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In my recent webinar on airline branding, I used the examples of JetBlue Airways to demonstrate how an airline can successfully adopt a holistic Web 2.0 branding strategy. A number of webinar participants wanted to learn more about it, so I got to the heart of the matter.

So that you could hear it from the horse’s mouth, I got in touch with Morgan Johnston, who leads the Twitter initiative at JetBlue Corporate Communications. This is the same Morgan who famously started “following” the popular blogger Jonathan Fields, who got freaked out and wrote a story about it.

Here is an email interview with Morgan, regarding JetBlue’s digital branding strategy and a good behind-the-scenes look at how JetBlue does it.

SimpliFlying: Who’s the driving force behind the technology initiatives at JetBlue, and how big is the team?

Morgan: Responsibility for our online initiatives span many groups, from our brand, sales, or web teams, to corporate communications, or customer service.  We each have different requirements and ideas that we bring forward to create an …

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For about 21 hours from Oct 21 to Oct 22, JetBlue Airways did a fantastic job of what Rohit Bhargava calls “short term blogging“. They set up a Live blog, to coincide with the opening of their new Terminal 5, at New York’s JFK Airport. There were a couple of posts every hour, keeping track of the latest happenings at the new terminal, updating not just customers but also employees. The blog was quite a hit!

Today, the blog still exists as a reminder of how well JetBlue has embraced technology in order to engage its customers – both internal and external. But the airline has a history of tapping on the Web to interact with customers on their own terms.
David Neelman’s flight log
JetBlue was one of the pioneers in the airline industry to add a “personality” to the company – when David Neelman started his personal blog on JetBlue’s website in September 2006 (way before Web 2.0 became the craze it is today). In his first post, David wrote:
I try to fly JetBlue at least …