Can airline food get worse? (Yes)
December 19th, 2005On a recent flight, my answer to “Chicken or Beef” brought not just the rubbery residue of poultry factories but a new attempt to convince me to part with my money. A bit of digging reveals that in-flight advertising has been a source of angst for airlines for some time. They have struggled between the money that “on-board marketing” can bring, and the fear that even more advertising will turn the customers off.
As with the politician who struggled with his conscience, the tray-top marketing option inevitably won out. The enjoyment of my delicious balanced food-product (yes, that is chicken) was interrupted by a folded card promoting the joys of Zingotel, a VOIP provider.
If this card, fighting for space with my very sad salad, proves anything, it’s that context is completely irrelevant for advertisers. How else to explain barely identifiable airline food as an appropriate backdrop for that all-important brand? Apparently Zingotel bought the line that airline travel is glamorous just because the sardines passengers make more than the average Joe. A captive audience isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, especially when you’re selling VOIP in a space with a guaranteed lack of connectivity.
When I googled “Zingotel”, I found that they had purchased an Adword on their own brand, which very predictably came up first in the natural search results anyway. While not quite as silly as associating their brand with reconstituted fondue of fowl during a 5-hr slice of hell, paying for position on a search where they achieved #1 naturally seemed entirely consistent with their other ad efforts — dumb. So I clicked on the Adword ad to punish them.
Interesting…although most major brands bid on their name, you make a pretty moot point and coming from a marketer it’s quite disheartening (even more so clicking on the ad to simply cost them money).
http://yahoo.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_04/b3968008.htm
Naturally, Khan bids for the keyword “E-Loan.” He certainly doesn’t want potential customers who start out with his company in mind to click on a competitor’s ad. But how about “Eloan?” It’s not spelled quite right, but he doesn’t want to turn away business from bad spellers. He bids on that too. “Elone?” Ditto. In total he has bids on 3,000 variations of the brand name.
“We’ve spent a lot of money on building this brand,” he says. “If they’re looking for us, I want to make sure they find us.”
Bernie | January 13th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
“E-loan” is very close to a generic term; it may not come up naturally near the top without a lot of effort, even if the customer types in the exact name. “Zingotel” is very different — it’s almost guaranteed to be the first result of natural search.
Antony | January 16th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
I’m at a loss. Seems like the big players like Sunrocket and Vonage are also bidding on their own names, what’s the difference.
I think it’s common practise for Zingotel to bid on their name, especially when they are building precense online.
Even in Vonage’s case, a user might be more inclined to click on ads by other companies than to be directed to the official website.
I liked the ad - nothing wrong with trying something different.
Sandro | January 20th, 2006 at 4:13 am
The CPA the company achieves by bidding on their own name is going to be significantly lower than their cost of advertising so it all works out. Yes it’s a paid click but they’re achieving their goal of getting the user to the right spot. Every major brand out there buys their own name - and IMHO it’s a tad ignorant not to - especially for a new company that’s venturing online. If I was their marketer I would tell them to do exactly this.
bernie | January 24th, 2006 at 1:44 am
Bernie, Sandro,
Thanks for your comments. While initially I was puzzled by your POV, after digging around I think you’re right — in some cases.
I’ve checked out not “every major brand,” but plenty of them — Intel, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nike, Toyota — are not buying their own brand as a keyword with Google. Hertz does, however, and so does Google itself (but of course they have a better rate than others do). Yahoo doesn’t, but they may be loathe to pay Google
An article from ClickZ by Kevin Lee helps me out. He sets out some cases where it makes great sense to buy your own brand as a keyword. The one that gets me is when you have an affiliate program — the last thing you want is to pay your affiliate lots of money (in his example, $5), for a customer they got by buying your brand from Google (in his example, $1). Another reason is that you really want to control the snippet the customer is seeing.
All valid, but in other cases it is far less clear. You could take the money you’re spending on your own brand and buy other keywords that do better for you; you might be spending money unwisely because you just can’t stand the idea of someone not finding you if they typed in your brand.
Thanks to you both for opening my eyes on this.
Antony | January 24th, 2006 at 3:09 am
I just made my first $40 with their affiliate program!!! Guess this pays for a couple months worth of service! People bidding on their name turn out to be people involved with their affiliate program - smart! I’ve got some new skill to learn.
Bilbonics | March 5th, 2006 at 7:15 am