Tourist Travel Maps + Savannah Tourist Map

Today I entered the world of "domaining" for money. I researched and learned a little before settling on my first domain purchase. After mulling, www.internationalcitymaps.com I decided to go with www.touristtravelmaps.com and www.savannahtouristmap.com. It seems like a good starting point and I will be setting it up most of the night.

I am excited to be another member of this very crowded field but am anticipating doing well. I will update in the blog from time to time.

Twitter Thoughts

I have for awhile now been hearing various comments about the Twitter craze. Friends say its great and others say "I don't see the use." Love it or hate it, Twitter is here to stay. I have been using it for about 4 months now to varying degrees of success.

The other day at work a colleague unfamiliar with Twitter asked me what I thought about the platform. I was unable to think of any immediate reasons that this form of distribution was useful to him.

After this conversation, I started to think about Twitter and wonder "why is it so popular?" Distribution of content is definitely an important factor of the new web. Consumers' thirst to have content at multiple touchpoints is expanding and Twitter is feeding their thirst.

The picture above shows LAFD's highly creative and innovative way of using Twitter to inform LA of useful information. Imagine a scenario where the FD is posting ongoing alerts of forest fires, or safety information. Twitter is able to push this information to SMS, and web areas therefore enlarging their digital footprint.

Delta.com

Delta Airlines fresh out of bankruptcy and looking smart with a new brand makeover disappointed me at a number of touchpoints this week. The first was a cynical interaction I had while taking the train to work.

The signs that line the top of the cars always strike my interest and I often wonder if they are effective. I can see some definite brand equity but not much ROI but that is for another post. This particular car was lined with Delta ads and I love to read headlines so I naturally read them. One said something about a flight you would want to spend extend. I get the irony of the ad but the core irony is that I was stuck on a Delta flight for 3 extra hours recently. I assure you I did no want another minute on this flight or any Delta one!

This ad was funny but to me it just underscored one of the worse aspects of Delta that you sit around and wait. What marketing genius came up with this one? The same guy that decided to market an automobile in a Spanish speaking country that was called Nova(or No Go)? Ha.

That was the first erosion of my faith in a brand that was badly damaged but slowly moving up. Second was when I tried to redeem a voucher given to me for volunteering to get off a flight. I decided to use the website to book a flight to Savannah but only to find that Delta made no mention of redeeming vouchers.

My inital reaction was to call and wait to speak to someone but I figured keep at the website. I continued to navigate through this site and eventually reached my limit. No mention of voucher redemption anywhere!

I called customer service and after 25 minutes of being on hold and being shuttled to different departments I was talking to a live person. She informed that delta.com was not Safari compatible! Can you believe that? No mention on the homepage of site requirements it took almost 30 minutes to find this out.

In today's age of consumer empowerment, why are airlines consistently aloud to treat us as steerage class passengers with no consequence? I have to say some airlines do listen and they are getting it. (read JetBlue) Most though treat us as they want and we take it. I wonder how long this will last before they feel the backlash.

Delta, how long before you start listening?