WestJet's Over-the-Top PR Event

This just in:  Christmas has become commercial.  It seems that Santa is all over the media shilling everything from cars to breath mints.  It's easy to see how the "magic" of Christmas can be lost in the marketing noise.  But if it's done right, a Christmas promotional event can create goodwill and build a brand.

WestJet - a Canadian cariier - creatively tapped into the spirit of giving (and savvy use of technology) to surprise a planeful of holiday travelers.  Click here to see a video of how they gathered a Christmas wish for each of the passengers on a WestJet flight and scrambled to deliver their wishes upon landing.  The video, posted on YouTube, has generated forty million views so far.

I don't know what the promotion cost, but if they spent $100 on each of the passengers, the total for the prize budget would be $15,000 - not out of line for a promotional event.  And for that I believe they got a lot of goodwill (and at least forty million views of the video).

The downside?  You can't do a "surprise" every year.  The cat is out of the bag.  We'll have to see what they come up with in 2015 to top this very creative promotion.

Hawaii has "The Curse of a Strong Brand" ... What to do?

I recently spoke at the Heritage Tourism Conference in Hawaii ... talking about why the destination needs to move beyond Mai Tais and Sun tans and promote its heritage and culture.  Here's a video of the presentation given by my and Dr. Jerry Agrusa of Hawaii Pacific University on the subject. 

(Ignore the fact that I was mis-identified as Peter Shaindlin, the Chief Operating Officer of the Halekulani Hotel).

Click here or on the image to watch the video.

The Death of Marketing as We Know It

Pelin Thorogood just posted a great article on the Cornell Enterprise blog titled ...

The Birth of “Customer 2.0”
and the Death of Marketing As We Know It:

Adapting Marketing to Changing Customer Behaviors and Demands

(click above to see the whole article).

The article is highly relevant (and recommended!).

When a newspaper once erroneously reported the death of Mark Twain, he immediately wired them with the message "the reports of my death are highly exaggerated."  The implied "death of marketing" is certainly exaggerated.  The death of "marketing as we know it" is spot on, though.  

Like any discipline, marketing is subject to Darwin's law of evolution:  adapt or die.  I'm sure that when radio came on the marketing scene there were those who said it was the death of marketing as we know it.  Ditto for television.  Ditto the internet.  In fact when Gutenberg invented movable type, I'm sure that there were monks huddled over their illuminated manuscripts lamenting the "death of publishing as we know it."  

While the conventional wisdom ... the things we "know" about marketing ... change constantly, the fundamental philosophy of marketing does not.  Marketing is about creating value for the customer and the brand by providing a benefit or solving a problem.  Movable type, radio, television and the internet changed the way we communicate, but not the basic idea of communication.  The exciting thing about marketing with the birth of "customer 2.0" is the power that the consumer now has ... and how that better enables the creation of value.

What is changing in a big way is the way we relate to the newly empowered customer.  These days, it is less about finding and connecting with the customer ... and more about enabling the customer to find and connect with us.  Marketers ignore this tectonic shift at their peril.  

Thorogood cites Marsall McLuhan's famous declaration the "the medium is the message."  That was true for movable type, radio, television, the internet and every advancement in technology.  The message about the rise of "customer 2.0" means that old assumptions about marketing tactics are, indeed, dead.  But the changes we're seeing give rise to an era when we can use marketing in a brand new way to do what it always set out to do:  create value for the customer by providing benefits or solving problems.