“Airport marketing is waking up to the immense opportunities in today’s age of ‘connected travellers’. These travellers, ever more hungry for new experiences, like to carry their living room with them as they travel – a smartphone, an iPad, a laptop.”
In fact, it seems carrying their living room with them is just a small step for today’s connected travellers. In fact, one man has recently made history by advertising and paying for a promoted tweet to complain against British Airways on Twitter.
Our in-house experts promptly got in touch with Hasan Syed and put together an analysis, as well as 5 tips airlines should know about social media customer service.
This immensely popular blog post titled ‘Disgruntled Passenger 2.0‘ went on to be picked up by numerous international media including BBC (UK), Daily Mail (UK), The Telegraph (UK), Business Standard (India) and News.com (Australia) to name just a few.
Please enjoy the following articles where SimpliFlying’s Aviation Marketing Insights have been featured this month.
AIRPORT MARKETING
AIRPORT MARKETING EXCHANGE – THINKING DIFFERENTLY
Airport World Magazine | September Issue
A new regular column by SimpliFlying, the Airport Marketing Exchange, will elucidate key issues and address how airports can plan their marketing and communications strategy to affect and measure results. David McMullen and Shubhodeep Pal discuss marketing innovation in the age of the connected traveller… Read more
AIRLINE MARKETING
Asiana Airlines under federal investigation for post-crash handling of victims, families
San Jose Mercury News | 25 September 2013
“Unfortunately, Asiana Airlines, with the world’s eyes set on it, was slow to respond and was far from satisfying the insatiable need for more information in the hours after the crash, ” SimpliFlying, an airline consulting firm, wrote in an analysis… Read more
How to overcome challenges by the digital traveller: Part 2
Blue Sky Blog | 26 September 2013
Henry Harteveldt and Shashank Nigam took on the roundtable to address challenges from the digital traveller and how to overcome them.
Beginning with Shashank mentioning Simpliflying’s Asiana Airlines crash case study, we kicked off the discussion with crisis management and social media. We used to have a golden hour to respond to situations, now we’re lucky to have a golden minute. In the case of Asiana Airlines, there was a golden 20 seconds before a picture of the crash appeared on Twitter from a Google employee about to catch their flight… Read more
SIA puts premium on India
Business Standard | 23 September 2013
On SIA’s radar will be the premium market in the domestic skies, that has very few players right now, and strong imminent competition from the Jet-Etihad partnership. Shashank Nigam, CEO of SimpliFlying, a Singapore-based aviation brand strategy firm, says, “The SIA and Tata Group venture comes with deep pockets ($100 million for now), and certainly has the potential to make it big in the under-served premium end of the market. We’ll see two major groups fighting for the high-yielding customers, as the likes of Air India have lost ground in that market, and Kingfisher has not flown for a year. While most aviation players lost money, the market is ripe for innovation in premium services.” … Read more
Coping with Tragedy
Airline Business Magazine | September Issue
The recent crash of an Asiana Boeing 777 in San Francisco provides a number of lessons in social media crisis management for airline marketing departments. Journalists often look at social media when a story breaks, rather than wait for an airline press release… Read more
Promoted tweet used to complain about British Airways
BBC | 3 September 2013
The idea that the ad platform of large corporations can be hijacked by members of the public is an interesting trend, thinks Shashank Nigam, chief executive of aviation consultancy SimpliFlying.
“The implications are tremendous for the future of airline customer service, especially on social media,” he said in his blog… Read more
BA customer pays for a promoted tweet to criticise airline for losing his luggage and slow response to his complaint
Daily Mail | 3 September 2013
… the tweet had already been read by thousands of viewers, according to aviation marketing consultants SimpliFlying, and within six hours had gained more than 25,000 impressions on Twitter – not including its coverage on popular blogs such as Mashable, which first reported the story… Read more
Similar feature is also found in The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, AdLand and Computer Weekly.
Angry customer uses promoted tweet against British Airways
Business Standard | 3 September 2013
According to Shashank Nigam, chief executive of aviation consultancy SimpliFlying, “These tools are easy to use and brand detractors have the same access to them as corporations. I’d guess that this cost less than a thousand dollars to buy and Mr Syed targeted it smartly.” … Read more
Disgruntled British Airways Passenger Airs Out Grievance Through Promoted Tweet
Brandchannel | 3 September 2013
“The idea that the ad platform of large corporations can be hijacked by members of the public is an interesting trend,” notes Shashank Nigam, CEO SimpliFlying. “The implications are tremendous for the future of airline customer service, especially on social media.”… Read more
Similar feature is also found in Euronews and Liputan6
Passenger Hasan Syed’s paid tweet gets results on Twitter with British Airways
News.com.au | 4 September 2013
SimpliFlying listed five ways that British Airways could better deal with Mr Syed’s complaint, including having a standard operating procedure for such incidents, give staff a list of frequently asked questions and have a crisis communications plan… Read more
Airlines increase their staff, time and money in social networks
Hosteltur | 13 September 2013
SimpliFlying Airline Social Media Outlook 2012/ 2013 identifies three key objectives pursued by airlines in their social network activities are: create empathy or commitment to the brand (100%), customer service (86.2%) and sales/ revenue (72.4%). Airlines are therefore increasingly are investing more effort, more money, more human resources and working more hours… Read more
If you would like to interview SimpliFlying or involve us in your next article, please feel free to contact us at media@simpliflying.com