Taking a step back recently, I tried to think of all the industries that have been radically transformed by the tsunami of the Internet. Internet has a way of altering the way of the land in many different ways because, fundamentally, it changes the way we all communicate.  The immediacy, mobility and multiway channels of the “new” communication is a powerful combination — especially since the cost is relatively minimal.  Perhaps, the harder task would be to identify which businesses will not be significantly impacted. However, if the Internet does not get them, I have a feeling that the arrival of other new technologies (miniaturisation, RFID, etc.), changes in societal values and consumption habits, or the effects of global warming or terrorism will cause equally large changes in those industries as yet untouched by the Internet alone.

To this end, I have compiled a far-from-comprehensive list of sectors, industries and businesses that have been rocked by the Internet. I think the list, ultimately, will include absolutely every industry.  If only in search of cost savings, new forms of internal communications or a change in the marketing mechanics, all industries will be impacted in one way or another by the internet.  While the terminology in this analysis tends to be “negative,” using rose-tinted glasses, the situation is riveting, exciting and potentially explosive for those companies within each industry which manage to capture the wave and surf on the opportunities.

I have categorised the list into three different areas: media, other goods & services, and the dark side.  I thought it would be fun to speculate about how much each industry has been hit to-date (up to 5*), and then to consider what other collateral ‘damage’ has or will occur due to the relative revolution in the said industry. I then cite an emblematic player who has typically been benefiting from the paradigm shifts. Finally, I have dropped in a pithy statement on the future prospects for that industry.

As a matter of principle, I have not systematically cited the usual list of suspects of winners (Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Apple, etc…) that will all benefit from the ongoing surge in internet users (now at over 1.8 billion people, of which more than 600 million are now doing so from their mobile). This post is not intended to be academic, nor complete. It is merely an opportunity to take a step back and consider the wonderful opportunities that lie ahead.

The first list concerns the media industries which have systematically been on the front line — a normal state of affairs considering the Internet is not just a new media, but all media in one.

The media industries under flux

Other than the media industries, herewith is a list of some other industries of goods and services under the same analysis.  There are obviously many missing.  For example, all the computer hardware and software suppliers or Politics.  I have written in the past about the impact in the political spheres with the opportunity for anonymity as well as the strong demand for transparency.  All political campaigns going forward will have more than just talking heads, but tweeting heads and blogging buddies.  Anyway, here is a sampling… with just a couple of b2b industries (which in many cases have actually been faster to take on social media than b2c companies).

Some other industries (other than media) hit by the internet

And, then there are some less conspicuous industries — which bear witness to a darker side of the human being — that are also being revolutionised.  And, I could probably add a few more, such as sex toys, prostitution rings and terrorism…

The darker side...

What industries are cruelly missing from this analysis?  How far off base did you find some of the commentary?  I will be glad to hear your thoughts?

WikiLeaks Logo

WikiLeaks is one  of the most riveting initiatives (read: ongoing battles) on the Internet and is putting a new spin on the transparency-anonymity debate.  The Sunshine Press, which runs WikiLeaks, is an non-profit organization funded by human rights campaigners, investigative journalists, technologists and the general public.  The “brown paper envelope of the digital age”, WikiLeaks.org could be a game-changing site as far as freedom of voice is concerned — if it survives.

Nothing to do with Wikipedia, WikiLeaks invites contributors to provide “leaked” documents or videos via a secure system that, theoretically, cannot be traced or censured.  Based in Iceland and launched in December 2006 (sent live Jan 2007), WikiLeaks has created a sophisticated web of servers intended to cover the original scent (of the sender) combined with an international status that defies the constraints of national or even regional laws.  Here is a report by investigative journalist Jacques Peretti, for the Culture Show, on WikiLeaks via YouTube (Jan 29, 2010).

According to Wikipedia’s entry on WikiLeaks, the site has some 1.2 million leaked documents.  Although not currently available on its own site due to the ‘temporary’ closure, you can find the leaked documents on this mirror site.  Per a report in The National newspaper (competitor to the Washington Post), “WikiLeaks has probably produced more scoops in its short life than the Washington Post has in the past 30 years” (November 19, 2009).  Having achieved 20,900 on the Alexa ranking, WikiLeaks is clearly a force to be reckoned with.  While the site was originally designed to be akin to Wikipedia in a freeforall uploading, editing and commenting platform, it had to revise its approach to narrow the remit and provide an editorial oversight committee to validate certain documents.  This is a similar path through which Wikipedia had to pass.  Clearly, human nature and the option of too much anonymity need some boundaries. If I have no basis to understand whether or not the content of the WikiLeaks articles is always exact, the concept is intriguing.  If a WikiLeaks-style militancy were to be aimed more specifically against Big Business, it could potentially force business’ hands down the line.  The site already indicates that it has numerous ‘leaks’ against the banking industry.  And, for example, the leaked Tiger Woods gag order has its immediate run-on effects for the sponsoring companies.

WikiLeaks has its detractors and its very mention in a post, such as this one, means that the post is censured in countries such as China (I am not sure if by having one post on WikiLeaks whether my entire blog will be banned?).  I found this counter-WikiLeaks site if you are interested in the contrarian view. The big problem is that the site is out of money… and has currently a moratorium on publishing anything, even if documents may still be uploaded.  If WikiLeaks do not survive, it will be a blow to value of freedom of expression.  If it is able to raise the money without any state support (i.e. via citizen donations), it will be a testament to the urge to have true free press.  Meanwhile, I’m afraid the jury is out and the layers of secrecy around the management of the site make it distinctly difficult to gauge its chances of success.  For now, their date for a return to publication keeps on slipping: an old fashioned problem for a new fangled concept.

Here are some more ideas for the mainstream media (MSM) to kick into high gear with their online community.

With media titles dying or falling fallow on a daily basis, the MSM crisis seems just now to be hitting full stride. The number of recent closures has been drastic. In August, Condé Nast closed Portfolio, followed in October by the announced closure of Gourmet, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride, as well as a parenting magazine called Cookie. As reported by WSJ, “Ad pages at 14 of Conde Nast’s 23 print publications fell by more than the industry average of 29.5% in the second quarter, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.” Of course, the more startling statistic is the -29.5% for the industry…

But Condé Nast is only amplifying a trend that started with Hearst and Time Warner. And as Strategy and Business suggested in their recent article, “McGraw-Hill is said to be close to a sale — or closure — of Business Week.  So, as mainstream media continue to tackle the issue of the right internet model, below are three thoughts that complement and/or update my other posts on the topic (see here: Mainstream Media: Recommendation from a reader’s perspective and The Future of MSM).

1/ Cross-referencing with links. How is that online media (newspapers, magazines. etc.) rarely, if ever, link out to help readers understand the references in their articles? Not even a site like Wired!

Take this BBC’s article randomly taken from today’s news about how Russia’s economy will decline by 7.5% in 2009. As is their custom, they wrote the entire article on line without any links whatsoever.

“Russia’s economy will shrink by 7.5% in 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev has said – but claimed Kremlin intervention had prevented a worse decline.

Russia, which is heavily reliant on oil exports, has been hit by the sharp fall in energy prices. Mr Medvedev said the decline was “very serious” and admitted the government had been surprised at how severely Russia had been hit by the crisis.

However the predicted slide in GDP was less than earlier predictions. “The real damage to our economy was far greater than anything predicted by ourselves, the World Bank and other expert organisations,” Mr Medvedev told Russian television.”

I have re-contextualized these first three paragraphs for how they might have done it differently:

“Russia’s economy will shrink by 7.5% in 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev has said – but claimed Kremlinintervention had prevented a worse decline.

Russia, which is heavily reliant on oil exports, has been hit by the sharp fall in energy prices. Mr Medvedev said the decline was “very serious” and admitted the government had been surprised at how severely Russia had been hit by the crisis.

However the predicted slide in GDPwas less than earlier predictions. “The real damage to our economy was far greater than anything predicted by ourselves, the World Bank and other expert organisations,” Mr Medvedev told Russian television.”

The links I have chosen for these few paragraphs are sourced from a variety of sites, including Wikipedia and Google Maps, of course. By choosing certain words to hyperlink and the source of the new link, there is a new form of editor to invent. Naturally, such hyperlinking takes more time, but in this research for links, two things are going to happen. First, the very act of researching the links to make sure the content is viable is a form of value-added research for the reader/consumer. Secondly, the outgoing links will create synergies and link-love, bringing in more readers over time.

2/ Get more knowledge of your reader, gaining trust and, therefore, more opportunities for engagement. Too often, when you read and/or sign up for a news site, there is no effort to exchange in a give-and-get (i.e. a win/win) approach. News organisations need to find ways to have readers impart their personal information which can be used to enhance the reader’s experience. For example, they should view their readers as word-of-bloggers… begat from the word-of-mouth era. This is being done by the New York Times rather well with the “which articles are being blogged about” section.

Just as Amazon has a section of “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…”, so readers of an article could have “Customers who read this article also read …” Better yet, as the newspapers ramp up their database management system and get to learn who their clients are (intelligent CRM), they can refine the recommendation and suggest even more aligned follow-on articles to read. I would like to see some adaptation of the iTunes Genius or the brand new Genius Mix, for example, which could provide an intelligent ‘playlist’ of articles to read.

3/ Add the text-to-speech function… Every morning, I read the news online as I am surfing. Sometimes, I listen to podcasts or videocasts which allows me simultaneously to continue doing my online morning activities. As per the Readspeaker service I have included in this blog, there are several — and fast improving — read out loud services which can help, not just the visually impaired, but also the ordinary iJoe… to provide an easier experience for reading on the computer screen for us all. A few examples of available services: ReadSpeaker (the one I use), Natural Reader, Ultra Hal, Odiogo and Talkr.

What do you think? What should online media be doing to improve the readers’ experience?

And does Murdoch have a chance with his pay-for news scheme (read this great November 2009 article in Vanity Fair by Michael Wolff)?

State of the Spam Business

How many legitimate (non junk or spam) emails do you receive in your inbox?

It may come as a surprise to you that only 3% of the world’s supply of emails are legitimate, at least that’s what a recent Microsoft survey says. On a personal level, I know that I have a spam-to-legit ratio that is more like 1:6, aided by (a) the never ending screening and hunting down of phoney addresses and cyber pirates by the various governing bodies; (b) the individual mail filters (I use hotmail mostly) which appear to direct with about 80% accuracy true junk into the junk folder; and (c) my attempting not to leave my email address in public spaces that are too easy for email bots to trawl and discover. In any event, in a recent BBC article regarding a recent Microsoft security report, “[m]ore than 97% of all e-mails sent over the net are unwanted… The e-mails are dominated by spam adverts for drugs [nearly 50%], and general product pitches and often have malicious attachments.” Other industry reports have the volume of junk mail somewhere between 75% and 90%, so this latest number takes the morass of spam to even higher levels.

A second source for spam information is the monthly Symantec State of Spam report (PDF – April 2009). According to the Symantec report, in March, the spam coming from the US accounted for 28% of the world’s supply (up from 25% in February and 23% in January). Coming in second, Brazil accounts for 9%, while India at 3rd fell back to 4%. South Korea leads the Far Eastern countries at 4%, ahead of Turkey, Russia and China (all 3%). Below is the chart courtesy of Symantec. Latin America is responsible for a quite surprising 15% of the total. As far as I was concerned, it seems that half of my spam relates to winning the jackpot and inheriting some African fortune, so I was surprised not find Nigeria up in there in the top 10.

“The [Microsoft] report found that the global ratio of infected machines was 8.6 for every 1,000 uninfected machines.” I would suspect that Mac gets a less than market share representation…fortunately for us Mac users.

The only good news, if you read on in the BBC report, is that malicious software (aka malware) must increasingly be adapted country to country (see world map of malware levels), which diminishes the odds of an Armageddon style worldwide malware. The article states, “[a]s the malware ecosystem becomes more reliant on social engineering, threats worldwide have become more dependent on language and cultural factors,” [the Microsoft study] reported. In China, several malicious web browser modifiers are common, while in Brazil, malware that targets users of online banks is more widespread.”

In terms of where the malicious software is most prevalent, “the [Microsoft] report, which looked at online activity during the second half of 2008, also pinpoints…[that] Russia and Brazil top the global chart of infections, followed by Turkey and Serbia and Montenegro.”

On another level, from a report out in March 2009, I read about how much spam is said to pollute our world… A Carbon Footprint study from McAfee says that spam generates greenhouse gas (GHG — aka Carbon Dioxide or CO2) equivalent to 3.1 million passenger cars. This report says that “the energy [33 billion KWh] consumed in transmitting and deleting spam is equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million U.S. homes.” I love the notion of the life cycle of spam! If you want to download the McAfee PDF report, do so here. Another feature in the McAfee report is the estimated loss in productivity caused by spam: “If you have 1,000 workers earning $30 per hour, your company will suffer $182,500 per year in lost productivity.” It is very crafty to propose an ROI on their anti-spam software.

In any event, as I indicated in a prior post TV5 from Québec, Canada, there are also the unwanted communications from companies where you can no longer unsubscribe to their newsletters, as is the case with TV5. Another one on my can’t-get-rid-of-them list is www.seek-blog.com.  No way to unsubscribe.  I suspect such mail should be considered spam along with the other 97%! On the other end of the scale, kudos to Nick @ NickOnWine for sending out regular subscriber updates.

Like mosquitoes, I can think of absolutely nothing beneficial from spam. After the ERACE ‘EM Campaign (the Eternal Radical and Complete Extermination of Every Mosquito), comes the EAT SPAM Campaign, Eradicate All Toxic Spam. Sign up here!

The wheels are coming off the track for the Vélib bicycle programme in Paris, a subject I have been following since its inception. According to this BBC write-up (taken in turn from Le Parisien), the Parisians seem to have taken a little too much liberty with the vélo liberté…

It seems that, after 18 months, the verdict is that the Vélib system in Paris simply does not function. The city of Paris has had to indemnify JCDecaux for the damage and disappearance of so many bicycles. In fact, 19,600 out of 20,000 bicycles have had to be replaced or repaired, with nearly 8,000 of them having disappeared (into Eastern Europe and Africa). The replacement value of each bike is 400 euros, not cheap, eh? And, then there is the Vélib Extrême / Freeride trend which has popped up on YouTube.

What a poor statement. The youtube site dislaims: “none of the vélibs in this film were mistreated…” Appropriately, the accompanying music is Highway to Hell. Why has the criminal underworld descended on Paris? How many Parisians are responsible themselves? How is it that the similar programmes work so much better in other cities? And, importantly, for cities wanting to replicate the Parisian system (London, San Francisco…), how can such base vandalism be avoided?

After getting drummed into our heads that using mobile phones may be carcinogenic, I am increasingly encouraged by recent studies saying that using the text (SMS) function is good for you! For its immediacy, the acceptance of shorthand (and errors) as well as the language of emoticons, SMS and Instant Messaging (IM) communication is a very real way of communicating.  Technology and the human touch is a topic I have addressed previously in a blog post.

So, if you text a lot AND you use the word “I” when you IM or text your soulmate, chances are that you are experiencing a healthy relationship, so says this latest study in US News. With a little imagination, the study would seem to reinforce the notion that you need to love yourself in order to be able to love someone else properly.

And, an article I found on the BBC says that, with the help of SMS / text reminders, a group of people suffering from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder*) in the UK will be reminded daily to sit in front of their light box to give a little light to their gloomy conditions in the midst of the dark, short days of winter.

Finally, knowing the number of emoticons that are included in the TXT messages, it is no surprise that there is an emotional impact from the messages emanating from our handy mobiles. On another note, I have also heard more and more about the abuse of SMS between teenagers and the notion of sextext (as yet an unofficial term according to Urban Dictionary). Something to watch out for. Meanwhile, below is a table of TXT speak in case you need a refresher, but an easier resource is here at, what claims to be, the Largest List of Text Message Abbreviations. But, whatever you do, don’t forget to use the “I” when addressing your loved one.

*SAD affects around 2% of UK citizens and between 1.5-9% of US citizens depending on the state in which they live. According to the wikipedia entry, 20% of the Irish (2007 study) were said to suffer from SAD and 10% of the Dutch.

I have often wondered how my life might have been different had I not learned to type quickly and accurately. I will never forget a lecture I attended by Lester Thurow, former professor of Economics and Dean at MIT, back while I was at Yale (around 1986). He said that typing was far from an insignificant skill to possess as an executive. For many “older” executives–especially those who were not born into the need to type their school papers–typing is not a noble skill. There are still many executives who consider it below themselves to know how to type (much less how to use the computer, Outlook and internet…); those who think that typing themselves is a loss of time.

Au contraire, I find that typing fast and accurately is a tremendous skill and competitive advantage. Just to answer once more the question “how do I find the time to blog so much?” I say, first, that I make the time (part of my philosophy on time). But, right after that, I say that it is thanks to the fact that I can type up to 70 words per minute without (too many) mistakes. When combined with having the word retrieval (from the brain) stoked by some good coffee beans, the posts come fast and furiously for me.

On the professional front, this means that typing up memos, meeting recaps or e-mails is substantially less of a chore. That said, there are no shortcuts for rereading and proofing your written word. Of course, reading emails is another kettle of fish and knowing who to put in copy, etc., in your replies (managing the politics…) is a little more cumbersome. Nonetheless, typing faster is a competitive advantage anyway you cut it. It even helps me finger out my messages on my Blackberry. But my typing skills did not come “out of thin air.” I had to apply myself to learn how to type — and I did so consciously early on, without access to any of the fun ways to learn that now exist.

Among the fun typing games out there (and there are many), I enjoyed this one from Jon Miles, called Fingerjig. Of course, you can also play Fingerjig on Facebook and find out if you’re a better typist than your friends. It doesn’t test you for upper case, etc., but it is a reasonably fun and engaging way to see where you stand — and see if you need to improve!

So, if you are a student at school, the need to learn to type is pretty much obvious. A done deal. One of the areas I have been working on is finding ways to encourage our children to type quickly — and online games are clearly a great answer. Below are a few solutions that I found (even if some reside on a platform that has other painfully silly games) for kids and adults.

A good reference point is at “Only Typing Games” which has a nice little selection of online games that encourage typing skills.

-For the beginners…and of a younger age: Typing Monster from PrimaryGames and Dance Mat Typing from the BBC.
-For the “older” kids, where one can challenge oneself to whichever level one has in typing, Crazy Keys or QWERTY Warriors & QWERTY Warriors 2 (the latter of which play on the aggressive killer instinct) from Crazy Monkey Games
-And, still for kids, there’s Alpha-Attack (from Miniclips)
-Then, for the less game inclined typer, a few “serious” sites courtesy of Touch Typing post from a prolific, if currently dormant, JEETBLOG. You can test your speed, or do some online tutoring here: TypeFaster or Keybr.

If you want to try your hand at your own typing speed, try this. It takes just one MINUTE!

70 wordsTypingtest

The World Economic Forum have just released the results of the Global Gender Gap Report 2008.

There are a few suprising facets to this WEF report, now in its third year, authored by Ricardo Hausmann, Director, Centre for International Development, Harvard University, Laura Tyson, Professor at University of California, Berkeley, and Saadia Zahidi from the WEF.  First, what strikes me is the tremendous dynamism in the results — from one year to another a country can change by more than 30 places (as France did jumping from 51st to 15th).  Secondly, the list of sponsoring companies for the research includes a number of banks, consultancies and a car company hardly known for women’s equality as well as the employment services company MANPOWER.

Those quibbles aside, the research shows that there is a “…a strong correlation between competitiveness and the gender gap scores.”  And the report indicates once again the strength of the equality movement in Scandinavia, with Norway coming out on top this year ahead of its neighbouring Scandinavian countries.   Here is the list of the top 10 for 2008.  Noteworthy for being absent from the top 10 (I should say again) are the United Kingdom (13th) and the United States (27th, behind Cuba) which scores highest in “economic participation and opportunity.”  And, fairly astonishing for being in the top 10 are the Philippines and Latvia.  The report voluntarily overweights the importance of having female leadership — as a way of providing visible role models (which clearly boosted the Philippines).  How much credit for France’s rise goes to Ségolène Royal (and Carla Bruni)?.  A

Global Gender Gap Index

Rank 2008 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Country Norway Finland Sweden Iceland N. Zealand Philippines Denmark Ireland Netherlands Latvia Score* 0.824 0.820 0.814 0.800 0.786 0.757 0.754 0.752 0.740 0.740 Rank 2007 2 3 1 4 5 6 8 9 12 13 *0 to 1 scale: 0=inequality, 1=equality

The report establishes the following “top line” numbers, indicating that on balance things are tending to get better, although there were nearly twice as many countries where the gap was widening in 2008 versus 2007 as opposed to the prior year.  The big conclusions of the report are that the world has again shown progress in closing the gaps in economic, political and education; however, it has actually lost ground on the health gaps.

The criteria for selection are worth citing:
“The Report examines four critical areas of inequality between men and women:
1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio”

Meanwhile, tailing off the bottom of the list are a host of countries without need for comment: Saudi Arabia, Chad and Yemen.  India (113rd) landed basically on par with Iran (116th).  Japan wallowing in at 98th is a blemish…especially when you find higher up Mongolia (40th), Kyrgyz Republic (41st) and Russia (42nd).  Italy lies at 68th, not exactly brilliant.  Meanwhile, I thought Turkey (123rd) might have ranked higher.

Here is the writeup from the BBC and from TIME (with a good and lively analysis).  If nothing else, the research and report allow for some debate and exposure to this very important issue.

Airline Ads — the good, the bad and the luxury 

In these trying economic times, one of the industries that will inevitably be hit hard (again), will be the airline industry. Whether for personal or business travel, there is likely to be a good amount of seat-belt tightening. Some wise folk would say that NOW is a good time for the companies [that can afford it], to invest in attracting new business. In this vein, I took a look at some of the print advertising messages by airline companies around the world. While I certainly can’t say that I did a definitive and comprehensive search of all the ad creatives, I did find that there were certain patterns. When I take the NORTH AMERICAN companies, for example, it seems to me that the companies are communicating less about the experience in the plane and more about the “dream” of travel and the number of destinations serviced. In the creatives here (which I believe may be a bit dated) American Airlines (left) puts forward that it flies six times a day from NYC to London “via cloud nine.” A second American Airlines ad (right) presents the benefits of staring out the window. Implicitly, they are asking you not to look at the quality of service inside the plane, no? 

 

More current, American’s billboard ad above is another curious statement. What are they selling? They are proposing planes that know how to land in water? Not going to rock my boat, if you see what I mean. The creative concept here is to show that you can have wifi internet access in flight. Dubious item to search if you are trying to encourage people to fly. To the right, you see Delta pushing its inflight entertainment (curiously promoting playing its Texas Hold’em game against fellow passengers). I would be remiss not to include Southwest, a true lovemark, which is proud of its advertising (historical creatives posted on its own site). But, even Southwest, in this output (left), is discussing the technology equipment (and while we haven’t heard the last about inflight telephone conversations), we are again not truly onboard.

And then Air Canada (left), is encouraging pedestrians to consider flying with its “People Working Above” humour. Again, not much content in the way of in-cabin service. Had they picked snow-packed scenery (there is a BIT) and miserably cold people, then the concept might have been to incite people to fly away to warmer climates? Bottom line, the North American companies seemed to be more prone to communicate about the concept of flying, rather than the experience itself.

EUROPEAN COMPANIES – THE “JE NE SAIS QUOI…” 

After the North American ads, I took a look at the European companies. Mainland companies were not as “out of the cabin” as the American companies. Air France’s creative (left) has been running for quite a while. It’s a nice image, but it leaves me wondering about the reality in the cabin. And their competition up north, Brussels Airlines (formerly Sabena), had decidedly the same creative air (below). Something about water as being part of the flying experience? The need to sit on a wooden board? I, for one, am absolutely horrible at sitting on the ground. Interestingly, both ad creatives use women. 

 

England‘s two primary airlines, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, have somewhat different approaches. Virgin allows for cheeky claims as well as innovative service concepts. On the left, you have an ad (9 inches) targetted presumably toward the female customer yet again. On the right, Virgin is going at the pre-flight experience with the offer of the limousine and a fast track check-in into the Virgin lounge. “Fastly Superior” and a cut above in terms of service proposition. Whether it is 9 inches of pleasure or the limo-to-lounge service, there is little humanity in this offer.

Moving to Virgin’s compeition, British Airlines is communicating in this creative on the onboard experience. Again, the focus is on the “mechanical” or physical benefits on board. With a cute creative (using the windows as eyes), the ad speaks to the ability to get a real night’s sleep in the plane (all good when you are flying overnight or on very long haul flights). Of course, in this creative by BA, you have to understand that you did not fly BA in your last flight. I have snuck in an Aeroflot creative just to say that they are more in the North American category…not much to sell onboard, unless you like the idea of doing wheelies and 360s. European companies are in for tough times, just as much as in the US, with lots of short flights, expensive personnel and intense competition (and regulation). Recently, European legislators have decided to go after the European companies for improper pricing advertising. Read here for the June 2008 article from the BBC. 

 

ASIAN AIRLINE CLASS