A few weeks ago we published an article reviewing the new Facebook Timeline for brands and taking a look at how its new features could be used by airlines.  When that article was published 27 of the 30 days of the facebook adjustment period had already passed, and few airlines had made the switch.

Now that the adjustment period is over, we’ve decided to take a look at how airlines and airports have adjusted to the new layout and we’ve created this Top 10 deck featuring the Top 5 examples of Airline pages followed by the Top 5 Airport Pages.

During our research we were positively surprised by the quality of the work done by both airline and airport Facebook teams. However, sometimes we were disappointed to see how some companies appeared to be unaware of the change and had not adapted their Pages. Furthermore, especially on the airport side, we noticed that many companies had created beautiful cover images but had not filled their Timelines, leaving the very useful “milestone” feature almost unused.

Note: The airlines portion of this Top 10 was created adapting a guest post we wrote for Tnooz.

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Crises in the Air Transport industry come in many shapes and forms but they usually have three things in common: 1) no prior notice or warning signs, 2) the need to inform large numbers of people in a very short time and 3) a large number of (increasingly digital) angry/distressed people.

However, regardless of whether the crisis is something the airline did to itself , an uncontrollable natural phenomenon or a strike, there is always a need to reach large numbers of people as quickly as possible, providing information, answering their questions and avoiding the spread of false rumors.

In today’s increasingly connected world, social media has proven to be the crisis management tool, and has been used successfully by both airlines and airports in a wide range of scenarios. The reason for its effectiveness is based on two factors: the first is that it allows the kind of mass communication and information dissemination that we mentioned earlier, and the second is that they are the place where an increasing percentage of users go to complain and seek information.

At SimpliFlying we’ve accumulated a wealth of experience consulting in social-media based crisis management strategies for both airlines and airports …

We’re having a glorious month! We crossed 1 Million views on our YouTube channel recently and celebrated that success with you by sharing with you some of our most popular videos, including a crazily popular video tour of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s interior. And now, we have further good news to share with you!

Our SlideShare channel, where we post our presentations from global conferences, infographics and Top 10 decks, has been growing incredibly fast. Just late August last year, we crossed a 100,000 views there. Early March this year has seen us surpass 200,000 views!

For this we have two parties to thank: first of all, you, our readers have been truly fantastic and we appreciate your continued support and patronage of SimpliFlying. Second, our monthly Top 10 initiative has gained a lot of popularity with many of the case-packs receiving close to 10,000 views each. (Check out the second graph to see how the channel views have grown in the last one year since the inception of the Top 10 case-packs in February 2011.) Thank you again for liking them, sharing them and adding to their popularity.
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Some of you already know that we have an active YouTube channel - we call it SimpliFlyingTV - where we regularly post interesting airline-branding and AvGeek videos, often including exclusive interviews with airline executives. A week or so ago, we hit the magical 1,000,000 (we just couldn’t resist putting those zeros there!) views mark – hence, we’ve decided to celebrate this milestone by offering our readers a selection of the very best videos from our channel.

 
Inside the Boeing 787 Dreamliner cabin
The launch of the 787 Dreamliner has been one of the most exciting aviation landmarks of the past few years and our readers will remember that our CEO Shashank Nigam and Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal were recently able to fly on one of these aircraft at the Singapore Air Show. Long before that however, back in 2009, Shashank was able to obtain an exclusive interview with Boeing’s Colleen Rainbolt and tour the inside of a 787.

The video below was published back in 2009 and has been viewed over 670,000 times.

 
Bombardier CSeries Cabin Tour
Staying with the “cabin” theme, the second video we’ve selected for you is an exclusive visit to another innovative aircraft, the keenly anticipated Bombardier C-series.

 
Air New …

Even though it seems like yesterday, our popular top 10 initiative has reached its first birthday and we’ve decided to celebrate it with a king-size slide deck featuring the best case studies from our past top 10s.

This top 50 has been designed not only to celebrate the first birthday of the SimpliFlying’s Top 10s but also to provide our readers with a unique downloadable resource that features what we think are the very best marketing initiatives put forward by airlines and airports over the past few years.
An idea-generating tool
However we do not wish this top 50 to be a sort of “museum” of past initiatives but rather a tool for airline professionals to generate new ideas. We hope that by viewing such a wide variety of outstanding initiatives in a single slide deck, other marketers will be inspired to create other new and innovative campaigns that will form the basis of future SimpliFlying Top 10s.

You will notice that each case study has a category indicator before its title. These indicators refer to the original top 10 that featured that particular case study, and have been included  to facilitate further research into the subject.
A year of top 10s
The list below provides links …

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 …

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 …

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 …

If twenty years ago one had asked an airline marketing executive about the dangers that a bad experience, passed on through word of mouth, could represent for the company’s image and brand he/she would have probably laughed. And with some degree of reason too!

After all, those were the good old days when, if one passenger had a bad experience he would tell his friends and family who may or may not have told a slightly distorted version of the story to their friends and family members… and the story would pretty much have ended there.

However, in the age of Twitter, Facebook and instant 24/7 global communication, the story doesn’t quite end there anymore. Even one annoyed passenger out of a whole planeload has the power to share his experience not only with his friends and family but also with millions of complete strangers who may in turn share it with a million others.  And this time the story does NOT end there.

Moreover, according to recent research, 25% of social media users expect a response within an hour and 6% expect something within 10 mins!
Time to start thinking about social customer service!
Unfortunately, only a handful of airlines and airport seem …