JetBlue Taps Plane Full of YouTubers to Promote New LAX Route

JetBlue will land its first jet at Los Angeles International Airport today and has packed the plane with YouTube celebrities to document the ride.

In a bid to build buzz for its new routes from New York’s JFK and Boston’s Logan International to LAX, the airline is counting on a stream of tweets and videos produced by Howcast and YouTube stars such as Kevin Nalts, Delphine Dijon, Justine Ezarik and Meghan Asha. To facilitate that, JetBlue is using its one plane with wireless internet access, BetaBlue, for the JFK-to-LAX flight.

None of the bloggers is being paid directly by JetBlue, but all got a free flight, and some are being paid by Howcast to produce how-to videos featuring JetBlue. The airline asked all the bloggers to disclose the relationship in whatever videos they produce and to keep them “family-friendly.”

“We wanted it to be transparent; we’re not trying to hide JetBlue, we just wanted them to have the space to do it in their own voice and make it interesting,” said Rachel Viega, account supervisor at MediaCom Interaction, a unit of WPP, which oversees JetBlue’s digital marketing.

JetBlue opted for a low-budget, slightly experimental media plan around the flights. The company bought outdoor and radio spots in Los Angeles to promote the new routes, as well as print ads in AMNewYork. But the airline is counting on the cast of video bloggers on the plane to seed YouTube and the Twittersphere with reports from BetaBlue.

JetBlue contracted with Howcast to produce a number of how-to videos related to air travel, including “How to Fly Coast to Coast” and “Happy Jetting with Delphine,” which will be distributed on Howcast’s network and YouTube. Howcast CEO Jason Liebman said all the videos have a “shout out” to JetBlue that discloses the connection.

JetBlue started flights into LAX on Wednesday, its third airport in the Los Angeles area; it already flies to Long Beach and Burbank. After some PR disasters last year and new competition on Los Angeles routes from Virgin America, the airline emerged with a savvy, recession-themed marketing campaign.

It has also made a habit of listening to its customers via Twitter. Its feed @JetBlue, managed by PR rep Morgan Johnston, has more than 680,000 followers. Recent tweet: “on BetaBlue with some fun folks at 28,000 feet and climbing for our JFK-LAX launch.”

The Hut

Pizza Hut Adopts an Alias to Market Diversified Menu
Category Leader Going by ‘The Hut’ Amid Increased Competition From Freezer Aisle and Elsewhere

Another surprising victim of the recession: delivery pizza. Improved frozen fare, more grocery-made pies and a profusion of high-quality mom-and-pop shops have led the billion-dollar pizza chains to expand their menus to include wings, pasta and sandwiches. But the larger selection seems to have created a bit of an identity crisis for industry leader Pizza Hut, which will begin calling itself “The Hut” in some of its marketing efforts.

Even as overall pizza consumption increases, “the large chains have been losing share of the pizza market for years,” said Technomic President Ron Paul. As a result, he said, major companies are leaning on their next-best asset: massive delivery infrastructures that can bring a variety of fare to consumers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less.

Campaign for Wrangler Jeans

… Portrays People Getting in Touch With Their Inner Animals

Press Grand Prix Goes to Paris Hotshop Fred & Farid

Print is France’s forte this year. Two-year-old Paris hotshop Fred & Farid has won a press Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for its European campaign “We Are Animals” for Wrangler jeans. The idea is that people have lost touch their animal instincts, buried in daily urban life.

Different executions portray young people in nature-filled settings posed like animals in the wild. Some ads show people in Wrangler jeans or denim shirts. In “Dakota on Road,” a woman clad only in white jeans stands in the middle of a road’s yellow lines, caught like a deer in approaching headlights. In “Dakota 1,” a woman is submerged in water up to her nose, like a crocodile or a hippo.

JetBlue Taps Plane Full of YouTubers to Promote New LAX Route

JetBlue will land its first jet at Los Angeles International Airport today and has packed the plane with YouTube celebrities to document the ride.

In a bid to build buzz for its new routes from New York’s JFK and Boston’s Logan International to LAX, the airline is counting on a stream of tweets and videos produced by Howcast and YouTube stars such as Kevin Nalts, Delphine Dijon, Justine Ezarik and Meghan Asha. To facilitate that, JetBlue is using its one plane with wireless internet access, BetaBlue, for the JFK-to-LAX flight.

None of the bloggers is being paid directly by JetBlue, but all got a free flight, and some are being paid by Howcast to produce how-to videos featuring JetBlue. The airline asked all the bloggers to disclose the relationship in whatever videos they produce and to keep them “family-friendly.”

Microsoft Sues Three in Click-Fraud Scheme

AFTER an investigation that took more than a year, Microsoft has filed its first lawsuit over click fraud, where people manipulate clicks on a Web advertisement. Microsoft filed the civil complaint on Monday in United States District Court in Seattle against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia, along with several corporation names they were believed to have used, and several unnamed parties.

Block Tobacco Legislation

ANA Mounts Suit to Block Tobacco Legislation

Nearly a half-dozen entities, including the Association of National Advertisers, are aiming to block legislation passed last week to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory control over the packaging, manufacturing and marketing of tobacco products.

In a lawsuit that’s also expected to include tobacco companies and the American Civil Liberties Union, the groups will argue that marketing and advertising restrictions laid out in the bill fail to comply with free-speech protections provided by the First Amendment.

Which GM Brand Should Be Saved?

Consumer Survey Picks Pontiac – the One Least Likely to Survive

General Motors Corp. is looking to sell three brands and kill off one, Pontiac. And which brand was overwhelmingly named by consumers in a recent survey as the one they’d like to live on? Pontiac.

In a new worldwide survey from online auto community CarGurus, consumers were asked which of the four brands they would most like to see survive. Of the nearly 1,700 respondents, 44% named Pontiac, 27% said Hummer, 20% picked Saab and only 9% named Saturn.

Langley Steinert, CEO of CarGurus, cited Pontiac’s “trailblazing heritage” — including the 1964 GTO, which started the muscle-car craze — as reasons for consumers’ apparent fondness for the brand. Pontiac’s “current G6 is the 20th-best-selling car in the U.S.,” he said, “so I’m not surprised to see consumers vote to save this historic brand.”

That’s not to say there weren’t a few of the findings that took him aback — such as the popularity of the gas-guzzling Hummer. “What did surprise me was the relative popularity of the Hummer brand over that of Saab and Saturn,” Mr. Steinert said. The Saturn Vue, he said, is a top-50-best-selling car in this country, while Hummer’s best-selling model, the H3, ranks in the No. 153 slot. “I would have expected Saturn to be the other brand consumers wanted to see survive GM’s reorganization,” he said.

The Ad Campaign for a ‘New’ G.M.

Can General Motors make up for decades of mistakes and misfires in a minute?

That is the ambitious goal of a 60-second commercial to begin running on television on Wednesday. The spot is already available on a Web site (gmreinvention.com) and on YouTube.

The commercial is part mea culpa, part gauzy paean to the concept of a “new” General Motors. Although portions seem self-serving, there are moments when a viewer may think, “Hey, maybe G.M. deserves another chance.”

App Revenue Is Poised to

…Surpass Facebook Revenue

More than a social phenomenon, Facebook harbors a lively and growing ecosystem of game and other application makers, ad networks and retailers of virtual goods. What happens when businesses running on Facebook become bigger than Facebook itself?

That could very well be the case in 2009. Facebook, which just surpassed 200 million global users, is expected to bring in about $500 million in 2009 revenue, mostly from advertising. Tech blog Venturebeat estimated that Facebook developers make a combined $500 million on the platform.

Ad Age estimates the collective revenue from Facebook of developers to be between $300 million and $500 million.

All in all, numbers big enough that Facebook is looking to cash in

Crispin Sells Its Interns on EBay

Marketers Pizza Hut, Philip Morris Not Welcome to Bid

We may be in a recession, but this year’s batch of Crispin Porter & Bogusky interns will be getting fatter paychecks. Not that the agency itself will be funding the pay increases for the 40 young talents who will slog away in its Miami and Boulder, Colo., offices on accounts such as “Guitar Hero” and Burger King. Rather, Crispin has launched an eBay auction for their services.