Beer Lover's Airport Guide
I was recently 'marketed' (read: spammed) by a marketing agent from Cheapflights.com. The email was individually adressed and contained the marketing contact's full information, as well as an attached PDF document. Ignoring every piece of internet security advice I've ever received, I hastily opened the attachment.
That document, an eight-page guide to craft beer in major airports, marked the first time I've ever been pleased with an item of spam. Not without its technical flaws (nor modesty in branding Cheapflights), the document is right up our alley of what we aim to do on this site: promote craft beer.
The Beer Lover's Airport Guide offers up craft beer bar advice for travelers passing through airports in 20 major US cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, L.A., Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Portland, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and Washington.
Bad Business Decisions
Just to make this clear, I don't receive a penny from Cheapflights for posting this content. I actually found this guide rather helpful (and appropriately aimed), thus a worthwhile share. Interesting, great beer and cheap flights seem an unlikely duo. I certainly questioned the marketing strategy of the company to tailor to such a niche market- never mind this site.
I respect the effort, and wish I had this guide with me during last summer's flights to Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Chicago. The ultimate irony in my free advertising efforts is that I recently turned down my first paid offer from a different company for sponsored content.
They wanted to pay me to put up a link to their site, embedded in a blog post - a one time fee for advertising disguised as real content. While I initially debated the idea of a sponsored blog post, I reconciled to disclose that the potential post was an advertisement- and even had the leeway to craft the post to my desire. At the final hour, however, we couldn't come to terms on a seemingly minor detail (rel="no follow" for any geeks out there). Now I find myself back where I was - no extra cash in hand, promoting stuff for free. Hell of a business plan, no?
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Reader Comments (3)
It's a measure of how often I have to travel that I've enjoyed many of these airport beer pubs! This doc is getting saved to my phone so I can plan to enjoy my layovers. Nothing worse than settling for some hole in the wall and later waltzing right past an inviting brew pub! Thanks for enduring the moral quandary and sharing.
Anchor Brewing also has a pub in SFO, not sure which terminal it is, but United has a lot of gates there. Had a Christmas Ale (OSA) there in December. They had several others on tap.
Gordon Biersch can also be found at Dulles (I think in the C or D terminal).
Well at least you have people offering you paid advertising dollars. That's always a good sign that your blog is going places. Keep dishing out the free advertising and soon you will have enough traffic from the search engines to get paid big money.