When I used to live in Boston a few years ago, a number of my friends used to fly Midwest Airlines to destinations in the Northeast. And they never mentioned anything about the flight other than the cookies and their warm smell floating down the cabin at 35,000ft.

I thought that was very unique, and while I personally never had the chance to fly Midwest, once I became part of the aviation industry, I met lots of executives who absolutely loved the airline for its cookies. Now, that’s a brand icon that’s hard to duplicate: what’re more, it makes for a perfect Brand X-factor, as detailed in our 6X airline branding model.

Just like Singapore Airlines has the Singapore Girl, Virgin Atlantic has Richard Branson, AirAsia has its Nasi Lemak and Porter its racoon – Midwest had its cookies, which appeals to many senses – taste, smell, touch. And most importantly, it helped form an invaluable emotional connection.

The cookies were such a huge hit that Midwest Airlines even put the dough with the same recipe in supermarkets in 2007, so that people could bake them at home. It flew off the shelf!

Alas, something that’s not easy to duplicate is often easy to get rid of too. And that’s what’s happening after the takeover by Frontier Airlines.

Source: The Purple Goldfish

The Cookie Crumbles (and promises are broken)

Frontier Airlines, which absorbed the Midwest Airlines brand in 2010, had promised to keep the signature cookies at that time. However, now they’ve taken an about-turn, citing costs and mis-match with the animal-oriented Frontier brand image. The executives are replacing it with animal crackers, which will also cost $1 in Economy class. How sad is that?

The number one rule of brand differentiation is that if you’re the only one in a market with a unique offering – no other airlines bake fresh bookies on-board – then keep it! Yes, it may not bring immediate gratification to the airline CFO, but certainly in tough times, the brand that has an emotional connection will come out stronger than one that has a transactional relationship with the customer. Ironically, that’s what the CFO is trying to prevent.

How could Frontier have saved this brand icon?

The withdrawal of the cookies has resulted in raging debates among fans and pragmatists online. With the benefit of hindsight, we can think of a few ways Frontier could have handled this brand icon better, and perhaps even saved the cookie from crumbling. Here are a few ideas:

1. If the cookies were a major cost, and had even a chance of getting the chop, why make the promise to keep it at all? People stop trusting a brand that makes promises but doesn’t deliver.
2. If the free cookies weren’t bringing in additional revenues, why not try charging for it first, rather than just eliminating it? Yes, people might be disappointed, but perhaps not as heartbroken.
3. Since the passengers loved the cookies so much, why not try and make additional revenues from it by continuing to place it in supermarkets and sharing revenues with the manufacturer?
4. If the animal theme matters so much for the Frontier brand, why not try making animal-shaped cookies? Perhaps they’d be a hit too.

Source: Flickr (nycblondieandbrownie)

Quoted in an article by the NY Times, Erich Joachimsthaler, chief executive of Vivaldi Partners said,

“when consumers don’t know how to judge the benefits or the differentiation of a product — I don’t know the difference between Midwest and JetBlue and United — then a meaningless attribute like cookies can create meaningful differentiation . . .The giveaway creates buzz, it creates differentiation, it increases a purchase decision.”

A hotel that gives away cookies is DoubleTree and they’ve already distributed over 250 million of them. Travelers seemed to love the Midwest cookie just as much, if not more. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see it being sold on eBay soon. In fact, don’t be surprised if a “Save Cookie” Facebook page comes up too!

Jay Sorensen, the person behind the cookies at Midwest still keeps the plaque that he received when he left the company that was signed by executives and employees. According to JS Online, it’s a picture of a cookie in a wicker basket. The caption reads: “We won’t let the cookie crumble. With fond memories and best wishes from your friends at Midwest Express.”

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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 very “socially active” ways, using their social media pages and often creating dedicated websites where participants could interact.

Looking deeper into the reasons that drove these airlines to choose crowdsourcing, we found that the most common goals were:

1. Solving a particular problem
2. Reducing costs
3. Associating their brands with a specific concept (for example: quality or low prices)
4. Obtaining first hand-data from their community of users
5. Promoting a new feature/product/route

With this teaser, we’ll leave you to discover how some of the best airlines in the world harnessed the power of the web in the most tantalizing and innovative ways possible.

• Loyalty 2.0 | The Top 10 Social Loyalty Initiatives by Airlines
• Top 50 case-studies of airlines and airports excelling in social media
• The Top 10 Viral Videos by Airlines (plus bonus videos)
• The Top 10 Twitter Initiatives by Airlines
• Top 10 Travel Distribution Initiatives by Airlines: Reinventing the booking cycle to drive revenue (from #eftamerica)

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 to have noticed this change, and even fewer have realized that an annoyed passenger could easily be turned into an happy one, as well as a brand advocate, who rather than venting his anger at a million strangers will praise the airline’s excellent customer service response.

There are a number of reasons why offering customer service through social media is an attractive option for both customers and airlines:

1. Customers no longer have to go through the trouble of waiting on the phone (forget the irritating wait-tune) to reach customer-service executives.
2. Being an “open” forum mostly, complaints and resolutions can be seen publicly. This can help a) reassure customers that the airline is serious about customer service; b) help create brand-advocates who can spread the word among their networks about a great customer service experience.
3. The responsive, interactive and open nature of social media helps customers feel more comfortable with asking more questions and getting all their doubts cleared which might not always be possible through the phone. On the flip side, the airline can also understand better what exactly are the most common issues worrying customers and how their service can be improved.
4. Apart from the benefits social media undeniably provides, customers now expect most brands to respond to them on social media, which is an almost equally compelling reason for airlines to have social media customer service initiatives anyway.
5. The internet and social media are absolutely unmatched in providing speedy and latest information especially in times of crises.

In this Top 10 we have selected ten great examples (as well as 2 bonus ones) of companies that have gone out on a limb to offer customer service through social media, thereby making their customers very happy indeed. We hope you enjoy the case-studies.

• Southwest Airlines, the Most Remarkably Kind Flight Attendant and the Art of Customer Service
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• Five steps to Customer Service Excellence for United Airlines (with real-life case study)

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 creating loyal customers or, to put it in the simplest and most compelling terms: driving repeat business for LCCs. There are some compelling reasons for LCCs to start thinking about building a loyal flyerbase. Five of them are listed below.

1. First, and perhaps the most easily identifiable reason: it has been known since long that getting a new customer is much more difficult and resource-consuming than keeping a customer loyal.
2. Second, with the growth in the number of LCCs in markets, a number of carriers are fighting for their share of the pie. With fuel costs (and consequently, operating costs) rising much faster than passenger numbers, carriers that have the highest load factors will win the battle for survival.
3. Third, given that fuel costs are hurting all carriers, a battle to fill capacities based on price-cuts will not just hurt the carriers but the industry and wider economy. No example for this can be better than that of the Indian market where the troubled national carrier Air India indulged in heavy price-slashing leading to a domino effect of reduced profits (in fact, heavy losses) industry-wide.
4. Fourth, given that most major markets have multiple LCCs in competing closely (including on prices), there is a need for secondary differentiation factors that would help in customer retention.
5. Fifth, and perhaps incidentally, the present state of the economy has compelled many price cuts within businesses. As a result, many companies have taken to flying LCCs for short-haul travel. Agreed that this might not be a huge population, but a seasoned business traveller flying on a no-frills airline for the first time would definitely look to fly the LCC that offers the most value even at the low-cost.

So what can you, as an LCC do to actually drive repeat business via loyal customers? First, think like a person who’s flying you multiple times a year. Even though the frequent-flyer concept is not applied to the LCC market, it is undeniable that there are people who do fly you frequently. (I have a relative who flies the same LCC twice a week just because its on-time performance is impeccable!)

Small things matter. Work on the small ways you can make a difference to your loyal customers. Second, understand from the example I just gave that even though small things make a big difference to customers (eg. on-time performance) they will not be enough to drive repeat business until loyal customers are identified and told specifically that they are being rewarded for being loyal.

So here’s my golden tip for today: Make those who fly you frequently feel special in small ways.

P.S. If you’re an LCC and have the understandable question of how on earth you’ll track loyal customers without setting up a loyalty program and going through an IT headache, watch out for the next part in this series that’ll show you three easy ways to track loyal customers.

• Driving loyalty for low cost airlines – presentation from Low Cost Airlines World Asia Pacific
• Three easy ways for low-cost carriers to track loyal customers
• Five (nearly) zero-cost solutions for low-cost carriers to reward loyal customers and drive loyalty
• Three keys to making loyalty programs work for the airline brand of the future
• [Presentation] Why the future of loyalty programs will be social-media based

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, possibly the last major airline brand (see AdAge article) has just caught the wind about engaging customers through social media and began their new journey by first taking over a existing Facebook fanpage with over 100,000 fans, which was started by a real fan in 2006, and setting up a new Twitter account. All this happened on Sept 5, 2011 – over two years after we wrote here in May 2009, “why time is running out for the Singapore Airlines brand to get into Web 2.0″.

Better late than never. They have the advantage of learning from the mistakes of others, but at the same time need to match high expectations set by worthy competitors like AirAsia, Cathay Pacific and Qantas. So, now what?

Twelve things Singapore Airlines needs to do social media right

1. “Just because you built it doesn’t mean they will come”. You can build the best roller coaster in the world, but to have monks ride it (image above), there needs to be something in it for them. Similarly, SQ needs to offer something unique to their fans on social media – something they can’t get offline, and something every other airline on Facebook and Twitter is not offering.
2. SQ has an advantage of already having over 100,000 fans on their Facebook fan page, which has been run by a real fan till date. Now, they need to put significant resources to carry on the good job this one real fan was doing.  SQ needs to embrace their suggestions and lend a listening ear.  Fans on social media often act like women – they are not necessarily looking a solution, but for you to be a good listener.
3. They need to reply to the negative comments, and not just the positive ones. They are doing a decent job with this right now, and need to keep up the good work (see image below).
4. It will be a learning process for the airline, which has till date maintained tight control over their brand. They must now learn to co-create the brand with their fans. We have shared previously lots of case studies of how airlines crowd source.
5. It will be important for SQ to create a multi-account social media strategy – each targeted to a separate target audience. They should look to create @SIAMedia or @SQMedia to target press and journalists – especially to send out instant information in times of crises. Learn from American Airlines.
6. Frequent fliers are twice as likely to join an airline discussion on social media, than typical adults. SQ should look to start a Krisflyer Facebook page and  @Krisflyer on Twitter to cater to the needs of their frequent fliers.
7. Over 80% of tweets an airline receives are regarding customer service issues – from flight delay queries to lost baggage accounts. Providing excellent customer service will be the key to success for SQ’s social media presence. They should either look to create an integrated model team, like jetBlue, or look to outsource part of online servicing, like KLM.
8. Having grown up in Singapore, I know how organizations there love “SOPs” or “Standard Operating Procedures”. SOPs should be created for employees on how to behave on social media. A “Social media 101 chapter” can be introduced in induction training for new employees, or annual retreats to make this a regular feature.
9. SQ has a unique advantage that few other airlines have – there are more positive mentions than negative ones. They need to leverage on this fact to build brand ambassadors, and empower them to spread the message further and come to the airline’s rescue in times of crises.
10. Leverage the Singapore Girl icon on social media – She has been central to the Singapore Airline’s brand till date. And it will be crucial that the Singapore Girl comes to life on social media too. How? I’m sure we can have a day-long discussion on that
11. Singapore Airlines also needs to ensure that they do not become yet another airline on social media, but are engaging their fans in a unique manner and driving specific business goals like revenue and loyalty. For starters, use our Social Media Cheatsheet for Airline Marketers
12. Lastly, and most importantly – branding on social media is very different from building a great offline brand. You need to experiment. You need to iterate. You need to loosen up a little. Try five things. Three may work. One might work very well. Then keep repeating the process. It’s not about getting it absolutely right the first time.

As of last month, there were 191 airlines on Twitter. Of these, only 85 had actively been tweeting. And only 28 provided 80% of all tweets! Singapore Airlines has been a great offline brand. My hope is that this doesn’t become the case of too little, too late. Now, they need to make sure they don’t get lost in the crowd of 191 airlines on Twitter, and create a brand on social media that’s just as lovable.

All the best, Singapore Airlines – hope you remain a great way to fly, even on the Twitter bird  

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• Airlines on Twitter in May 2011: AirAsia and TAM Brazil hot on the heels of Delta Airlines

I’m delighted to share the news with you that Interbrand’s Brandchannel.com has just published the white paper on airline branding, “Six steps to building a swashbuckling brand,” authored by me. Brandchannel.com is the leading online exchange about all things branding. Hence it is an honor for the it to be selected as the featured white paper for last week. You can read it online or download the paper here. I’d love to have your comments and feedback.

Thanks for all your support.

Regards,
Shashank

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• Coming soon: SimpliFlying Buzz, the first airline marketing and branding portal on the web

We will explore issues that affect airlines all across the world, from full service and premium airlines, to budget carriers, all with the airline brand in mind. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the airline industry or not, or whether you’re a novice or an expert when it comes to aviation. The purpose is to have a great discussion on how airlines manage their brands, what they’re doing right, and what they can do better, for us, consumers.

So, come join us in this journey, and provide your valuable feedback and comments.

• Randy Petersen of Flyertalk on airline branding – Part 1 of 2
• Facebook group on airline branding
• LCC 2.0: How low cost airlines can use social media to engage their customers
• Airlines need to build strong digital brands to survive the recession in 2009
• Is Alaska Airlines’ Social Media Execution heading South of Expected?