Yes, I said it: branding!

The benefits of crowdsourcing, and its effectiveness for problem solving, are well-known. The power of the social web is being harnessed by airlines more than ever (in fact, a cargo-carrier has recently got into the game as well). Crowdsourcing initiatives are now being used not  just to engage customers but also to find ways to improve their product and services, as well as at the same time building their brands. Hence, “crowdbranding”.

With today’s Top 10 case-pack we would like to highlight some of the best examples of airline crowdsourcing. At the same time, we also invite our readers to have a look beyond the surface and into the deeper strategic goals that drive each of these strategies. In some cases it will be clear that the end game was indeed solving a problem or finding an innovative way of addressing existing issues, but in others it will also be clear that the stated goal of the crowdsourcing campaign wasn’t the only goal.

Most of the airline examples included in this Top 10 used crowdsourcing to solve problems related to visible parts of their product such as in-flight meals or routes, and did so in …

In our latest top 10 case-pack we talked about the importance of social-media-based customer-service and how both bad and good experiences can be amplified and spread at incredible speed on it. We also mentioned that according to recent research, 25% of social media users expect a response within an hour and 6% expect something within 10 minutes!

For today’s post we’re looking at customer-service from a different angle and submitting to you the thesis that airlines having in-flight WiFi could possibly harness the power of social customer-service in radically new ways. For example,  some customers might post something on your Facebook page while in the flight, and expect you to do something before the plane lands.

But what if they ask you to do something you never expected? (Something good, of course!) Read on to see what a delighted customer wrote:

“If someone in the Southwest Airlines corporate HQ can see this – I’m on flight 913 currently en route to Phoenix and I want yall to know that our flight attendant Holly is perhaps one of the most remarkably kind and helpful people my girlfriend and I have ever met. If you can meet us at the gate with something …

What a year this is turning out to be for Qantas! In June, the Chilean ashcloud crisis affected many of their flights for an extended period. For their stellar efforts in responding to the crisis, especially on social media, they were even one of the Top Nominees in the category for Customer Service (check out the case-study here) for this year’s SimpliFlying Awards for Social Media Excellence. Then almost out of the blue, disaster (at least for passengers and from a PR perspective) struck when, on October 29, following instructions from CEO Alan Joyce, Qantas announced that it was grounding all flights indefinitely, with employees not required to report to work.

Another crisis presents itself
Quite understandably, almost immediately, the interwebs exploded. While passengers vented their dismay and fury, it’s notable that even most employees were taken unawares that led to an initially wary and “slow” response from Qantas as customer inquiries flooded the official Twitter account. Tweets talking about and mentioning Qantas shot up. Very soon, “Qantas” and “Alan Joyce” were trending Worldwide, indicating tweets containing these keywords in excess of 1000 per minute. While the initial response from Qantas was decried as being too “mechanical and impersonal”, Virgin seized …

What a fabulous journey it has been! To say that the 2nd SimpliFlying Annual Awards for Excellence in Social Media were a success, would perhaps be an understatement. Right from sowing the seeds online to reaping the rewards offline in Amsterdam on October 10, this year’s SimpliFlying Awards journey has been exhilarating and extremely rewarding.

Behind the Scenes
In more than a year of being with SimpliFlying in various capacities, helping get the Awards machine up and running has been by far the grandest enterprise I’ve been involved with. The first and most immediate challenge that faced us was to ensure that we received a fairy representative roster of nominations. In this we succeeded most handsomely, getting almost 70 nominations over 4 categories.

Then came the greater challenge: actually getting votes for the top nominees. In this endeavour, we pursued three diverse methods: first, we constantly promoted #SMAwards on the SimpliFlying Twitter channel that has close to 8,000 followers. By means of numerous retweets and mentions on Twitter, we reached a wide audience. Second, we used our SlideShare channel to promote the top nominees in each category by producing 4 …

It gives me great pleasure to share with you that SimpliFlying has been awarded the Gold medal in the 2011 Magellan Awards in the Online Travel Services |Blog category! These annual awards are organized by Travel Weekly, the travel industry’s most influential national trade publication.

This is our third major award in our 2.5 years of existence – we were among the Top 2 aviation blogs on the FlightGlobal Webbies in 2010 and won the Global Brand Leadership Award in 2009.

The numbers speak for themselves
In August 2011, we hit a record-breaking 75,000 unique visitors mark. While it may not sound like a lot compared to mainstream sites like Mashable, given our niche focus on aviation marketing, we think it’s worthy of a mention. Our Youtube channel now has over 800,000 views, presentations on Slideshare have been viewed over 150,000 times and we’re breaching the 8000 mark for our Twitter followers. So SimpliFlying has been Simply Flying of late
Why winning the Gold in Magellan Awards is a BIG deal…
The …

After receiving over 30,000 votes in just two weeks from airline, airport and hotel fans all over the world, we announced the finalists for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards in Social Media Excellence, to be held at the EyeforTravel Online Marketing and Social Media Summit on Oct 10 in Amsterdam.

Now, we are announcing a panel of distinguished judges who will preside over the 10 minute presentations by each of the finalist hotel, airline and airport. These judges will take a decision on the winner after viewing the presentations Live in front of the full conference audience!
Raymond Kollau – Airlinetrends.com

Raymond Kollau is founder of an independent industry and consumer trends research agency airlinetrends.com. Airlinetrends.com monitors the global aviation industry for commercial innovations in response to changing consumer behavior. Having been part of leading consumer trend firm trendwatching.com since its inception, Raymond founded airlinetrends.com to focus on trends and innovations in the global airline industry.

Raymond holds a Master degree in Business from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands and also studied International Relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. His …

SimpliFlying is back with the  Monthly Twitter Report for airlines (in partnership with Eezeer) for August 2011 in continuation with our coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines.
After close to 6 months of reporting monthly on how airlines are using Twitter, we can safely say that apart from Facebook, Twitter is the social media platform of choice for most airlines. The number of tweets sent and received has been rising in general for months in a row. Airlines have also become more forthcoming as well as responsive.
This month, while the usual suspects (Delta and JetBlue) are once again on the list of top engagers, Cebu Pacific absolutely storms into the list. Not only is it placed second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets, it also scores the highest in the Global Satisfaction Score with a score of 106.7. (For more details, see the infographic.)
A number of facts are immediately clear from this report:

As we’ve mentioned, Cebu Pacific is second on the list of airlines receiving the most number of public tweets with more than 11,000 to its name. However, Delta Air Lines is once …

Are you an aviation geek who will be in the Seattle area this weekend? Then join me and the SimpliFlying team, David Parker Brown from AirlineReporter.com, the kind folks at e Future of Flight and LOTS of AvGeeeks who would be in town for the Airline Interiors Expo and APEX 2011, for a happening tweetup! It’s at 2pm, on 9/11/2011 (this Sunday) and attendance is FREE!

Just think of all the drinks flowing in a sea of avgeek conversation! It’ll be one seriously amazing time – all the time!  The best part of all? The super hot airline flying out of Seattle, Virgin America, is giving away free Round Trip tickets to one of the attendees, in addition to other goodies like t-shirts and sunglasses. How hot is that?

Hope to see you in Seattle! Use the Twitter Hashtag #SEAvgeek to spread the word!

Let the voting begin!
After 10 days and 69 nominations (!!) for the best airlines, airports and hotels in social media, the SimpliFlying team and Hotel Marketing Strategies blog has shortlisted the top five finalists for each category for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards in Social Media Excellence. The “Best Airline in Social Media” had so many high-quality submissions that we just couldn’t bring it down to five.

Anyone on the web is free to vote once in each category and give their favorite airline a shot at glory! Airlines, airports and hotels are free to request for votes through their social media sites, by emailing their frequent fliers and staff or through any other means.

One representative from the Top 3 most voted in each category will also get a free pass to attend the EyeforTravel Online Marketing and Social Media Summit on Oct 10 in Amsterdam, and a 20% discount for their colleagues.
The process

The voting begins immediately, and polls auto-close on 15 Sept, 2011
The top 3 voted in each category will get to make a 10 min presentation …

Oh, what a month it has been for SimpliFlying! We’ve been breaking our own records over and over again this month and it’s all thanks to your continuous support!

Some key statistics we achieved this month:

We crossed 5000 hits in a day, on 29 Aug 2011! That’s 5000 unique visitors in 24 hours. It’s the highest till date, in the last 3 years SimpliFlying.com has existed. Thank you!
Our Slideshare channel crossed 100,000 views earlier this month, where we upload our presentations from conferences, as well as Top 10 case study decks. One of our decks, on Top 10 Facebook Contests by Airlines, has just crossed 10,000 views too. Thank you! (and special thanks to Shubhodeep Pal for this one!)
On our YouTube Channel, we are approaching 800,000 views on our videos, with one of our videos on the Boeing 787, getting almost half a million views. Thank you!

Here are some screenshots of the key statistics we have just shared. Thank you once again!

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