Comments on: Joe Crump of Razorfish predicts doom for airlines that don’t build digital brands

By: » Shashank Nigam awarded the Global Brand Leadership Award at World Brand Congress for airline branding - SimpliFlying || Aviation :: Branding :: Technology || Airline marketing, airline brand management, social media, Web 2.0

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:46:49 +0000

[...] sought inspiration from a LOT of folks in the past year. Thank you very much for being there, Joe Crump of Razorfish, Allen Adamson of Landor, Lisa Markovic and Manish Dureja of Jet Airways, Sunderaj of [...]

By: Tom Scrabala

Tom Scrabala — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:16:14 +0000

There are no “thought leaders” in airline branding. A good website does not make for a positive brand experience.

By: Southwest Airlines - Creating a Brand Experience in 5 Minutes « PR Meets Marketing « Dr. Scott’s Cool Marketing and Business Blog

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:06:25 +0000

[...] Joe Crump of Razorfish predicts doom for airlines that don’t build digital brands (simpliflying.com) [...]

By: Mohammed Thiab

Mohammed Thiab — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:01:50 +0000

Contrary to the IT business, airlines and aviation is a very mature industry, driven clearly by business needs and not by technology bells and whistles. In airlines industry, the stakes are high and this has more than just financial implications when/if things go dramatically wrong. Airlines is mission-critical and also also time-sensitive. Safety and high reputation/image are also critical to the success or failure of an airlines company.

Simply put, success criteria of an airlines can be extracted from the main mission which could be “To fly people and goods from point A to point B SAFELY and ON-SCHEDULE while maintaining a reasonable level of COMFORT and CARE to the passegers.

Other than that would be cosmetics including food variety, on-board entertainment, charming stewardesses, color of their dresses, digital logos, … etc.

Mentioning digital logos. They can be useful as a branding tool, but after ensuring all other critical success factors are satisfactorily addressed and met.

My 0.02 thoughts on this topic

By: Jonathan Paisner

Jonathan Paisner — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:14:56 +0000

if “going digital” means giving consumers a reason to positively interact with your brand online, absolutely. Airlines must create opportunities for two-way communication with their consumers – and not just by using a website to sell them stuff but to offer content and insights that consumers care about. If they don’t they will further commoditize their offering by becoming merely a logo next to the cheapest price that can be found on orbitz. jetblue offers a solid purchase experience – plus a relatively easy to use and understand frequent flier program that rewards direct online purchase. their strong digital presence drives consumers to interact directly with the brand, rather than rely on third parties and aggregators.
jpaisner@ hotmail.com

By: Marie-José Jamin

Marie-José Jamin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:10:30 +0000

Joe should consider some external factors that have hit the aviation industry the past year, like David points out.
On the other hand it is kind of weird to state that brands have to go digital as late as 2009.
Becoming digital is easy. Just ask some neighbourhood kids to design a website, or hire one of the many, many companies that do this professionally. But being digital is much, much more than that first step.
Without a solid strategy how to make this complex, fast changing digital environment work for your brand, how to adept your company to this situation (response time, crises, marketing tools, sales tools, reporting tools, customer criticism, ideas, product development, management) can result in over promising, overspending en uncontrollable mess many companies are dealing with right now and of which even airlines think that this is too much.

By: David Taylor

David Taylor — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:07:03 +0000

Is Joe suggesting that the Internet will be crucial to the future success of airline brands? (Or any others?) I’m shocked! On one hand he says that what you say about the brand is least important, yet on the other accuses the airlines of over-promising. Airlines have been hammered by 9/11, out of control fuel costs, and now a major recession. This is what’s eating away at their brands.

By: Spyro Poulos

Spyro Poulos — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:42:52 +0000

But I mean isn’t that the case with any brand – in fact I still can’t believe how long it took even media based brands like newspapers and magazines to go digital – it’s one of the reasons print is in trouble because we all didn’t take digital expansion of our brands seriously back in ‘95.

By: Ron Verweij

Ron Verweij — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:36:21 +0000

Fully Agree. I have been talking to a friend of mine who owns a marketing platform used by 2 airlines and he have showed me some insights. With pressure on costs their e-commerce / digital branding will be giving Airlines a healthy profit. My fear though is that Airlines forget about their core business since the e-commerce part of Airlines is somehow deattached from ground services / inflight services. The challenge is not to loose focus and integrate mobile commerce with the mobile boarding pass as primary driver. Why the mobile baording pass? Well with adding this the mobile channel is added to the online services and enables Airlines to build a one-on-one relation from packing to arrival.

Regards,
Ron Verweij

By: Bradut Florescu

Bradut Florescu — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:31:13 +0000

Yes, that is right. Needless to say that there are so many airlines that start up with an on line structured brand identity.