Air New Zealand tries out off-colour ads

Air New Zealand is using Twitter to test the waters on a series of provocative advertisements they are planning for the Grab-a-seat product.

Grab-a-seat is a website that offers heavily discounted airfares for those quick enough to snaffle the available seats up when they appear online.

The company sent out a Twitter feed today featuring visuals of six possible advertisements, with the message "tell us what you think of these".

The ads poke fun at six Air New Zealand destinations; Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Westport, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The Auckland one, for example, reads "Flying to Auckland is cheap - not many people want to go".

And the one for Wellington characterises politicians as pigs drinking from a trough.

Feedback from the public accompanies the Twitpic post.

There were those who quite liked them:

"Anything that brings a smile to my face works for me! Although some were a tad obscure, the smile was definitely there for others ..."

And some are not so impressed:

"Well done on insulting people with sweeping inaccurate generalisations about people from Auckland, Nelson, Westport & Dunedin. And I'm pretty sure you'll have upset plenty of Christians with your poor taste line for Christchurch."

* Click PHOTOS link at right to view the ads

- NZHERALD STAFF