Raul Rodriguez, Marketing Manager and GM for Europe at PLUNA, the official flag carrier of Uruguay, is our new SimpliFlying Hero for May 2011 for applying innovative strategies to improve PLUNA’s brand and making it one of the leading airlines on social media in Latin America.
Dipping the toes…
Raul’s and PLUNA’s journey through the social media space began a few years back when Raul approached the management at PLUNA with some ideas incorporating Twitter and Facebook. At that time, the management at PLUNA, a 75-year-old airline, had embarked on a strategic plan to change the company’s model from a typical legacy airline to a more hybrid model. However, Raul’s “crazy innovations” were faced with initial skepticism. Raul, in response, decided lead by example one day at a meeting with all the other managers at PLUNA:
“I decided to project my twitter feed on the screen and I searched in Twitter for PLUNA, Live! 101 posts came up saying bad and good things about us. There was a conversation going on and we were not part of it.”
That demonstration, together with the assurance that no large initial investment would be required by entering the “conversation” on Twitter, proved a …
After 10 days and 104 nominations (!!), the voting to determine the best airlines in social media is now open and you can vote right here.
As part of the inaugural SimpliFlying-Airline Business ‘Social media for the aviation industry‘ conference being held in London on Oct 1, 2010, we launched an awards scheme to recognise and reward airlines innovating in the field, culminating in these awards:
Best social media marketing campaign
Best use of social media to drive revenue
Best use of social media in a crisis situation
SimpliFlying Hero of the Year
Let the voting begin!
From the huge list of 104 nominations, the SimpliFlying team has shortlisted the top five nominations for each category. The Best Social Media Campaign had so many high-quality submissions that we just couldn’t bring it down to five. Anyone on the web is free to vote once in each category and give their favorite airline a shot at glory!
Airlines are free to request for votes through their social media sites, by emailing their frequent fliers or through any other means. Two representatives from each of the airlines below also get passes to attend the conference on Oct 1.
The …
This is an awesome week for SimpliFlying: The Airshow social media campaign has been going very well and I’ve been featured on CNBC, Channel NewsAsia and a host of other media outlets, as far as Latvia! Amidst all the airshow excitement, SimpliFlying was announced as the world’s second best aviation blog by Reed Business Information’s head of Blogging, Adam Tinworth and Vice President Cabin Design Office at Airbus, Jonathan Norris in The Webbies 2009 – Flightglobal Aviation Web Awards. We’re really excited about this and it’s a great recognition of our continued efforts to bring back the romance to flying. Visitor hits have gone up 85% over the last week, since the award was announced, and airshow efforts started. Of course, this wouldn’t have been possible without probably the best social media team in the world (see pic below) – all in Singapore. And those not in the picture below include Rachel Levy (Boston), Sridhar (Chennai), Raghav and Pradeep (Singapore). Of course, our Board of Advisors are always there when we need them – …
