Travel Trends - Delta, Sweden, Ad Agencies, TripIt

Planeguage from Delta - Delta and Delta.com, who have been rapidly adopting to some of the latest interactive trends since emerging from bankrupcy, (see Delta SiteSeer Challenge, Delta SiteSeer Video and Under the Wing) have just launched a series of short, animated videos titled 'Planeguage.' The videos put a humorous spin on some of the most common challenges/hassles of airline travel. You can view the first video above or, if reading via email/rss, view the video online.

Personally, I think the videos are fantastic, from the intro music to the characters to the stories, and the spots appear to be a great way to create a viral marketing campaign around the new Delta brand. Notice that the videos are already on YouTube, and in the case of the one above, have been viewed 10,000+ times. While the videos themselves are entertaining, it will be interesting to see if consumer response is 'that is creative and fun' or 'so they are telling me they have no room on there planes.' Communicating with consumers online, what a tricky endeavor.
http://blog.delta.com/

Community of Sweden - Always under the radar, those Swedes have been busy. Visit Sweden has just introduced what it is calling the 'Community of Sweden', the ' the official online community for Sweden,' where visitors can 'share and enjoy photos, travel stories tips and more from friends in Sweden and all over the world.' Think of it as it MySpace for people who love traveling to Sweden. As numerous DMOs begin to experiment in the UGC / Social Networking space, look for more of these communities to begin appearing. Hands down, the best feature of the site is the fantastic flash map / update tool on the homepage. Great execution on the map.
http://communityofsweden.com

Forrester: Web Shops Not Ready to Lead - During the recent HSMAI Internet Marketing Strategy Conference, which I attended last Monday, one of the topics brought up by the attendees was what the ad agency of the future looks like. The popular answer was that the ad agency of the future has a deeper understanding of the interactive world with a solid background of 'traditional' advertising. While several interactive / online agencies are getting closer to this ideal situation, it would appear...according to this report...that we still have a while to go.
http://www.adweek.com/

TripIt Is In Sync With You - Semantic Web here we come. Travel planning service TripIt...introduced to the blog a few months ago...has launched a new service that will automatically sync your travel plans with your calendar such as Office, iCal, Google, etc. So, no more manually entering your travel dates into the calendar, TripIt does it for you. Just as a refresher, the 'hook' of TripIt is that you can forward your confirmation email to the service, which will automatically create a complete trip itinerary for you. Convenient.
http://www.tripit.com/