Brands as Attention Brokers

A brand which has been hit hard during the economic downturn is British Airways, posting a £148 million loss up to the 2nd quarter of 2009. In order to soften the blow, they have decided to allow advertising to be placed on the back of some 12 million boarding passes.

Obviously, when a huge loss has just been issued, the company is going to look for alternative revenue streams in order to lessen the impact on British Airways operations. So the answer, is of course, to sell ad space. A relatively low-risk way of raising a bit more capital to inject into the business.

British Airways are being particularly selective in the brands they will allow to advertise in order to maintain as much control over the British Airways brand image as possible but I can't help but feel that the consumer is the one that is being used. After reading this story on the guardian website, it got me thinking about brands selling the attention of their customers to other brands in order to increase revenues.

In the pre-internet business model, consumers attention was bought and sold by brands and media institutions respectively. However, the consumer is no longer passive in nature, therefore making it more and more difficult to buy their attention. Through using particular elements of the British Airways customer experience as a message platform for other brands, British Airways is becoming a broker for their customer's attention. A strategy which I think is dangerous. There are so many brands competing in all marketplaces, that when a customer chooses your brand over others it is vital that your brand does all it can to satisfy that customer. If brands begin to exploit this and use the customers attention as a way of leveraging money from other brands, then it can only backfire.

The problem is the short term view on raising capital, as long as the business is running smoothly and posting profits in the short term, we'll deal with the long-term when we come to it. For the sake of raising a few quid now and selling the eyeballs of their customers, British Airways are threatening the long-term prominence of the brand.