Who is Ted?
People in Denver, Colorado, US have been wondering who the heck is Ted. The city has been taken over by signs about Ted, people roaming the city on Seguays wearing signs that say "I'm not Ted", free lunches with stickers that say "This one's on Ted", and more.
As it turns out United is behind this guerrilla marketing campaign, attempting to create a buzz for it's new low-cost, low-fare carrier TED.
Ted is believed to be the name of the airline-within-an-airline, which will launch from Denver International Airport in February. T-E-D are the last three letters in United, and a source close to the company said Thursday that Ted is the planned name. Officials at Denver's dominant carrier refused to confirm the airline is behind Ted - the subject of stickers, signs and giveaways throughout Denver.
Denverites already are getting to know Ted - the figure who mysteriously bought lunch for everyone at a Chipotle in LoDo on Tuesday and a slice of cheesecake for diners at a Cheesecake Factory last week. And Ted has turned up elsewhere on the Front Range.
According to the Greeley Tribune, Adam Kaiser woke Tuesday and found a huge "Ted" spelled out in sod in the middle of his 240-acre family farm near Lucerne. "It's a very interesting concept," Joshua Marks of the George Washington University Aviation Institute said of the campaign.
"It demonstrates that their approach for the new airline is going to be very different from the way they have conducted their advertising in the past. It's just different."
Great quote from the article: "Is it some illegal cult?" wondered Lindy Eichenbaum Lent, spokeswoman for Hickenlooper. "I assumed it was some college sociological project."
The web site for Ted is here. (flash)
See some of the "ambiant" marketing here.
People are able to submit their sightings of Ted related stuff to the site.
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That site meetted.com had some great comments. the by far funniest "ted sighting" story was:
Call me Ted! I wanna find out more about you! - dare I pun that I'm lovin' it? ;)
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PermalinkCan't not love free lunch and the like :)
Interesting biz factoid: united is bankcrupt. So, it seems like a large spending spree for this type of marketing. But definitely seems effective. I bet that was a fun project to work on.
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PermalinkMore news on Ted. MiamiHerald:
"Obviously it's for somebody who is into sort of a free, independent-skier sort of lifestyle," Whittier said. "They are playing to reality advertising. They are definitely trying to go low-cost. They are trying to create an Internet cult following."
The big question is if it will work. Michael Boyd, an airline consultant in Colorado doesn't think so. "They can call it Ted; they can call it Trans-Deficit Airlines. It doesn't make any difference. The concept doesn't work," he said.
Boyd and other experts say say low-fare airlines within mainline airlines have two major challenges: keep costs low and avoid confusion that different airline brand names can cause for customers.
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PermalinkMore Ted sighting shots found at this blog ovah here: littleteapot
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PermalinkThe picture I'd seen finally came available at Yahoo News.
First glance. Anyone else see a vague resemblance to a much-hyped logo that often appears on airplanes?
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Permalinksimilar branding idea, here's "Mike" from taxi.
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Permalinkheh. And that same orange color too.
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Permalinkyeah thats the funniest part. another-branding-brainsynch huh?
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PermalinkGo Orange!
It's a shame they're already redirecting to United, I wanted to see some of the campaign.
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Permalinkaye, a real shame as some of the images were really funny. I cant even find images on that site I linked earlier (teapot) in the comments now.
If anyone knows where Ted-sightings hide on the web these days, let us know aye? :)
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PermalinkTry Ted's Place?
http://198.104.148.27/flash-index.htm?navSource=Ted&linkTitle=visit
Found it after poking around a bit on the United site. My flash is acting up so I can't see it, so I dunno if that's got anything good.
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