Traditional advertising (in)effectiveness

It's official! Data collected from the Finnish M&M magazine (Marketing&Advertising) shows the recall after 1 (one) week for TV ads, from several weeks, shows these results:

1. the top primary recall (without giving names) is never over 15%
2. the top secondary recall (asking "do you remember brand X") is never over 20%

What does this men?
1. Brands, stop wasting money on TV ads! They don't work!
2. Agencies, stop trying to sell ineffective ads through ineffective channels!

You would make a favour to yourselves, and also to TV viewers... after all, we can get carpal tunnel syndrome from zapping for other channel whenever the "PUB" marking pops up!

Invest in engagement and community marketing, using below-the-line initiatives, engage people to remember brands on a positive way, not just because "well, it's impossible to miss them, the annoying intrusive pricks!"... ask me how, my fees score sky high on effectiveness/price ratio! ;)

Finnair is good

Don't get me wrong. I like Finnair.
They have direct flights Helsinki-Lisbon, at very sensible prices. Their on-board food has never been better, and also their wines are very good.
As far as I am concerned, they are polite... and always on time!

Last week I travelled to Paris CDG (hiiiiik!), and on the return flight it was on the papers again the "Finnair is getting late too often". Yet another good omen! What called my attention was that the CEO wanted the names of the drunk passengers who caused problems.
Very good!
Many Finns have this annoying habit of boozing themselves before stepping on the plane. And continuing on board. Then it might happen that it forces the plane to come back, losing some 4 hours because of the "joke"--and dissatisfied customers.
For once, I feared that some draconian rule of "no alcohol on board" would pop up. I do hope not. Personally, I come from Southwest Europe, where good food is always accompanied by good wine. And that is what has been happening in my Finnair flights.

So their solution is simple: block the drunken bastards that are a bother to everyone on board, while letting people who enjoy a 18 cl bottle of wine (or two) responsibly to continue enjoying their flight time. Thanks, Finnair, I'll keep on transmitting positive feedback! Until my next flight!

Optimus subPrime

So now I know.
For days, I was bothered by this huge orange blob while trying to read my online newspapers. I couldn't care less what it was, my only concern was to keep it away from the text. At a certain point, I tried to close it. There i was, franticly pressing the "X CLOSE" but nothing! What an irritating little sh*t!
Today, the revelation: Optimus rebranding. How cute... NOT!
Reading some comments from bloggers, such as this one (in pt-PT), I found it costed 32 million euros!!! Amazing!
Amazingly STUPID!

Naturally the ad agency is happy. Woah, 32 M€ when traditional advertising will crumble is not bad. But I thought people at Optimus were smarter.
I can talk. I tried to sell Optimus a way to potentiate the information they already have, as any other mobile operator has, improving the response to their marketing campaigns--their own customer communication data records!
The biggest advantage is that the improvement on the response to advertising would be made through much cheaper advertising!!! How come? Basically based on social network/communities engagement marketing
(I can tell you folks out there the technicalities for a moderate fee).
Bad news for the ad agencies maybe, but they have to live with the fact that traditional advertising will disappear soon!

How nice, extremely well produced... and intrusive this PR flop was... alienating people!
It's just like the typewriter manufacturers making them full of extras and extra speedy and all, while PCs appeared. Tough break, but the best typewriter cannot... compute! Ad agencies, accept, and embrace the change, or else it is total bye-bye for you. Maybe you will get 30 M€ in 2008, but then your eager-to-pay-so-much client will be out of business next year, because their competitors spent only 3 M€, yet got 2-3 times more clients!

I'm sad, because Optimus was supposed to be innovative. They stormed a market thought to be "already full with 2 operators". Something they did right last year to get a great share of the new clients, but they are starting 2008 on the wrong foot.

Finnair is late again. But is that their real problem?

When boarding a Finnair plane bound to Lisbon the news all over the tabloid was "Finnair mistreated us". Us, as in two passengers. What a nice omen for the trip.
It happened that they were returning from a "dream trip to Thailand", which ended up over 24 hours later than scheduled. Since we have time, the events unfolded as such: The plane was 10 hours or so late. What does Finnair give the passengers? One burger voucher and water! Yey! Nothing else! (Mind you, in the "old" int'l airport, one goes out, immediately crosses the bridge, and gets to eat plenty of the local delicacies for ridiculous prices).
Eventually the plane leaves. Very late. These two girls were getting the connection to Stockholm after, and as they landed the hostess tells them they might just get into their connection (last plane of the day) after all! Just run!
They ran like there was no tomorrow, arriving at the gate. Where the attendant told them "you cannot board, your seats have been re-sold, because we never thought you'd make it on time."
Amazing answer.
Adding insult to injury, they saw yet another passenger who came from Bangkok with them entering the plane. Why? "Oh, he's in business class."
...
They got a place on the early flight, arriving one day late and full of fond memories from the trip.
Obviously the tabloid loved it. What is the more surprising (or not, considering those above-mentioned answers from the staff) is the "defense" from Finnair's PR responsible:
1. Somewhere over Europe on the Helsinki-Bangkok route a drunk Finn wrecked havoc. So what else is new? They returned to Copenhagen to leave him (unfortunately it seems there were not enough parachutes available on board), and then retook the route. Arriving late in Bangkok, it left obviously even later back.
Meanwhile the passengers were stranded for hours in the new Bangkok airport, tired and starving. But who cares? It's not Finnair's fault people drink.
2. Just because people arrive in time at the departure gate, it's not automatic they can board! Supposedly, there are checks to be made, blablabla. So what about the gentleman in business class? AH, he doesn't need to be checked, it seems.

Please, someone JUST FIRE THIS IDIOT "Communications Manager"!
There was only one thing to say in this situation:

"We are sorry.
We will try our best so that these things
never happen again."

They could have saved face, at least. By acting arrogant, they will just lose passengers. The two ladies mentioned "we took the Finnair flight because we trusted our home carrier, even if it is much more expensive." Nice reward.
Planes get late. Incidents happen. That's excusable.
What is not excusable is arrogance over customers.