When Travelport unleashed what it no doubt hoped would be a “viral” video to YouTube a few weeks back, it and many others probably weren’t expecting it to get as much traction as it did.
The clip featured a group of office workers (presumably travel agents) jumping over tables with, inevitably, one of them landing head first on a desk.
A few weeks on and the video has managed to attract almost 50,000 views on YouTube.
Clearly on to a good thing, Travelport has released another effort. Although not as good as the first, it will appeal to the FAIL-hungry types that spend all day watching such calamity/hilarity on YouTube.
The latest has already fetched 15,000 views of its own:
Contrived to a certain extent because the clips were made using actors/stunt types, if success is measured by the number of views then Travelport will probably be rather happy.
But such activity, where a B2B company makes that often weird (and perhaps unintentional) leap into the world of consumer-facing marketing, does lead to more questions about its motivation than the simple answer of “yay, loads of FAIL freaks have seen our humorous video clips”. [Not an official quote]
As it is impossible to segment how many potential travel agent users of Smartpoint (the product Travelport is trying to flog) have seen the video on YouTube compared to so-called normal people, presumably the longer term metric will come by way of counting how many customers switch to the new platform as a result.
Unless, of course, Travelport is simply trying to position itself as a fun lovin’ GDS eager to banish the image of a corner of the industry more often associated with Jurassic Park than Jackass.
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Does this mean that next we can expect Sabre creating a new character similar to Mayhem? And Amadeus developing a cute and cuddly puppy-like creature to make them appear all soft and cuddly?
Can we espect American Airlines will adopt a killer whale as its symbol (oh wait someone else did that already). Even Spirit Airlines will get into the act with a Panda replacing Ben Baldanza as its official spokesbear.
Will this create new products and we will be using new tools based on BYOSA? Bring Your Own Stuffed Animal?
This could get REALLY interesting.