Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

Wow, if you haven’t been following the whole iPhone leak story, you’ve really been missing out. It has everything Tom Cruise’s last good movie, Mission Impossible III, had!

Think about it. The story that’s still unfolding, even as I write this, has it all. Espionage (iPhone’s crazy security measures), romance (brand love on the part of the maniacs eating this stuff up), danger (dude might lose his job), disguises (3g disguised as 4g), and now, EXOTIC DESTINATIONS.

In one of the smoothest, smartest moves we’ve seen on the part of an airline lately, Lufthansa has now offered the guy who got drunk on German beer, and lost the precious top secret iPhone 4g prototype, Gray Powell, an all expenses paid trip to Munich. Could all this be one gigantic ad campaign? You just never know these days. Could it be an attempt to get Gray Powell out of the country where he’ll be greeted by German Apple staff and we’ll never see the guy again? Should Gray Powell avoid this offer and go into hiding? How will it all end??

We say go for it, Gray! Any one of us here at Engine Digital would be all over that stuff, even if we had to suffer a taser sting or two. Have you ever seen a Lufthansa attendant mix a cocktail at 35000 feet while en route to Deutschland? I have! (And no, I’m not a spy, I’m just bragging.) It’s pure class! Worth every bit of suffering that Gray Powell might have to endure at the hands of his handlers. Of course, I’m not serious, but even if this is some kind of rouse, it’s well worth it for all involved, as it’s paying off with some serious attention for everyone that has a role in this tech thriller.

Apple, like it or not, is getting some great publicity and hype for the upcoming release of the G4, Gray Powell is now an internet superstar, and Germany is getting some awesome PR for their beer’s ability to mess you up. And now, Lufthansa is currently enjoying their time in the limelight looking like a super slick (cocktails!) airline who has a sense of humor and some pretty serious wit in the board room, just by scoring a bit part in this blockbuster. They weren’t even originally a part of the script, but they can obviously see an opportunity when it presents itself. So now they’re wrapped up in this unfolding juggernaut at the box office of internet traffic. *at the time this article was written, their twitpic’d invite had 26 000 views

Seems easy, doesn’t it? But all great ideas seem easy when you’re not the one that thought of it. It’s what we preach to our clients all the time. Playing in this space takes some guts, some risk, but most of all, you’ve got to have the process in place to move quickly. The payoff is huge though. Airline’s are no stranger to the pitfalls of social media, they’ve been forced on more than one occasion to have a presence in spaces like Twitter. It’s obvious that they’re learning, and with the case of Lufthansa, even having some fun. Good for them. I think Apple could learn something from how Lufthansa has handled this whole affair. (Unless of course this is an ad campaign on the part of Apple, which, if that’s the case, they’re amazing. Not likely, though. Apple is quickly garnering the reputation they used to want to smash with hammer back in the eighties.)

Anyway, I’m already hearing whispers of sequel. If Tom Cruise could just find his inner “eye of the tiger,” and get back on his game, he could easily take a seat on a plane to Munich, where I’ll likely be somewhere in an aisle seat having a Gin and Tonic for having written this amazing piece of journalism.

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