Eshin Direct

Oh boy, did I forget that Cathay Pacific indulge you with their theme song “I can fly” as their muzack on their telephone systems. The person that came up with muzack should be shot on principle. If you’re going to be using muzack at all, let’s spare a thought for those poor suckers who are put in the queue for more than the length of one song. Failing that, some variation in the muzack would be nice and not the same company jingle. I’ll be fair. Cathay isn’t the only company to be obsessed with it’s own apparent musical ingenuity. PCCW is also another one of the companies that loves its jingle.

I think the problem is with the big companies. I’ve noticed that as you rise in seniority and status within these big companies, leadership is governed by ego more than anything else. I’m imagining that someone came up with the jingle, fell in love with it as his or her brainchild and decided let’s use it absolutely everywhere. Does anyone stand up to tell them that perhaps that it isn’t such a great idea? Most likely not, since it would be akin to insulting their own child. Not something you want to do if you are upwardly mobile.

But perhaps someone might be interested in pointing out that we’ve moved on from the marketing theories of yester-century where marketing wisdom stated “tell ‘em as many times as you can about your product, service, widget”. Today’s wisdom is more akin to “tell ‘em enough times, and they’ll buy it”. Focus on the “enough”. Not excessive. Sure, coming up with such an ingratiating tune and flogging it for all its worth is sure to make your mark on branding history, but in the business of getting business, the alienability factor should be the primary concern.

And if something was really that good, you could play it once and people would still remember it. If marketers venture into the world of music production, then take a lesson from the effect that one-time performances by talented singers, jazz musicians, violinists, whatever, have on an audience. If it was that good, they’ll remember it for the rest of their lives, and more importantly the positive emotions that come from that.

Especially dangerous for an airline is the idea that you are sitting in their ticketing hotline queue for more than five minutes, with a song that tells you that you “can fly”, when the only flying that’s happening in the immediate future is the phone departing from hand and arriving at wall, same day.

I think muzack should be optional and I’m reasonably sure that with today’s technology, and the investment their clients make into the equipment, telephone systems manufacturer’s can provide the option to callers listen to the muzack or not. Hell, I’d even wager it was possible to provide another layer of interactivity where you could choose a station to listen to while in-phone.

Press [1] for the in-phone News channel
Press [2] for the in-phone Cantopop channel
Press [3] for the in-phone International Hits channel
Press [4] to be indoctrinated into our company’s cult through continuous jingle repetition

For Cathay Pacific, it shouldn’t be too hard to do, since they already have a similar system on-board with StudioCX. How about a PhoneCX? You can have that one for free CX. No charge.

Tags: Marketing Rants