Google's Gift to Holiday Travelers

by Nathaniel Whittemore · 2009-11-11 20:44:00 UTC
Topics:

In a move that is sure to generate huge positive will, Google is giving holiday travelers at 47 airports around the country the gift of free WI-FI. This is on top of free in-fright wireless for the month of December on Virgan America flights. While this is clearly a marketing play, it's still worth breaking down a bit to see what we can learn.

Given that, here are four reasons this is incredibly smart business:

1. It's awesome. Unlike many campaigns that ostensibly give consumers something back, the thing that Google is providing is genuinely useful and will, assuredly, make many travelers chaotic flight cancelations just a bit less painful. People don't want stuff just because it's free, but they definitely want good stuff because it's free.

2. It's connected to the core business. Rather than giving away free coffee (although Starbucks, if you want to match Google's airport support, that would be great), or fruitcakes, or something neat but not related to Google, they are providing something that reinforces their brand as the heart of the internet.

3. It reinforces the positive emotional feeling. Internet humorist once defined brand as the emotional aftertaste of an experience. Google's Free Wi-Fi is not solving world poverty, but that isn't the job of this particular happening. This is all about getting people to feel a little warm when they think of Le Goog.

All that said, I'd still love to see them actually announce a winner for Project 10 to the 100...

(Photo: Joiseyshowaa)

Nathaniel Whittemore is the founder of Assetmap. Previously he was the founding director of the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Using Twitter to Scale Caring
NEXT STORY:
Facing Forward: The End of the Social Entrepreneurship Blog on Change.org

COMMENTS (0)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.