Last week, I delivered four speeches, sat on four panel discussions and ran two MasterClasses. It’s been quite an exhilarating experience speaking to multiple groups of senior aviation executives. And more than ever, just being a sponge and soaking up knowledge from the other speakers has been very rewarding as well.

One of my best received speeches this week was the one I delivered at the Low Cost Airlines World Asia Pacific at Singapore last week. Previously, we’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the changing face of loyalty as social media takes root in the minds of customers. Late last year, we even did a three-part special series (download pdf) on LCCs and loyalty. The first part offered five compelling reasons to start thinking about loyalty. The second part provided three easy ways to track loyal customers. And the final part offered five nearly no-cost solutions to drive loyalty.

In this presentation, I presented a culmination of our thoughts on this issue and presented the thesis that light-weight loyalty programs based on social advocacy bear immense opportunities for low-cost carriers. Since many of …

In marketing, we often talk about the value of brand associations, of being at the top of the mind of consumers and having the brand instantly connect with a feeling, memory etc. However, putting all this into practice is probably one of the hardest things in the industry. According to researchers, there can only be 3 brands in of a consumer per category… don’t believe me?
A short brand-recognition exercise
Let’s do a little exercise: name 3 brands of Cola.

Now let me guess: The first one that you thought of was: Coca Cola? And maybe the color red? The second one was: Pepsi, perhaps? And the third one?  Maybe you struggled a bit with this one, but probably it was the top selling “white label” brand from your local supermarket

Let’s do one more:

Think of good times (or more specifically, the recent holiday season) and name a brand of soft drinks.

I guess that you probably thought of something similar to the image below:

One last test:
Can you think of the holiday season and an airline/airport in the same breath?

Having troubles? Well it’s understandable since no airline …

We promised we’d make the New Year exciting for you. And here we are – delivering on the promise we made! After creating quite a buzz with our revamped SimpliFlying Heroes initiative that saw almost 3000 votes pour in over just a week, we’re back with something even more exciting. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show that we’re bringing you today (and every fortnight hereon)!

Today, we’re launching SimpliFlying Podcasts – a brand new product that should excite our readers, most of whom are travel marketers. Starting this Wednesday, SimpliFlying will be releasing Marketing Strategy podcasts for airline and airport marketers on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month. Each podcast will have great insights on the latest in marketing from the best minds in aviation.
Why you should listen to the podcasts
Helmed by Shashank Nigam, the CEO of SimpliFlying, every fortnight we will interview a well-known face from the world of aviation (mostly CxO level). The in-depth interviews will be followed by a detailed discussion of insights into the latest in airline and airport marketing by SimpliFlying staff.

The podcasts will be available …

I recently had the opportunity to write a feature article in the Airline Passenger Experience Magazine, led by none other than Jon Norris and Mary Kirby, of the Runway Girl fame.

The article explored in a detailed fashion the behavior of the frequent traveler of today, who is not only always connected, but always engaging too. And what airlines are currently doing to respond. It then goes on to forecast the upcoming trends and what airlines need to do to stay relevant.

You’ll find our social loyalty infographic integrated into the article, as well as some cutting edge case studies like Estonian Air’s new social loyalty program and Air New Zealand. This complements well the recent series of articles written by Shubhodeep recently on why LCCs should seriously think about loyalty programs.

Enjoy the read, and we’d love your comments!
The Future of loyalty  
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The past year has been an interesting and very successful one for Simpliflying with a number of new client acquisitions and tons of exciting free resources such as infographics and Top 10 case-packs posted regularly to the blog amongst other things. At the brink of the new year, we relive ten of the most popular articles on SimpliFlying in 2011:

10. Social seating: Have you read about the Malaysian Airline initiative that led the airline to create a much talked about Facebook booking engine that allowed people to sit with their friends on the airline’s flights?

9. Airports in social media: In the ninth place we have a Top 10 case-pack, an initiative helmed by our Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal, on how airports have driven engagement trough social media.

8. Blockbuster social initiative: Next, in 8th place we find one, if not the, most successful social media campaigns of 2011, the AA Advantage “mystery miles” campaign that hit the headlines in February by achieving an 84 fold growth of its Facebook fans in 54 hours.

7. Airline Twitter initiatives: In the seventh place we find …

What a year it has been for the airline industry when it comes to marketing. With healthier profits this year, we’ve seen many airlines push the envelop when it comes to marketing and social media innovation. So to sum up the year, we’re sharing the top 11 marketing innovations by airlines in 2011.

While going through these, you’ll also realize that most of those that made the list aren’t one-off campaigns, but mature strategies made up of tactics that drive very specific business goals. So gone are the days of fluffy, one-off social-media campaigns with questionable ROI. Hope these inspire you for 2012!

Estonian Air social loyalty program: AirScore, the airline’s groundbreaking, yet simple, loyalty program rewards travelers for online advocacy. You earn virtual points on Facebook for sharing a trip report or booking through the airline’s Facebook app. And these can be redeemed for simple privileges like fast-security lane access. In 10 days, the program generated over a million impressions on Facebook, more than the number of passengers carried by the airline in a year! It’s now won three global awards in three months. Read more… (airlinetrends.com)
SpiceJet Bombardier …

Note: This is Part 3 of a three-part series on low-cost carriers (LCCs) and loyalty. The first part offered five compelling reasons to start thinking about loyalty. The second part provided three easy ways to track loyal customers. This final part offers five nearly no-cost solutions to drive loyalty.

Update: The entire 3-part series is now available as a single, downloadable pdf here.

After last week’s article, you now have a fair idea of where to find your loyal customers. Hence, it’s time to actually set the virtuous cycle of loyalty in motion. Why cycle? The age of social can no longer bear the burden of two-way traffic not looking each other in the face – it’s no longer the age of broadcasts or pure need-based consumerism where a cold, dispassionate relationship develops between the customer and the airline. Instead, social interactions between the airline and customer can evolve into life-long virtuous cycles of buying and selling based on not just mutual needs but mutual respect based on the value each party brings to the other. At its very basic, this can be broken down to a couple of scenarios: “I will reward you because you spread goodwill about …

Note: This is Part 2 of a three-part series on LCCs and loyalty. The first part offered five compelling reasons to start thinking about loyalty. This article will provide three easy ways to track loyal customers. The final part will offer five no-cost (nearly!) solutions to driving loyalty.

Last week, when I presented to you five reasons why low cost airlines need to take loyalty seriously, a couple of thoughts must have crossed your mind. First, you must have thought about how, most importantly, LCCs (low-cost carriers) can track loyal customers before rewarding them. Understandably, you must have thought that effectively “tracking” loyal customers via  a dedicated CRM system would incur an IT headache and additional costs that might defeat the business model of an LCC. Second, you might have thought that taking loyalty seriously is no good if one can’t track loyal customers effectively and easily (read: within one’s means). In this article, I will offer three easy ways for socially savvy airlines to track their loyal customers.

Incidental Loyalty
Before I move on to the three solutions, allow me to introduce a particular kind of customer you might not …

Note: This is Part 1 of a three-part series on LCCs and loyalty. The first part offers five compelling reasons to start thinking about loyalty. The second provides three easy ways to track loyal customers. The final part will offer five no-cost (nearly!) solutions to driving loyalty.

Before you raise your eyebrows, let me declare that yes, I do know why you might be slightly surprised to read the title of this article. You might say that LCCs exist to carry customers cheaply from one point to another without offering peripheral services or caring about customer loyalty because everyone will come if your price is low, right? You might say that LCCs themselves couldn’t care less about cultivating loyalty or building loyalty programs because that would be an unnecessary investment of time and resources. Right? Wrong! This article will build on the premise that while LCCs have been doing one L (low-cost) well, they need to start thinking about an equally important L – loyalty!

Before I go on to my thesis, let me state upfront that I am not talking about creating loyalty programs. I’m only concerned with …

Yes, you read that correctly. I did not write Web 2.0. Of course, that’s not because it’s not relevant – it’s terribly relevant – but because this newer term encompasses Web 2.0 and then some. So what exactly do I mean by Mobile 2.0 and why is it important? Cutting to the chase, here are some things we all know: first, ordinary feature phones are dying a fast death and smartphone shipments are rising as iOS and Android become increasingly popular with others, such as Windows Phone 7, hot in pursuit. Second, people are increasingly using their phones to do tasks they earlier used their laptops or desktops for: hotel search, ticket bookings, banking, emails, etc. Third, smartphones are creating an all new category of the always connected traveler – a web-savvy, social-networking geek who isn’t afraid to declare to his virtual networks what he’s thinking or doing.
The future is mobile
Given the rapidly changing interactional/behavioural habits of the traveler, it has become important for airlines to target them where they can be found. Close your eyes and think for a moment about what the word mobile phone means to you: I’m quite certain that most of the readers here …