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 …

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 …

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 …

On the morning of December 1st 2011, the world woke up feeling a little empty and sad: Rico, the Air New Zealand mascot, had been “killed”. Eleven days after the unthinkable happened, and thanks to the help of Rico’s Facebook followers the “killer”, Richard Simmons, confessed his “crime”.

Even though he is no more, for marketers and air transport professionals alike Rico will live forever as part of our memories, presentations and as a source of inspiration for future strategies. What follows is a resume of his brief but well-lived life that, hopefully, will help us remember his best moments and better understand the marketing strategy for which he was created, due to which he thrived, lived and, sadly, was done away with.

Rico’s character was originally launched in October 2010 to promote Air New Zealand’s premium economy space seats. Even though what sort of animal he was and where he came from always remained a bit of a mystery, his fluffy persona was apparently designed as an effort to differentiate the advertising campaign by not using a human being. As Rob Fyfe CEO of Air New Zealand explained in his …

Would you believe it? Only a few days ago, while releasing the case-pack for the Best Airlines Driving Customer Service and Crisis Management we had reported that the total votes for the 2nd SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media had crossed 12,000 in just about a week! We also mentioned how votes had been received from more than 2,500 cities across the world. But today, we have updated figures for you, and we request you to hold your breath!
With about a day still to go for voting (and trust us, a lot of votes come in on the last day), the total number of votes has already crossed 30,000. Moreover, votes have come in from 4500+ cities across the world. How incredibly awesome is that?
Yes, while you gather words and your breath to answer that, this would be a good time to remind you that only a day is left for voting so you can still vote for your favorite airline if you haven’t done so. Do vote if you care about the airline you love! Meanwhile, you can check out the latest result for the current category below. All voting closes September 15….

Continuing our coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines, we’ve released the April 2011 Airlines on Twitter report with Eezeer. Data around airlines on Twitter this month reveals a few stark facts:

99.8% of all tweets are about service item issues – like flight delays, baggage inquiries and other customer service issues that’d typically go to the call center
While the number of airlines on Twitter has increased 10% to 184, 27 of all airlines make up 80% of the tweets (this number stood at 30 last month)
While Delta still remains the airline receiving and sending most tweets, it only replied to 11% of the tweets it received, as compared to 18.2% last month
While there’s a 250% increase in tweets about Timeliness, it is also the worst rated item in terms of satisfaction, with a score of -81.6
Air New Zealand has the highest global satisfaction score of 107.6 this month, unseating Cathay Pacific, which scored 107.7 last month

More interesting data and facts in the infographic below. Enjoy!
…

Are you sitting comfortably? For many of us on flights these days, be they long haul or short, the answer is no. This can be due to anything from someone incessantly kicking the back of your chair to a loud snorer or an unhappy child.

However, it seems that aircraft furniture of the future is changing to address the need for more comfort, better support and more groovy hi tech gadgets and gizmos for those who love their in-flight entertainment. In fact, in a recent survey done by Devesh Agarwal, more people thought seat comfort was more important in making a ticket purchase decision, than punctuality or frequent flier benefits for long haul travel.

Airlines are changing the way we travel. International flight comparison site Skyscanner.net are here to prove it by looking at five of the most exciting new seat designs of the future, in this guest post.
Skycouch – Air New Zealand
Nicknamed ‘Cuddle Class’; Air New Zealand’s cosy new Economy Skycouches are set to take off from an airport in London. To be ‘sky tested’ in the B777-300 aircraft, the Skycouch features three seats that have been designed to create a flexible seating option. The seats lie completely …

At a conference in Acapulco, Mexico this week, after my speech, a journalist asked me – how can airlines create viral videos? And my answer to that was… you can’t “create a viral video”. You can create a video and hope that it goes viral, meaning it gets watched by a lot of people and gets shared by lots too, generally in a short period of time. It’s an art, more than a science.

But it seems that the smart folks at Air New Zealand are bent on proving me wrong!
Fun safety videos as a marketing strategy?
1.2 million views in 40 hours. That’s what Air New Zealand’s latest safety video “Fit To Fly” has achieved.  It is high energy, 80s retro, Lycra clad fun hosted by that era’s exercise guru Richard Simmons, who is having a renaissance, and featured on Ellen recently. The video also features a few high profile cameos, including one from Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan. But the key point to note is that this is not the first of Air New Zealand’s safety videos that’s gone crazy-viral!

The Bare Essentials safety video, with crew (and CEO) in just body paint, has over 6 million views …

Have you heard of Rico? If you answered “no”, you’re missing the birth of probably a cult airline brand icon that may just reach the heights of what Richard Branson is to Virgin Atlantic, or what the Singapore Girl is to Singapore Airlines. And I’m not kidding.

When Mary Kirby first told me about Rico on Twitter, I was totally kicked – watching videos of this edgy, furry, lovable character chilling in one of Air New Zealand’s new seats. This is the same airline that brought us those body-paint safety videos and flatbed seats in Economy. Given that I was scheduled to speak at the Aviation Outlook Summit, where Rob Fyfe was present as well, I couldn’t help but corner him for a quick chat about Rico. You heard him first, on SimpliFlying

So, what do you think about Rico? A brand icon, or hot air? Let’s discuss in comments, and over on Twitter…

At the edge of the world, a small airline is pushing the envelope when it comes to doing the right things. This is a hallmark of a brand that is going places, even in times of adversity. If you haven’t already heard, Air New Zealand yesterday revealed a revolutionary flat-bed seat in Economy Class that will re-define the way we travel (Check out Crankyflier’s firsthand coverage here). This prompted a lot of commentary around the world, and I really liked one from Arun Rajagopal (in addition to Cranky’s) with his focus on branding. Arun is a creative supervisor with Wunderman in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. He is an award-winning copywriter, a co-author of the marketing book ‘The Age of Conversation’ and blogs at www.arunrajagopal.com. His interests include airlines, travel, marketing and social media. And here’s how Arun explains Air New Zealand is re-defining the flying experience (first published on his blog) Pic credit: Flickr – source 1. Be bold in your marketing Air New Zealand is not shy of stirring a little turbulence in your …