The Lancet is old England’s New England Journal of Medicine. Which is to say that it publishes well-considered stories of great social and medical import. This story certainly qualifies. Let’s ignore the seven-minutes of yammerful backstory about. Blah, blah, blah, a guy in Paris needs a heart transplant. A donor turns up in the French West Indies. That’s a 12-hour ride on a commercial airline away. And, that’s never been done in the history of heart transplants. E-gad. What’s going to happen? Cold open. Commercial break.
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Bam. We’re back in.
But it was this thumbnail that caught my eye.
The freezer in those two seats packed a lot of heart. It got me thinking. Did they pay for one seat and just scooched over into the other? Did they pay for two seats? Do you get a discount if the person doesn’t need an in-flight snack, a headset, or those little bottles of collectible hooch my folks displayed on their best shelf when I was growing up? Does the box get rattled if there’s a tyke kicking the seat behind it? Then, I noticed that the icebox was in the back of the cabin. Do you really want the transplant patient waiting for all the people who can’t figure out how to get their luggage down? I mean, the flight is twelve hours. That’s long enough. What if the jet bridge operator can’t get that doohickey to line up with door flange? Tick, tock people. Was First Class an option?
Then, it really hit me. The real story. What airline was this?
Lincoln had a classic commercial in the early 70s. A master diamond cutter sat in the back of a Lincoln Continental and cut a diamond perfectly as the car bumped over the uneven street of 1972 just pre-almost-bankrupt New York City. Flawless. Saturday Night Live parodied it replacing the diamond cutter with a mohel and the diamond with, well…
To me, this was a massive missed opportunity for the airline. “We’re the airline with heart.” Or, “If it’s safe enough to transport a transplant, it’s safe enough for your family.” How about, “I’ll have what it’s having.” Look, I’m don’t write ad copy. But there’s something here. A couple of B2B air trade outlets picked up the Lancet story. Nothing on mainstream media. The airline’s social media and comms teams should be ashamed.
P to the S, the Lancet story gave the airline parenthetical mention (Air France).
Air France KLM spent $100 million on advertising last year. It’s not like they don’t have money and spend it. It’s just absurdly easier to buy ads to do something, you know, creative.
Which got me thinking about other things brands do because it’s just too easy to buy ads.
There’s a big pharmaceutical company. They’re working to develop a medical marvel. A way to fix genes in people who lost their sight. Their solution? Ads. Big banner ads all over the Internet. A friend of mine spoke to the marketing folks about their strategy. They told him, “You see, a lot of people see ads and click on them. Especially if we put these banners in the places they go online. When they click this ad, it will take them to our website and they can read all about our plans to create this life-changing therapy. We have all sorts of very accurate patient data. So, we can focus our investment on the patients and not waste spend on the caregivers. In fact, all of creative copy is optimized to convince patients. We’re very proud of this plan. Our agency won an award for its pinpointing.”
“Um, the patients are blind, right?”
“Yep.”
“So, they can’t see the ads.”
“Oops. We missed that. But, wait, won’t AI read the site to blind people?”
“Um, yep. But, AI skips the ads. You know, like an ad block for blind people.”
“We did not know that.”
Sadly, this is a true story. And, no, AI doesn’t turn sites into useful places for the sightless.
Sometimes, there are none so blind as those who use banner ads.