Three airlines, three rockstars
Heard of Morgan Johnston? On Google, “Morgan Johnston Jetblue” produces over 37,000 results, as compared to “Dave Barger jetblue”, which returns 26,800 results. Dave Barger is the CEO of the airline, and Morgan Johnston leads JetBlue’s social media branding strategy. Morgan was into video production, before he joined JetBlue’s Corporate Communications department in early 2007.

Heard of Christi Day? She was voted the Employee of the Quarter earlier this year at Southwest Airlines, because of her tremendous efforts in leading the airline’s brand on various social networks. It’s not very often that a personin the PR dept. of an airline gets such a prestigious award.

Heard of Elliott Pesut? He was featured as the Geek of the Week, in one of Seattle’s leading daily this summer. Why? Because he is the “Head Twit” for Alaska Airlines. Elliot is a trained pilot, who was earlier at Flight Operations in Alaska Airlines. He volunteered for this new role, when the opportunity arose.
Why should YOU lead social media branding for your airline?
See a common thread in the stories above? All these people have no background in IT or new web technologies, yet have created an …

It’s always good to speak with people who lead execution, rather than just build strategy. Especially when it comes to social media branding, it’s the person Tweeting or Facebook-ing with individuals who often makes all the difference. One such person is Elliot Pesut (@elliottp) who leads the Twittering efforts of Seattle-based Alaska Airlines.

In this exclusive interview with SimpliFlying.com, Elliot details the airline’s Twitter strategy, and talks about the unique challenges of his job, as well as Alaska Airlines’ forays into social media and how it’s all about connections, online and offline.
Volcanic rise of @alaskaair on Twitter

Alaska Airlines’ social media efforts got a real boost after a volcanic eruption a couple of months ago, near Ancourage, one of their hubs. The eruption caused unpredictable delays to flights and the airline needed to inform its customers about changes in real-time, as well as sooth nerves. And they turned to Twitter, calming nerves online while updating passengers of their flight status. Don’t you think that is so much better than receiving an insensitive SMS telling you that your flight is cancelled?

Today, Elliot updates followers of which planes each day are wi-fi equipped and seeks their feedback on everything from new destinations …

Once in a while, you have a conversation that makes you believe again, that there’s an alternate to trying to nickle-and-dime customers to make money at an airline. That is, by providing such exceptional customer service and brand delivery that people come back to you because they like flying with you.

I recently had such a conversation with Greg Latimer, Managing Director of Brand and Product Marketing at Alaska Airlines. He made me believe again, that an airline brand is indeed what it does, not what it says it does.
How does Alaska Airlines build customer loyalty?
When you hear Greg’s thoughts, you know you’re talking to an industry veteran. Alaska Airlines is well known for having very loyal customers, partly due to the rewarding loyalty program that they have, but there are many other factors, as I discovered.

Greg reveals that Alaska Airlines is religious about focusing on its primary brand differentiators, which drive customer loyalty, such as its caring customer service (for which the airline has won numerous awards.) Moreover, since what gets rewarded gets done, employees were rewarded at least $900 each last year, when customer service metrics were met.

Alaska Airlines also involves its customers in being part of the brand …

I just saw this on Flickr and was inspired to re-post it here, un-edited. The story goes a long way in demonstrating what I absolutely believe in – an airline brand is what it does, not what it says it does. And here, Alaska Airlines has done just that.

Thanks to some nifty work by @elliottp from Alaska Airlines, I now have the name of the gentleman in the yellow vest – Mike Chalich, who’s the Seattle Station Supervisor for AS. Kudos to you Mike!

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmemav8r/3516916832/

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This picture has a lot of meaning as the guy in the vest just took this over as his project, having tried to leave Seattle three times he knew that tensions were high and he worked like a madman to get us out including checking on baggage on the ramp and even pitching in to help catering finish their jobs.

I believe he was at the airport on a visit from corporate as he was not in uniform and only had security ID that was visible.

How many airlines do you know where an executive rolls up his sleeves, so to speak, to get …

At Sea-Tac airport in Seattle yesterday, many slept on the floor or in chairs, while other bleary-eyed passengers again stood in lines that snaked around the terminal, some counting their delays by days rather than hours. All this, caused by some of the worst snow-storms during the peak travel period in the Northwestern US.

To rub salt to the wounds, “Horizon and Alaska Air left customers fuming because they were unable to get through to Alaska or Horizon reservations agents on the phone or on the Web site to rebook travel”, the Seattle Times reported. Under normal circumstances, these services would have worked fine. Unfortunately, Alaska wasn’t the only airline badly affected by the mess, but also others like United Airlines. Though I haven’t heard too many good things about United, Alaska Air has certainly impressed in the past when it came to caring for their passengers. But things like these still happened. So, what can the airlines do to capitalize on externalities like these to actually build their brand further?
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