McDonald now advertising in Report Cards!
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
But this one may still surprise you. McD picked up the $1,600 cost of printing report-card jackets for the 2007-2008 school year in Seminole County, Florida, in exchange for a Happy Meal coupon on the card's cover(see picture). With 27,000 elementary school kids taking their report-card jackets home to be signed three or four times a year, that's less than 2 cents per impression.
The issue came to light last week when Susan Pagan’s daughter, Cathy, a fourth-grader at Red Bug Elementary School, brought home her report card and wanted to get a free Happy Meal because she earned good grades.Pagen told her daughter, "Our family does not eat at fast food chains," Pagan said. "And, now I’m the bad guy."
Pagan said she complained to school officials in an e-mail about the advertising and received a telephone call from Superintendent Bill Vogel. She said he told her that she was the only person who complained and he noted that McDonald’s offers some healthy alternatives.
Labels: BTL, New Trends, Print Ad
posted by Jas @ 10:12 PM,
,
Lufthansa banks on rumors
Friday, November 16, 2007
One of the very novel ways to involve your customer with your brand/ product is to come out with something interesting that most of your intended customers will like to be involved in and then bring yourself in. Many companies do it by way of "Issued in public interest" or "For more information on this (non product) contact us at xyz" which may happen for some awareness or plain virals. Such methods do not call out at the customers showing off their features or benefits, in fact its mainly not about the product at all, it caters to the peripheral persuasion method. Even though you may not be going for the product/service but still you may end up 'consuming' it.
This idea bird has pecked Lufthansa (Airlines) also and as a result it has launched RumorTravels, a campaign which highlights the prevailing stereotypes about countries around the world. We all have such stereotypes for the countries, something that we have been hearing or reading since childhood like many of my friends whom I met during my French exchange program thought that many people in India still travel by elephants! (and I affirmed some, telling them that I have a pet elephant which I got as a gift when I turned eighteen, the age when one gets a driving license in India). Then I have heard a lot about the Italian gentlemen pinching the bottoms of damsels, Paris being a city where people are just lost in romance 24X7! These are the things that "You'll never know if you don't go.", as summed by the tagline of the campaign. In several videos, countries such as Sweden, Germany and France are imagined by would be travelers.
To pep up the viewership and following, there's also a contest which encourages people to submit rumors about a foreign country in the form of a video or a story for chance to win two round trip tickets from the U.S. to anywhere in Europe. I reached a bit too late for the contest, but still the results are coming.
Addendum
Low cost-No frills concept was triggered by Southwest--which actually jumped the gun on deregulation, taking advantage of Texas' enormous size to avoid onerous interstate commerce regulations--ushered in the low-cost revolution with four revolutionary insights:
1) Flying just one type of aircraft will save a company millions on maintenance and bulk purchasing.
2) Point-to-point flights between smaller airports, rather than hub-and-spoke operations centered on a single large airport, allow each airplane to be used for several more flights a day, and more cheaply.
3) Passengers will appreciate the elimination of perks such as business lounges and free meals if the savings are passed on directly to them with a smile.
4) Air travelers will flock to the lowest prices, period.
And the impact? By the late 1990s, Southwest was the world's richest and most profitable major airline, inspiring successful copycats (such as JetBlue) and even forcing money-bleeding behemoths like United Airlines to launch low-cost hopefuls like TED. Lets see how Lufthansa addresses this market now!
Labels: Marketing Practices, New Trends, Viral
posted by Jas @ 8:16 PM,
,
