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Florida Will Turn You Into a Racecar Driver or Pirate, If You Let It
We stumbled across a very eye-catching tourism advertising campaign today on our way back from this glorious view of the Brooklyn Bridge, and thought we'd share. It's underground in the Union Square subway station, and it's all over. The ads, a before/after study in what can happen to you when you leave the rough city life for the beaches of St. Petersburg and Clearwater, depict rough-and-tumble characters turning into attractive, exotic people once they've flown the 2.5 hours south to Florida.
Check out all of the images, after the jump
Tags: Travel Advertising / Travel Ads / Airports / SFO / Airport News / → All Tags
In the Battle for Passengers, It's Airport Against Airport
It used to be that airlines were in charge of attracting passengers while airports just quietly went about their business. In the last few years, though, industry dynamics have changed and airport facilities are now front and center. Cities have been left to to sell themselves to potential flyers, with the result being what USA Today is sensationally calling "The Airport Wars." These involve campaigns and travel ads that promote home airports, highlight their amenities, and even sometimes explicitly trash rival airports.
Before we get to some examples, a bit of context. There are positive and negative changes driving these efforts. On the good side, you've got a combination of LCCs, online travel agencies, and technological savviness empowering passengers. Flyers can and do mix and match their own connections. On the downside, you've got airlines decreasing their amenities, forcing airports to step up. The results have included everything from SFO's cheerful "I Wanna Go Through SFO" campaign (see the video after the jump), to Edmonton International's gloves-off attack ads on rival airport Calgary:"When you go south, so does your air service." That's just mean.
Tags: Travel Advertising / Travel Ads / Hermes / Luxury Travel / National Geographic / Fashion Travel / → All Tags
A National Geographic Photographer Enters the World of Fashion Ads
What would happen if you took a celebrated National Geographic photographer and asked him to do the glossy ads and commercial for a French luxury fashion house? The answer, which you'll know if you've gone shopping for any very expensive leather bags lately, is a stunning gallery of ads that belong in an art gallery.
Hermes, famous for producing the highest quality goods for travel (if you're okay with dropping four figures or more on them), signed on Eric Valli, a NatGeo name who really fell in love with travel back when he traversed Afghanistan on horseback at age 18. Aside from the Fall/Winter magazine ads like the one above, he's now developed their short commercial for the new fragrance Voyage d'Hermès, a $90 perfume that evokes the romance of nomadic travel with a horse and a dove.
See the poetic commercial, after the jump
Tags: Weather / Hawaii Travel / Tsunamis / Travel Advertising / Travel Marketing / → All Tags
How the Hawaii Tsunami Watch Will See Only a Wave of Tourists
On Saturday, after the catastrophic earthquake in Chile, places that might be in the path of a resulting tsunami battened down the hatches and awaited the waves. One of these places was Hawaii, which instead of having everyone run inside and pray that the wave would leave then high and dry, sent reporters to the beaches and trained livecams on the surf so that the world could watch for the tsunami, too.
Although a massive wave never arrived in favor of some tidal ebbing and flowing, what Hawaii did get were millions of eyes trained on its gorgeous beaches and water. People were excited; their heartrates went up as they eagerly watched the water rapidly rush out of Hilo Bay, like seen in the livecam capture above, and we couldn't help but think what priceless tourism marketing this is for Hawaii. And we weren't alone:
Tags: Travel Ads / Snapshot / Subways / New York City / Holland Travel / Travel Advertising / → All Tags
Spotted: New York Subway Cars Given a Dutch Makeover
Guess what we saw this weekend! That's right, it's the rumored Holland Tourism train, which is really just the S Train in the New York City subway system, but wrapped in advertising.
The genius ad campaign comes from the Netherlands Board of Tourism, who are hoping that when you're sandwiched into a subway car filled with their images of bicycles next to canals and famous Dutch paintings, that you'll get it into your head to maybe vacation in Amsterdam or anywhere in Holland during one of your two weeks off a year. We don't think we've ever been on the S Train simply because the 7 Train does the same route, but when we spotted this one idling at Times Square, we noted that it was packed with people who were about to fall prey to the subliminal messaging of the ads. Score for Holland!
One more picture after the jump
Tags: Travel Advertising / Travel Ads / Holland Travel / Amsterdam Travel / New York City / Subways / → All Tags
Holland Invades the New York City Subway, and Spruces It Up a Bit
The Dutch just won't let New Yorkers forget that they could be living in "Nieuw Amsterdam" and not "New York." Holland may have lost their grip on Manhattan back in 1674, but they can still find their way in somehow...and these days, they're hoping to gain access to the wallets of New Yorkers by enticing them to vacation in the Netherlands. And what better way to get the attention of jaded New Yorkers than by taking over their commute and decorating the interiors of subway cars? Sure, it's been before, but it never fails to delight.
All through the rest of February, the S Train will be wrapped inside and out with scenes of Holland, like a canal with bikes or a dark wood museum gallery with Vermeer's Girl With the Pearl Earring on the wall. And because everyone loves freebies. street teams will be handing out "Holland-themed giveaways" each week at the Grand Central and Times Square stations.
And then there's the big prize...
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JAL's Marketing Is Not At Fault for the Airline's Bankruptcy
Another day, another article by Financial Times columnist Tyler Brule pounding the table about the overarching, total, world-shattering importance of marketing. This time he's got his sights set on troubled Japan Airlines.
The airline, he suggests, has gone from being one of the world's best-regarded companies to one of the worst in a span of weeks. Instead of drawing the obvious conclusion—that branding is fickle and fundamentals like not being effing bankrupt are critical—he instead insists that the opposite is true and that JAL needs to become a "marketing-driven carrier."
While we're not shocked that a marketing guy would insist that companies should hire more marketers, we do kind of find the tone of the article grating. Also the content of the article, which advises JAL to do what they're already doing. Also the conclusion of the article, which includes eyeroll-inducing marketing speak like "turn JAL into an adjective for excellence."
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Airport Security Bins: The Final Frontier of Travel Advertising?
It's nice to see that it's not just Amtrak taking advantage of those bins at airport security. You know the ones—the plastic ones at the metal detectors, into which you drop your laptop, shoes, and all other worldly possessions.
Well apparently brands are realizing that this is some invaluable advertising space, where they can have direct access to the weary eyes of travelers, a huge captive audience guaranteed to be gazing at the products for a precious few seconds day in and day out.
Last weekend at JFK, we spotted these Zappos ads in the security bins in Terminal 4. It was difficult to get a proper picture of them in a surprisingly swift-moving security line, but it seems that we're not the only ones to find them a bit shocking, since we easily located this picture on Flickr. If you spot any new airport security bin ads, do let us know!
Related Stories:
· Amtrak Ads Invade the Bins at Airport Security [Jaunted]
· Travel Ads news [Jaunted]
[Photo: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid]
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Amtrak Ads Invade The Bins At Airport Security
Amtrak might just be turning things around this year. They’ve adding WiFi to the rails, and now they’re trying to lure customers away from the crowds and inconvenience of air travel. They’ve begun to install advertisements in airports like SeaTac (Seattle-Tacoma), and they’ve even started to invade the trays where we part with all our travel gadgets before heading through airport security.
The new marketing strategy focused on the X-ray trays is exclusive to Chicago O’Hare right now, but we wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing it elsewhere. After all, there are plenty of other airports with aggravated passengers and Amtrak stations. The ads point out the humorous side of airport security by encouraging passengers to wear mismatched socks because Amtrak will never know. It’s true; we’ve had our share of awkward sock moments while waiting in the TSA line.
Tags: Travel Advertising / Travel Ads / Air New Zealand / Cougars / Cougar Travel / → All Tags
Is Air New Zealand's Racy 'Cougars' Ad Really All That Bad?
As a travel blog with both a specific Cougar Travel category and a generic Cougars category, we understand we might be a little biased on this question. But we're nonetheless a little bit skeptical about the controversy coming out of New Zealand, where an Air New Zealand contest and ad is drawing vociferous criticism from rape prevention and survival groups. It's not that rape isn't a serious issue, and we're obviously not making the "men can't get raped" argument. It's just that we're having trouble seeing "pro-sexual violence" in this lighthearted campaign.
The contest offered cougars—defined for Air New Zealand's purposes as any 35+ woman who preys on men at least 10 years her junior—the opportunity to win free tickets to a rugby tournament. Contestants had to send pictures of themselves and their "cougar mates" out on the town. The objections are coming from New Zealand's Rape Prevention Education, which insists that the ad&3151;the ad, not the contest—is degrading to women and insulting to male rape survivors. Again we're highly skeptical. Is it really the phrase "meat hungry cougars," which is one of the lines that keeps getting cited? Eh.
If nothing else, the entire absurdist tone of the fake nature documentary makes it hard to take anything about it seriously. Luckily the magic of the internet allows us to embed the ad, which we've done after the jump. See for yourself.
Tags: Travel Advertising / Travel Ads / Holiday Travel / American Airlines / → All Tags
American Airlines Holiday E-Card Getting Good Attention For Good Reasons
American Airlines created a pithy little holiday e-card that they sent out to AAdvantage customers, no doubt with dreams of viral success. So far so good, and nothing different than what any other advertising department does. What's surprising in this case is that they're actually succeeding, with an outlet no less distinguished than the Chicago Tribune writing about the card's success on Twitter and Facebook.
While while we would normally ascribe this to someone passing a press release to someone else, in this case we're kind of ready to believe the hype. The card is actually pretty good, especially for travel advertising that's trying to pretend it's not travel advertising. There are some parts that get a little It's A Small World-esque, with banal lines like "Savor What's Good About Now." But the overall video is fast-paced and it's cute, a delicate combination that keeps it upbeat without turning it into a saccharine mush. The slogan at the very end—"Look Up"—is particularly well-chosen.
Tags: Holiday Travel / Travel Advertising / Travel Ads / Travel Tech / British Airways / → All Tags
What Do A Little Girl, A Freaky Doll And Lapland Have In Common? British Airways.
New travel tech site TNooz.com has a roundup of seasonally appropriate, mostly cute holiday travel commercials that they've collected. There's a broad selection, from a bright sunny California commercial to a "moody evocative film" about Scotland. We were going to comment on each one individually—ex: generally, "moody and evocative" doth not good holiday cheer make—but there's one in particular that caught our eye. It's a 1992 commericial for British Airways and it's clever in its own way, though the punchline at the end is bitterly ironic this week.
Here's the thing though. We were a little hesitant to suggest this, but now we're convinced: the video is super creepy. We're not certain why we feel like this. We can't put our finger on what exactly is going wrong. But we're 100% sure something is fundamentally amiss with this family, from "clever daddy's" staccato speech to the little girl's pique. If this was the opening scene in a horror movie, by minute 20 someone would be killing kittens. Check out the doll in the upper corner and tell us we're wrong...
