One of the rotating ads on the NYTimes home page today is promoting Air France deals to Europe using an @ sign. 

When I first noticed the AirFrance placement on the front page of the Times I thought, “Wow, I’m going to blog this Air France ad as being progressive on two fronts.”  

1. AirFrance is using its Twitter account in advertising to promote deals to Europe.  As airlines like @UnitedAirlines and @JetBlue use Twitter to promote special deals not available anywhere else, it was natural assume @AirFrance.us was tagging along with this marketing strategy.

2. The use of the @ symbol (saying Twitter without having to waste txt) for the advertising impression was more impactful for memory, even if the user doesn’t click through the ad.  

So my first conclusion was, great, triple bang for the buck.   A promotion of both Air France’s website and Twitter address with a shorthand announcement of special deals Twitter-only deals to Europe.  

Second conclusion, hmmm. 

A note to AirFrance marketing staff:  @airfrance.us is much more likely to mean http://twitter.com/airfrance.us than http://www.airfrance.us.  The problem is this address does not exist on Twitter.  In fact, it cannot exist because there are no “dots” permitted in Twitter account names.  AirFrance does appear to be using @airfranceus  to tweet.   Just for curiousity’s sake, I registered @airfranceusa, which was available.  

As businesses begin to use Twitter addresses in advertising, which I think does convey more value to a given ad, there’s going to be a few things for both Twitter and companies to consider - matching domains, trademarks, multiple addressing.

The benefits are two complimentary addresses - one for the “now internet” (special deals) and one for the traditional internet (booking flights, checking times).