Following the spectacular launch by SpiceJet of their Q400, airlines around the world seem to be acquiring a taste for the benefits brought by a social-media based launch campaign. Today we to take a look at how Malaysia Airlines (MAS) is presenting its brand new A380 to the world.

The airline has launched a campaign called “The Big Flight” where it offers the chance to win a ticket for an joyride on the A380 and be amongst the first to experience the new aircraft.

In order to enter the competition users have to submit a video proving that they can do something special like the YouTube celebrities that took part in the MAS campaign launch. The airline will then shortlist the best videos and the 8 most voted ones will win tickets for themselves and three friends.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtTv2t3hw4U[/youtube]
This initiative is part of a wider social launch campaign that uses Google+, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to create sharable content and generate expectation for the launch of the new aircraft.
 

Expect more great initiatives this year!
While route launches via social …

The Midwest Cookie – a brand icon
When I used to live in Boston a few years ago, a number of my friends used to fly Midwest Airlines to destinations in the Northeast. And they never mentioned anything about the flight other than the cookies and their warm smell floating down the cabin at 35,000ft.

I thought that was very unique, and while I personally never had the chance to fly Midwest, once I became part of the aviation industry, I met lots of executives who absolutely loved the airline for its cookies. Now, that’s a brand icon that’s hard to duplicate: what’re more, it makes for a perfect Brand X-factor, as detailed in our 6X airline branding model.

Just like Singapore Airlines has the Singapore Girl, Virgin Atlantic has Richard Branson, AirAsia has its Nasi Lemak and Porter its racoon – Midwest had its cookies, which appeals to many senses – taste, smell, touch. And most importantly, it helped form an invaluable emotional connection.

The cookies were such a huge hit that Midwest Airlines even put the dough with the same recipe in supermarkets in 2007, so that people could bake them at home. It flew off the shelf!

Alas, something that’s …

Note: This article was first published as a Guest Post on Tnooz.

Those of us who work with Facebook Pages are already used to the incessant changes that Facebook has introduced over the years.

However, many were startled after the latest change was announced.

When Facebook finally decided to unveil its new Timeline for company pages, they gave page owners (marketers, to be more specific) a whole new playing field with lots of new tools and only 30 days to adapt and adopt the new format.

For those who had already prepared long-term plans for Facebook marketing at the beginning of the year, this radical change must have made their familiar football pitch appear like an ice-skating rink during the half-time break.

Admittedly, Facebook is trying to make things easier by allowing page admins to preview the new look of their pages before the new design goes live for everyone without exception.

The countdown is well underway and on March 30 all Fan Pages will be converted, permanently, to the new Timeline.

With such a slew of changes and new features being introduced with this update, it would be advisable to review all critical aspects of the transition before moving to Timeline.

To make this …

Westjet in Canada seems to be just as well loved as Southwest Airlines is in the US. The airline recently announced plans to launch a regional airline to serve secondary and tertiary Canadian cities with non-stop service using new regional aircraft. Since then, there has been a flurry of smaller Canadian airports trying to woo the airline and start service to their cities.

Bringing Westjet to Penticton
One of the most innovative of those efforts has come from Penticton Airport in British Columbia, which has a bunch of kids at the airport dancing to “Send me on my Way” from Rusted Root to woo West Jet into considering adding Penticton to their expanding regional network.

In addition to the Youtube video, they’ve creatively  added a Facebook page entitled, ‘Bring WestJet to Penticton‘  and followed up with a Twitter hashtag too, #westjetpenticton, to demonstrate all the local support there is for the service. And the city Mayor is involved in the efforts too!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSpLNflxhkg[/youtube]

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/AndrewJakubeit/status/181862342185861120"]
Certainly something to make WestJet route planners to sit up and take …

Engaging customers has always been tricky business for any company but even more so for airlines since they face geographically dispersed audiences that they need to inspire to travel.

In our view there are two key elements in this problem.  The first one is the need to be where the audience is and the second one is to find something that, while being relevant to the audience, is also able to inspire audience to part with cash and travel somewhere.
An Emerging social network
Just a few days ago we wrote about the high growth rates and airline marketing potential presented by Pinterest, the new image-based social bookmarking site. In particular we stressed how this new site had the potential to inspire travelers, and now we are seeing an early attempt by an airline to exploit this potential with the launch of the BMI Pinterest lottery.

 

Using Images Instead of Numbers for Lucky Draw
The UK-based airline created several different image boards featuring pictures from some of its destinations. Each board contains nine pins (images) that come associated with a number. To participate users have to …

Editor’s Note: After an excellent response to the previous post on How KLM is winning on social media in Europe, here’s another guest post by Peter Claridge of Unmetric, an exclusive aviation partner of SimpliFlying. Unmetric is a social media benchmarking company that helps brands analyse how well they’re doing on social media by including in-depth insights into numerous metrics as well as information on what kind of content “works” and how competitors are faring.

Airlines are in a unique and somewhat enviable sector when it comes to social media. They all fly to exotic destinations, are able to sponsor the biggest events, use amazing machinery, have huge amounts of glamour and produce reams of interesting facts. The sector is literally bursting with potential for engaging Facebook posts.

According to Unmetric’s data (based on secret sauce technology and kept as confidential as Coca Cola’s recipe), the average engagement score for the airlines sector is 33. Interestingly, European airlines tend to be well ahead of their American competitors when it comes to engaging their customers. However, if there is one unifying factor for all the airlines, it is that above everything else, photo posts are the driving force behind getting …

What’s the key to engaging customers in this time and age? For Martijn van der Zee, senior vice president of e-commerce at Air France KLM, the answer is simple: Get with the times, embrace failure and always listen to what your customers tell you.

We recently recorded a podcast with Martijn in which he shares some exclusive tidbits about KLM’s secrets to social media success: you can buy it at a special price of $19 here.

Late last year, a group of executives gathered for a social media presentation at a conference held in the Netherlands. Among the attendees was Martijn van der Zee, senior vice president of e-commerce at Air France KLM, who had with him a slide from a new initiative they were experimenting with. Little did he know how popular it would be at the conference – and on the Internet. Shortly after his presentation, the slide found its way online and became a viral hit, attracting millions of viewers worldwide.

The name of the initiative? Meet and Seat, a service that lets you use either Facebook or LinkedIn to view the profiles of other passengers on the same flight and choose your seat partner. The service …

“Pinterest?  The name sounds familiar, I must have heard it somewhere, but how exactly is it going to help our airline? ”
“I’ve heard of it too but I’m not really sure of what it is and, please, don’t tell me that we need yet another social network!”
We’re pretty sure that something similar must have gone through the minds of many airline and airport marketers over the past few weeks. According to some sources, Pinterest, the newest kid on the social block, is driving more traffic to company pages than “big” social networks like Linkedin or Google+ and people are spending more time on this addictive social network than just about any other platform except Facebook and Twitter.
 

But, what does it all mean ?

It could have simply been just another social network, or just another link sharing site that happened to be good at generating traffic while being visually appealing.  But luckily for us, it isn’t just that!

From a technical point of view Pinterest is a social-bookmarking website or, in other words, a website that allows people to highlight and share …

The third episode of SimpliFlying Podcasts features KLM’s Vice President for e-commerce Martijn Van Der Zee who explains the secrets behind the airline’s constantly innovative social media strategy and their latest, potentially game-changing KLM meet and seat social-seating initiative.

The interview is preceded, as usual, by a free industry insights section where SimpliFlying’s CEO Shashank Nigam and Community Engagement Manager Marco Serusi discuss the latest industry news, focusing on the Singapore air show and the marked shift in power from Europe to Asia.

You can listen to the free version below (industry insights) or subscribe to it on our iTunes channel:

Your browser does not support the audio element.

// …

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Peter Claridge of Unmetric, an exclusive aviation partner of SimpliFlying. Unmetric is a social media benchmarking company that helps brands analyse how well they’re doing on social media by including in-depth insights into numerous metrics as well as information on what kind of content “works” and how competitors are faring. Among its clients are Citibank, Nestle and AirTel. Look out for even more exciting stuff from our collaboration with Unmetric in the days to come.

With interesting posts, quirky social media campaigns, more fans, higher fan growth rates and a whole lot of social media love, KLM are the undisputed European kings of social media for airlines. Their latest campaign, encouraging people to ‘stewardess’ themselves (Ryan Air take note: you can use stewardesses, get huge publicity and not have to resort to innuendo) and in the process got well over 55,000 new fans in just 7 days, encouraged people to share their snaps and invite their friends to try it out for themselves.

The campaign itself is a lot like past social media campaigns like Yearbook Yourself where you take a photo and it digitally inserts it in to a scene and …