Newspapers, Meet Southwest's Marketing Team
A recent survey by Outsell, a market research firm, found that advertisers will increase spending by 5.8% this year -- and that ad dollars earmarked for websites will rise by 18%. This year, 20% of all ad buys will be for digital -- not paper -- publications.
And yet at least one corporation has developed a direct-to-consumer advertisement that also provides useful services. Southwest has created a widget that lives on your desktop and alerts you to fare changes, flight updates, sales and more. On the desktop, it looks like a Southwest airplane vertical fin (that piece that sticks up at the back of the plane) with the company logo and colors displayed.
The widget itself is pretty helpful. I fly often between Philadelphia, Baltimore and Chicago and typically use Southwest. In theory, I can use this to do everything from checking in online to booking new airfare to searching the system for sales. (To be fair, all of the widget's content gets linked back to the Southwest website, so it acts more like a portal than a true stand-alone widget app.)
Here's how newspapers can use it: Why not create a widget? It could serve headlines, columns, announcements about live chats with reporters, sports stats, polls (how often do you read the Daily Bugle at work? At home?), community events. But it could also carry an unobtrusive ad. It could be wrapped (borders and small banner space at the bottom) by a different sponsor every day.
The problem continues to be that publishers aren't thinking creatively enough. Even if advertisers are willing to up their spending by 18% (or 20% or 100%), I have to think they're not just interested in banner ads anymore, since users have become averse to clicking or even looking at them.