If the smart folks at AAdvantage had run this campaign a week earlier, they’d have surely made it to the Top 10 Facebook Contests by Airlines, which we put out last week. Because the results they’ve achieved in just three days seem phenomenal!

The most successful Facebook contest by an airline, till date?

The loyalty group at American Airlines, AAdvantage, set up the Facebook fanpage on Feb 1. And in the first couple of weeks, they managed to garner 2000+ fans, organically. Then they decided to launch the Mystery Miles campaign to drive membership, and the numbers hit through the roof.

In 24 hours, they went from 2,558 fans to 163,000 and had reached a staggering 210,000 fans at the time of this post, just 54 hours after the campaign was launched. Moreover, the interactions and engagements on the fanpage increased dramatically too, from just 41 likes for one of the initial posts, to over 1,200 likes for one just sent out!

They sure achieved their aim of “increasing their fans”!

“The opportunities to reward our customers through these new dedicated social media channels are endless and we’re delighted to find fresh and innovative ways to connect with our loyal members,” said Maya Leibman, President – AAdvantage Loyalty Program. “Just the click of a mouse lets our members earn miles towards their next getaway or dream vacation. Everyone’s a winner – and what’s not to ‘like’ about that?”

Having studied the industry in-depth in this area, we haven’t come across such a successful, planned campaign by an airline loyalty program yet.

Is airline loyalty the holy grail for airline engagement?

Given the success of this campaign, and having spent the last two days speaking at and interacting with airline loyalty professionals at Loyalty2011 in Dallas, it makes me wonder – is loyalty the area where social media will work best for airlines? The answer is probably yes.

Frequent flyers are already part of traditional airline “communities” – the FFP program databases. They already know the brand. And when airlines engage them using a medium they’re familiar with, the FFP members adopt quickly. This has been the case with jetBlue’s TrueBlue Community, KLM’s Bluenity and now AAdvantage’s facebook fanpage.

For airlines, they’re also able to drive better results through people they know who fly them, rather than trying to distinguish between “ranters” and “real-customers” on Twitter/Facebook. And that’s what makes this combination very promising – loyalty + social media.

What next for AAdvantage Facebook Fanpage?

I’m sure the team managing this campaign at American Airlines did not envision such a tremendous response to their efforts. But now that they’re on course to reach half a million fans in a week or so, what do they do? How do they manage this? Here are some questions that need to be answered:

1. How to distinguish between the one-time “likers” and the “real-fans”?
2. How to set the right expectations for future campaigns, given the first campaign was so generous?
3. How to start driving business from these fans – how many offers is too many?
4. How to scale up the team internally and use the right tools to manage this?

I think this is going to be interesting. I’ll be watching keenly! What do you think? Let’s hear it in the comments and on Twitter (@simpliFlying)

Great job, AA!

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I feel rating Hainan as Five Star was the final nail in the coffin for Skytrax. Here are three reasons why I believe Skytrax is dead:

1. Irrelevant – If I’m a Kobe Bryant, then the only Business Class seat that’s Five Star for me is Oman Air’s – not Asiana or any other 5-star-classified airline. Because I can fit in there. Moreover, service and products differ dramatically for airlines on different routes and sectors. Hence, airlines ratings need to be relevant – which Skytrax is not.
2. Not real-time- Annual ratings are no longer desirable as airline service levels can dramatically change over a much smaller period of time. Look at how Garuda Indonesia dramatically improved service in the last month. Moreover, passengers are now used to rating in real-time and also consume real-time data, which Skytrax doesn’t seem to support
3. Not peer-reviewed- In the same vain as real-time, passengers are used to reading peer-reviews to determine which airline to fly, not annual “star ratings”. In fact, recently, the UK government announced that they’re withdrawing support for hotel star ratings, because consumers prefer peer-reviewed ratings.

What does the Twitterati think about Skytrax?

Again, these are just my own opinions. To verify them, I conducted a poll on Twitter, and here are some reactions from those who took part, along with the chart summarizing the poll results.

As you can see from the results of the poll, 81% of the respondents believed that Skytrax ratings are highly irrelevant. I guess that sends a clear signal to airline managers obsessed with achieving an additional Star on the Skytrax ratings to look elsewhere.

What is the future of airline ratings?

Now that the writing on the wall for Skytrax is quite clear, we should think about the future. For starters, there are alternates like Eezeer’s NOW ratings for airlines, TripAdvisor’s airline reviews and even Zagat ratings, which are much more real-time and relevant than Skytrax. A recent USA today article also evaluated a variety of airline ratings.

So now that travelers have a lot of alternates to Skytrax, airlines looking to adhere to the next wave of airline ratings need to consider a few facts. And here are 10 of those.

1.     Each flier is different in what he/she wants in a “perfect” airline. It depends on various factors which themselves vary between various (yes, another various) airlines. Hence, the difficulty of quantifying what makes an airline good. It’s purely subjective.

2.     Business travelers often prefer extra space (think laptops, business suits, comfort) along with lounge access, free pickups – and they will rate the airline differently than leisure travelers. In fact, each micro-segment will have it’s own way of assessing the quality of the airline -from backpackers, to gramdmoms. Airlines need focused differentiation. Don’t try to be everything to everyone!

3.    Presence of multiple surveys is more confusing than enlightening. Doesn’t really help since the traveller looking for advice due to their different results and interpretations of what is “best”. And airlines need to help simplify this process.

4.     Comparisons in surveys are often not done in a uniform manner. LCCs cannot be included in the same class as legacy carriers (Zagat Survey) since they serve different purposes and will have different offerings.

5.   Consumers can often see through the PR spin by airlines about rankings. Proclaiming a winner might be the result of a magazine/survey’s prejudices. So, be truthful, and don’t try to cover up your misgivings.

6.    While ratings matter, price is still a key factor for deciding which airline to fly on – followed by schedule and convenience. Hence, sort out the basics of what value you’re offering to the customers, before dedicating resources to managing ratings.

7. Airlines should ultimately have route managers being held responsible for ratings of their specific route, over time and versus competition on that route. And that’s when the overall impact will be felt.

Eventually, not only is it difficult to identify the “best” airline, I think the question is pointless until a standardised method of measurement is undertaken. Otherwise, we might as well say oranges are better than apples (which might be true depending on the person.) The counterpoint of course is that some airlines are indeed oranges while others are apples. So can airlines be truly compared since they all tend to offer value through differentiation and will tend to do better than other airlines on some counts and worse on some other counts.

Until we can truly quantify such problems and even them out, the question of best is useless. We should stick to systems that compare airlines across a list of measures and let the traveler decide which airline to fly depending on how *he* views the relative importance of those measures.

And the reality is that Skytrax is a 90s technology that faces sunset this year – and unless they re-invent themselves to incorporate real-time peer-reviews, be transparent about their rating system and use social media to engage with customers – they’re doomed.

What do you think? Let’s discuss on Twitter and in comments.

P.S: Special thanks to Shubhodeep Pal for help with this article

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Spanair delights holiday travelers

Just around when thousands were stranded at London’s Heathrow Airport and missing Christmas gatherings, Spanair had delightful surprise in store for their customers.

On Dec 24, Spanair’s flight from Barcelon to Las Palmas arrived close to midnight. And when the passengers reached the baggage belt upon landing, they were surprised to see that instead of their luggage, out came beautifully wrapped Christmas gifts, each specially packed for each passenger and tagged individually too. Now, wouldn’t you be delighted if this happened to you? Just see the reaction of the passengers in the video below, and you’ll see what I mean.

KLM Suprises digital travelers

By now, you must have heard of the KLM Surprises campaign. Here’s how it worked: KLM started delighting digital customers at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam before they boarded their flight.

After travelers announced their presence  on Foursquare or Twitter, KLM staff contacted online them to learn of their departure gate and time (1st surprise). Then, after doing some online research about the person, they got a very small gift for the passenger (2nd surprise). A NYC city guide with sports bars highlighted, for a soccer fan. A glass of champagne for someone who had his 18th birthday on that day.

And the campaign worked wonders – receiving accolades from experts around the world, getting a ton of press mentions and of course, social sharing love from the travelers themselves . See the video below and you’ll see what I mean

Surprises as airline brand strategy?

Just last week, as I enthusiastically shared the KLM and Spanair adventures with a senior airline executive in Miami, he asked me a question about the applicability of such ideas to overall brand strategy. And I thought that was a very good question, which I should address here.

Think about scalability…

To create a memorable brand experience, airlines need to go above and beyond what’s expected. And a surprise delivers the punch. Remember the rapping flight attendant at Southwest Airlines? Or the dancing flight attendants on Cebu Pacific? Those were all surprises that the passengers didn’t expect – but are they scalable? Can they be repeated again and again? Consistently across the network? Scalability is the key to using “surprises” as a brand strategy for airlines.

Start small and make sense of the data…

These days, airlines have a data overload – they know a lot about their customers, though all data may not be at one place. The key is then to start small and try something fresh. And see whether it works. Measure and monitor the response. If passengers liked it, then try it again.

I’ll give you an example. If I’m sitting in the boarding lounge before my next flight, and I tweet that I feel like an orange juice, imagine my delight if I actually get an orange juice upon boarding? Or if I’ve been inconvenienced on an earlier flight, what if I get a business class meal during the next leg of my flight? Airlines already have this data, and someone just needs to make sense of it.

But then of course, there’s the concern that if they do it too often, people come to expect it, and when it’s not delivered, the effect is reversed.

So, what do you think about airlines surprising passengers? Is it a sustainable strategy, or just a gimmick? I’d love to hear your thoughts, over in the comments or on Twitter (@simpliflying)

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Your in-flight content solution

CloudStream is a tool that creates a “digital carry-on” for travelers to pack with their chosen content (i.e. articles they’ve been meaning to read) as well as content they’ve discovered from our curated set of feeds. It is essentially the first digital media platform that takes advantage of travelers’ time in air.

The tool allows you to browse through a number of content categories, which include travel, health, sports or technology and choose from a variety of mediums, like blogs or podcasts. Once you’ve complied and downloaded your content, you can save it to your pen drive, or even share it with friends.

Keep Discovering, and share content with friends

What I personally like about CloudStream is the ability to discover new content, in the “Featured Carry-on” section, where SimpliFlying is showcased as well. This is where Lufthansa’s team selects leading online content sources. I believe this would keep an element of surprise going, and keep people coming back.

I also like that while the service is created by Lufthansa for its customers, anyone can use it on any airline, as long as they have access to wifi anytime before their flight. This reflects well on Lufthansa’s social media strategy to add value first, then seek favors. Just like it did with MySkyStatus.

Lufthansa treads its own path on social media

One of the key reasons Lufthansa won the SimpliFlying Award for the Best Social Media Engagement campaign, for MySkyStatus, was because it was truly value adding. There was no direct selling of tickets and no hard-sell of joining any contests.

Under the leadership of Dr Torsten Wingenter, Lufthansa has been busy lately, creating a slew of social media initiatives, which simply add value to travelers. Evidence is clearly visible from initiatives in the last few months, including the Stephen Fry-endorsed Virtual Pilot game and the Munich Oktoberfest Foursquare promotion, where over 2300 badges were unlocked.

I believe this is a distinctive social media strategy, which is creating a unique brand positioning for Lufthansa when it comes to interacting with travelers using tools they are already familiar with. I will be keenly observing what’s next for Lufthansa, and we’ll be sure to talk about it here too.

For now, it will be interesting to see how people using wifi on Virgin America and other airlines adapt to the CloudStream service. I’ll be sure to give it a shot on my next flight. Would you?

• [Slides] Social Media Strategy for Lufthansa – how a legacy airline built a strong customer engagement model
• For bringing us MySkyStatus and Cloudstream, the SimpliFlying Hero for July 2011 is Lufthansa’s Alison Russo
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Last week, I flew Singapore-KL on Firefly (first time on an ATR) and just before landing 3-4 passengers were given the iPods, enclosed in a plastic case, with a note from the MD of the airline, asking for feedback. I guess I looked keen, hence was handed one of those devices.

I went on to answer about twenty questions, on the iPhone app, and didn’t feel the pinch because we were landing soon an I had nothing to do anyway!

I felt this was a simple, yet effective way to solicit feedback. What do you think?

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Here are nine airlines doing it right. Quite inspiring actually!

View more presentations from SimpliFlying.

So, what do you think about these airlines’ efforts? Serious social business, or hot air? Do you know other examples? Let’s discuss in comments, and over on Twitter

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A fantastic way of involving the customer in the brand – what I call brand co-creation, which is now possible thanks to social media. I’m up for some home-made dessert – are you?

I still stand by my belief that Cathay Pacific is way ahead on social media, when compared to most other legacy airlines. What do you think? Anyone with a sweet tooth thinks this is a good idea? Let’s hear it in Comments or over on Twitter

P.S: Special thanks to Dennis from CX to drop me a line on this!

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Too often, airlines get sucked into just asking more and more from their fans, without stopping to give back. And what better timing, than the Thanksgiving period (it’s the Canadian one today, US one in a couple of weeks).

I’m sure this will drive engagement not just one the social media front for Lufthansa, but also spur activity on the Miles and More program, and not just for the winners.

Bloody brilliant!

So, what do you think about Lufthansa’s effort? Serious social business, or hot air? Let’s discuss in comments, and over on Twitter

Special thanks to Khoa, one of my most respected aviation geeks, for this tip-off.

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This is bound to get the message far-and-wide for AirAsia X, and hopefully they’ll be flying to Sydney sooner than later. It’s good for us, consumers

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I had an intriguing debate with a new friend (and long-time Twitter follower) during my recent trip to Kuala Lumpur. When I asked about her organization’s resistance to even listening about the brand on social media – her answer was that their Head of Corp. Comms strongly feels that if it’s important enough, it will appear in the newspapers – after which there can be a proper response.

I recognize where she’s coming from, but I just couldn’t accept that reasoning. It’s like saying that I will never check my email, because my name card has a fax number, and whatever is important enough will pop out from the fax machine. It just doesn’t work that way anymore!

I won’t whisper feedback in your ears!

Customers are using a variety of mediums to communicate (and rant) these days, and press releases or forum submissions to newspapers rank way at the bottom.

If I don’t like the food on an airline, I’d submit a NOW review to Eezeer.com- instantly. If I find the wi-fi at your airport slow, I will tweet about it, or include it in my check-in information. Same goes for compliments. But how would you, the brand manager, or the corporate communications manager, know?

You need to go where the customer is, and not expect him or her to come to you. After all, how many completed feedback forms does an airline get, compared with emails? Means of communication have evolved, and social media tools rank way above anything else today.

I recently read a statistic that more emails are sent in a day than postal mails in a year. I think the time is not far when we will see more tweets and Facebook messages being sent per day, than emails in a year.

The big difference is that Tweets are one-to-many conversations; hence you’ve got to pay attention to what people are saying. Forget about engagement, you’ve got to listen first!

After all, you don’t want to look like the ostrich with his head in the sand, isn’t it? Time to wake up and smell the coffee!

So, what do you think? How can we change the attitude of traditional executives such that they embrace the changes in the world of communications? I’d love to hear your thoughts, in the comments and over on Twitter (@simpliflying)

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