More bang for the buck! Now this next item, we have to give props to Nordisk (they are still called Nordisk right? You’ll have to excuse us, we’ve been having a hard time keeping track of who has bought who lately). Some clever boffin in Nordisk’s marketing department got more advertising mileage than they surely envisaged when they first conceived of the idea to put little cardboard ULD ‘piggie banks’ with a US$1 note sticking out the top in front of each seat at all the tables at the World Cargo Symposium in March. They proved a fairly instant hit, with various degrees of shyness determining how fast people moved to pull the dollar bill and shove it in their pocket! But we reckon times are hard, so nothing wrong with defraying the cost of the trip to KL! But after a belated thought, and subsequent announcement, that the money could be donated to charity, most (we’re not telling) returned the dollars they had collected. But even more interesting was the surprise occurrence which demonstrated that IATA does indeed have a sense of humour! While up at the podium IATA’s Aleks Popovich wryly assured the audience that just in case there was any question about where the money came from, “it’s not the missing CASS money!”. WooHoo! We give Aleks a 9/10 for that one! Timing, delivery, substance…that joke had it all!
Business, business, business. Having just returned from the Air Cargo China event we thought would share with you some of the more lucrative ‘business’ undertakings that occurred in Shanghai during the event. We’re pretty sure we’ve not seen any of these young ladies at any other events which leads us to suspect that while they may indeed be from the ‘supply’ chain industry and could well be experts in the concepts of ‘capacity’, ‘utilisation’ and ‘yield’ – certainly the awareness of ‘uplift’ would be second-to-none and e-commerce is clearly a cornerstone of their business strategy – but still, we suspect they may not actually be from the air cargo industry. Sadly though, these budding young supply chain entrepreneurs probably were busier than those ‘officially’ attending the ACC event. Here at Belly Ache we’re inclined to think that perhaps it is the current downturn in the industry that was behind the lackluster event, but on the other hand, maybe people are just getting tired of these events? In the case of ACC, one thing is for sure…people were pretty d*&n tired of having things disappear – m a g a z i n e s , pens, brochures, hooks for hanging banners, plants, plane models , s p e c t a c l e s , chairs, you name it! – every time the y tu r ne d around for even a millisecond! Well, all we can say is, Intratil we missed you dearly, but thank you Brussels Airport for stepping up and filling the void that otherwise would have improved the state of our well-worn livers, but at the same time would have made the event far less bearable. Cheers!
