SAS Training - Blinkered Vision?

I recently received a mailing from SAS regarding their training courses.  For some reason the promotion they are leading with offers ski goggles as an incentive to sign up:

This appears to be quite a convoluted way of shoe-horning the offer and the proposition 'See your course more clearly' together.

The assumption is either they came up with something along the lines of 'See more clearly' then racked their brains to try and find a prodcut to match or someone turned up at their HQ in Marlow with a lorry load of ski goggles going cheap.

Either way ski goggles have nothing to do with data analysis or statistics and it's odd to use an item which has niche appeal.  Although companies using M&S vouchers or iTunes cards aren't exactly original, they know that they are almost as good as cash.

Also, offering the alternative of a £15 donation to the Prince's Trust means you are left with the perception that this is the value of the goggles when in fact they retail at £30 so they have undermined their proposition immediately.

For something like SAS training they would be better off either using something with broader appeal or pushing an 'early bird' discount for those booking within 2 weeks of receiving the brochure. 

An inventive creative can work wonders but can also fall flat on its face so you always need to ask "Is this really adding anything?".

Dan Barnett


Director of Analytics

blog@analysismarketing.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danjbarnett