JFK is Charged!

So I've got plenty of time in the airport today - matter of fact, for the last 24 hours, I've had a lot of time in the airport(s). Here's a quick recap;

Fly out of Logan this morning at 6. Land at 710am. Rent the car and plan on spending the night in Manhattan after a visit to East Rutherford and the World Champion NY Giants. Plans for going to NFL HQ for a visit to the NFL officials for a little training. Get a call from the NFL Officials guy saying that he won't be available tomorrow and I decide I can wait to hang out in Manhattan.

So - I got the last jetBlue flight out of JFK for O'Hare, and I'm outta here. I've got 4 hours to spend at the gate, waiting for the plane to leave at 830pm... and I'm sitting in front of a little tower with some USB plugs and power outlets.

This power tower - or as Samsung likes to call it - Charge Station - is basically a fancy extension cord and power strip. But its sponsored by Samsung and this glowing tower with some plugs has gotten more looks than the pseudo-hooker that walked by after she just landed from Tampa.

This is a brilliant marketing tool. Use a simple technology (power), fancy it up with some glowing blue lights and a huge Samsung logo, and you've got yourself about 300 views an hour. There are 4 of these charge stations in this gate area at JFK, which probably cost them all of about $20k for designing and building the things. If they spent $20k in television advertising, they could maybe get a 30second spot on a 6PM SportSCenter, which would probably have been lost in the shuffle anyways.

I hope whoever came up with the idea for these things got a promotion or a raise or something, because its a pretty freakin good idea to get a cheap way to relate your brand to being mobile, and being powerful. Good work.