Actor in video
Voiceover at the end

The biggest problem with the ad is that by emphasizing their quality product on these two routes they mostly remind people how much worse the other 100 long-haul domestic routes are. How do you target only the people who aren't mad that they aren't getting this?

They targeted people who aren't made by placing the ad somewhere besides FlyerTalk.

And focus on the window, an ice cream sundae, and barely show the hard product. Real effective. :rolleyes:

Was that a direct aisle access window seat in BF? Is there even a config like that?

No and No.

It was a window seat.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...daes-july.html

Check that link. All hell broke lose at Continental when that cut happen. Ha to think that was our biggest problem at the time. My how things have changed.

It shows just as much, or more, of the hard product as AA's commercials about wireless Internet do.

It was an underwhelming commercial, but I am not sure why there's so much hatred here.

Wow, times have changed. Check out the openness in this CO Insider post: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/9938141-post25.html

I don't recall the pmUA IPTE ad campaigns being panned on FT. They are still praised today.

OP when I read Matt Damon I thought he would be on the screen.

But how do they target SFO-JFK flyers rather than SFO-EWR or SFO-IAD or SAN-EWR or SEA-EWR flyers, etc., etc. to all of whom this reminds them they are getting an inferior product? I can't think of any advertising venue that would only reach the former and not any of the latter.

You must be new to FT. UA could announce private suites for every flyer with showers and masseuses, and there would be a wave of hostility on FT.

The actor is fairly compact, which ties into one of the complaints about the CO lie flat, not long enough.

No, I think people are rightly calling an apple an apple. The commercial was awful.

I think some people, myself included, can remember when UA's ad campaigns tied into many different forms of media - a television ad with direct similarities between a print ad and then more connections to an ad/picture on their own website.

I can remember when the illustration ads with economy plus showed a man with ridiculously long legs - it proved a point and you didn't have to see the whole ad to understand what it meant *to most routes* and not a specific market or city trio.

I'm not an advertising person (in fact i'm the polar opposite - an engineer) but I can understand why this ad sucked and why previous UA ads actually worked!

-jeremy

After all the hype we got from WHQ about their advertising agency search, the results we've seen have been stunningly uninspired and ineffective.

Since we have a marketing team from Houston who replaced most of the pmUA team, they may want to take a look at the old spots that made United / / / U N I T E D. The award winning "It's time to fly" campaign appealed directly to high yield business travel. The new campaign? I have absolutely no idea. For an airline as large as, and with as many strategic assets as United, that's unacceptable.

2001:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VywUQz-DtHs

2008:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkmSzk_yWr4 (Emmy winner, and also inducted into the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection)

I rather fly SFO-EWR using my RPU after watching this crappy ad :D