyman's eco-guide" for environmental news, travel, lifestyle, etc. MNN will use the ads to publicize a 7-night cruise giveaway as well—how eco-friendly of them. Hmm...
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Florida Keys Says There's No App For Real Life Vacations
Whoever's in charge of doing tourism ads for the Florida Keys and Key West has something of a mischievous streak. Either that of they're smart enough to know that hijacking well-known brands is much easier than creating new ones. They've launched a commercial reminding potential tourists that real-life experiences like canoeing or snorkeling trump hours and hours of playing Brick Breaker. That's kind of blasphemous, but in fairness, it's probably also kind of true.
The ad isn't entirely accurate— we suspect there actually are apps where you can overpay for a three-star hotel before marching your family around derelict tourist traps until everyone's equally miserable—but it's still a clever little spot. It could have been slightly improved by dropping that hackneyed "real experiences" line at the end. And we have to wonder whether or not there's a cease and desist letter from Apple in the mail for them. Still: clever little ad.
Check it out, after the jump.
Tags: Tourism Advertising / Tourism Boards / Tourism Marketing / Travel Ads / → All Tags
Tourism Boards Say Their Failed Tourism Slogans Are Your Fault
It's been a season of rebranding throughout Nevada, as city and tourism board officials have hired PR companies to create new slogans for them and their municipalities. Or more accurately, it's been a season of attempted rebranding, as the contracted firms came back with one hilariously bad proposal after another. The city of Sparks and the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority both had to reject new slogans after $100,000 efforts. Even Las Vegas was having problems, until they finally decided to dump their new slogans and go back to to "What Happens Here Stays Here."
Naturally the tourism boards and ad firms have undertaken a full review of these failures. They're taking fresh looks at their selection criteria, their talent evaluations, and their overall approach to PR. By which we mean they're blaming Nevada's citizens for being so gosh darn judgmental:
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Kayak Launches Massive Old-Fashioned Ad Blitz
You'd think the recession would have catapulted price comparison engine Kayak.com into universal traveler awareness. The company's internal figures, though, tell a different story. Less than 1/3 of the more than 100 million Americans who use travel booking sites know about Kayak. Even less are able to differentiate Kayak from similar-on-first-look but significantly different competitors like Expedia. In a move that's bound to raise eyebrows in the travel industry and among travel advertisers, the company is shifting their resources into a massive offline ad campaign.
The new ad blitz was launched over the weekend and is set to blanket primetime cable through 2010. CNN, ESPN, and MSNBC have all been selected as venues, presumably on numbers promising that most coveted of travel industry demographics: 25-44 year olds with disposable income. Forbes.com has a full writeup on the campaign, including a description of one of the "witty 30 second spots":
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Somewhere In Europe, Beautiful People Are Having More Fun Than You
Before getting into deconstructing the commercial brought to you by an continental liquor company, some basic definitions: a martini is a drink made of 3 parts gin to 1 part vermouth, topped with olives and served without ice. A dry martini is a drink made of 6 parts gin to 1 part vermouth, still without ice. A vodka martini is not a martini at all but at least it still uses vermouth and lacks ice, so it's in the ballpark. An iced vodka martini shaken is a watered down waste of vodka and vermouth which shares with a real martini only its name and a splash of vermouth.
So to review, a martini requires eschewing frozen water and having good vermouth on hand. Which brings us to this spot from Italian vermouth company Martini, recently aired in the Netherlands with a background sung by Caro Emerald. Beautiful people get invitation to secret party, beautiful people stop at several other parties along the way, beautiful people drink Martini vermouth throughout.
Click through for the larger HD version. Glamorous!
Tags: Political Travel / Honduras Travel / Travel Advertising / Tourism Boards / Travel Ads / → All Tags
Honduran Tourism Minister Launches Blistering Ad Campaign Against...Honduras?
Normally when you see negative travel advertising about a city or state, it's one locale trying to play itself up as an alternative to another and occasionally you run into a campaign that's more or less being done to punish a place. An example of this is food companies' punitive response to New York's ongoing war against smoking/alcohol/transfats/fun, but it's very unusual to have a campaign that's just pure "don't go to this place" spite. What's been happening in Honduras, where the exiled Tourism Minister is screening negative ads about his own country, is indeed very unusual.
The politics down in Honduras are obviously a mess. Manuel Zelaya was ousted from the presidency with various degrees of legitimacy and justification, the answer to that varying with where you fall on the political spectrum. The US government, along with Honduras' neighbors, insist it was a coup. The Honduran Supreme Court, legislature, and army mostly beg to disagree. None of that matters for our purposes. Instead we enter the story where Ricardo Martinez, Zelaya's former Tourism minister, is invited to act as the country's legitimate representative at the Central American Travel Market.
He was, all things considered, not the best imaginable spokesman for the Honduran tourism industry...
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Vegas.com Spoofs SportsCenter To Encourage Tourism
Most people have at least a passing knowledge of the famous ESPN SportsCenter ads, where sports mascots work as employees in the SportsCenter studio. Vegas.com is trying to build on that familiarity with a new Las Vegas campaign, except they're replacing franchise mascots with casino characters and the SportsCenter studio with... um...the Vegas.com studio? Maybe? The entire campaign could actually stand to be a little bit more punchy. Also a little bit more funny.
The clips are being posted over at Vegas.com/exposed. After the jump we've put one of the commercials, a spot that plays on the Treasure Island pirates. When we originally found this thing on AdFreak they included it with a clip starring Carrot Top. We obviously like you guys too much to expose you to that.
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'The Worst Hotel In The World' Has The Best Advertising Campaign
The UK's KK Outlet ad agency was tasked with selling a generously described no frills hostel in Amsterdam.
The hostel in question, as you undoubtedly figured out from the ads, is Amsterdam's Hans Brinker Budget Hotel. Lest you think they're joking about the lack of amenities, or that their self-deprecation is a passing thing, the establishment website hawks a book titled The Worst Hotel in the World: The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel Amsterdam. They're proud all of it, from the nonexistent bedding to the subpar customer service. It's like they're the Ryanair of hostels.
Via Advertising Is Good For You, Pure genius:
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WTF, Wisconsin?
WTF, yo? Poor Wisconsin; their tourism board obviously doesn't employ any youngsters who are familiar with the hip, internet lingo of the day. Perhaps they should have run their name by an intern first? The "Wisconsin Tourism Federation," or WTF, is a little late to realize that their own acronym is also a popular abbreviation for "what the f*ck."
So instead of continue on the path to permanent jokedom, the WTF sat down and decided to give in to the web change their name to the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin, or TFW. CNET has the scoop on their reasoning: "'We didn't want it to detract from our mission,' said Julia Hertel, a spokeswoman for the newly renamed TFW."
Aw, isn't that cute? But you see, what they didn't count on and probably still haven't realized the value of, is all this publicity. Now, thanks to their slip-up and unfortunate association with a cussing internet slang term, the WTF TFW is known outside of Milwaukee. The jury is still out on whether or not this incident will attract tourists to the dairy state.
Related Stories:
· WTF? Bloggers cause Wisconsin Tourism Federation to change name [CNET]
· Wisconsin Travel [Jaunted]
[Photo: WTF or is it TFW?]
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Entire County Wants You To Friend Them On Facebook
The tourism board of Northern Wisconson's Forest County Chamber of Commerce has reached back to old media to promote their new social media campaign, erecting a billboard on Highway 32 to highlight their Facebook fan page. The idea is to promote the Facebook page as a portal into the rest of the county's tourism promotions, with pictures, links to more specific sites, and event information. Cute:
Sadly, no one talks about billboards any longer. But they're still out there and they still work. So why are we talking about the lowly billboard today? Social media, of course... it's big news when a billboard is used to promote a Facebook page... Located just south of Lakewood on HWY 32, travelers from Milwaukee and Chicago heading north will see the board which carries an invitation from the Crandon Chamber to "Become a friend of Crandon" on Facebook.
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New McDonald's Campaign In Japan Imagines Americans As Nerdy, From Ohio
McDonald's is launching a new ad campaign in Japan, this time revolving around four new burgers they're making available exclusively on the island nation. To spearhead the effort, they're rolling out their local mascot Mr. James, a kind of stereotypical American nerd who speaks broken Japanese but is very, very exuberantly bubbly about it. The only problem is that the actual Americans who live in Japan loathe the character, who is roughly the reverse equivalent of when Americans put on fake Japanese accents by turning 'l's into 'r's.
Except on top of having pronunciation problems, Mr. James is an incoherent and painfully annoying simpleton. He stars in a number of spots in this campaign, going to McDonald's locations all over Japan and musing about his favorite burgers. He even has a blog, on which he goes into deep background about his Ohio birthplace and about how he loves to shower foreigners with cash. That last bit isn't part of the stereotype; it has something to do with a cash prize McDonald's is giving out, but the rest of the ensemble has Japan's small foreign community less than pleased:
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Canada's Most Famous Squirrel Turns To Twitter To Promote Travel
Remember this photo from a month ago, with Melissa Brandts and her husband, joined by the world's most recent celebrity squirrel? It went from Lake Minnewanka, in Canada's Banff National Park, to the National Geographic "Photo Of The Day" site. Then it went pretty much everywhere.
American Airlines is betting you remember this mini-meme quite well, which is why they've pulled their "French guy training squirrels on scooters" advertisement out of the vault. In case you missed the not-entirely-unobnoxious ad when it originally aired in the spring, here it is again:
