Jonah Bloom (editor-in-chief of AdAge) scribes a savvy look at Marketing as Service in his editorial called “Make Your Marketing Useful, Like Samsung and Charmin” in this week’s AdAge. Not one to mince words, Jonah goes so far as to suggest that large advertisers “take a small chunk out of those billion-dollar budgets and help provide a free, helpful service.”
In addition to detailing Samsung’s Airport Charging Stations, Jonah offers up this example from the UK:
One of my favorite examples came from Metro newspapers in the U.K., which spent some of its launch marketing budget repairing and improving inner-city sports facilities. It was a good way to get the Metro name emblazoned into the very fabric of the cities in question and a clever way to give the brand a bit of “history” within the city.
After mentioning yours truly, this blog and the HSBC BankCab, Jonah goes on challenge Citi and AT&T directly with these suggestions:
AT&T, for example, how about you spare a few million from the billion you spend shoving your bars in my face, and help the MTA fix its Subway intercoms? Or Citi, how about you take some of the hundred million a year you spend telling us how friendly you are to construct a wireless network for New York?
Go Jonah. Delighted to have you on board the good ship Marketing as Service. And while I agree that it would be great to have subway intercoms that work and a wireless network for Gotham, I’m not certain I would have recommended to either of these clients that they take on these particular challenges. I won’t go into my reservations here but rather offer up a challenge to you all to come up some other ideas for these two clients. Winner gets a free ride in the BankCab and of course, adulation in this here blog. As my son would say, “bring it.”
Step 1: Go to AT&T’s website, sign up for a free account (alternatively, offer only available to current subscribers).
Step 2: Enter anyone and everyone’s phonebook info into your admin panel on the site.
Step 3: Enter your name and password at specially-outfitted public phones, and access your phonebook from an encrypted database.
For non-paying subscribers, this free service can be supplemented with offers from AT&T recited by a friendly, soft, easygoing voice before the call is sent out.
This overcomes one of the highlight problems with public phones (no one memorizes numbers anymore!), while severely diminishing the panic attack we generally pin to a dead cellphone in The City.
“Oh no, dead cell! Got to find one of those AT&T phones around here…”
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None of the telcos currently use their marketing as service; the meaningful face-time given by these phones to non-subscribers, and the good will to current customers, would stick in the mind for years.
AT&T should wire select subway/metro/T stations so people can have cell service when underground waiting for trains. I don’t advocate having cell service while on the trains and traveling (it’s pretty nice to not be on the phone some of the time), but it would really come in handy while on the platform.