The buzz is palpable! After a heady round of nominations (69 nominees in 10 days) we’re down to the fun bit – the real voting to shortlist the Top 3 who’ll be invited to Amsterdam on October 10th for the 2nd Annual SimpliFlying Awards for Excellence in Social Media. Amazingly, we received more than 5000 votes in the first 36 hours from more than 1400 cities across the world. Huge, huge numbers! And they’re growing astronomically each day!

To acquaint you better with the nominees in each category of the awards, we’ll be posting case-packs on our SlideShare channel for each of the 5 categories of awards detailing what makes each nominee so special and why they’re in the final list of nominees (the initial list had over 60 candidates!). The campaigns that clinched each airline its position of prestige will be illustrated in detail. We hope you enjoy going through them and revelling in the reflected brilliance of their innovativeness, cleverness and sheer chutzpah.

The first case-pack has 5 case-studies, each illumninating the campaigns of Top 5 nominees in the category “Best use of Social Media to drive Revenue”. As you’ll see, some, like Virgin America jumped …

Social technologies are gaining huge traction among airlines. There’s simply no denying it. A couple of months ago, we released an infographic that showed how airlines are dedicating resources to social media. Most major airlines, according to the infographic, already have social media teams in place – most are managing cross-departmental strategies. Some even have plans to expand their teams later this year. That infographic was deemed to be a truly important one as far as the topic of airlines in social media was concerned: it received over 100,000 views and was featured in a number of publications including twice on Mashable itself!
Make sense of the chaos
Now, to add to all the hullaballoo, it really doesn’t help that social technologies are not just adding newer features regularly, but new social technologies themselves are being launched a dime a dozen (any takers for Google+ in airlines?).

So if you’re an airline marketer and thinking really hard about which social technologies to adopt apart from the usual suspects, we have the perfect remedy for your troubles. In fact, even if you’ve figured out which social platforms to adopt, you might still be wondering how best to use them or …

Cathay Pacific has proven to be one of the better full-service airlines over the past few years at engaging customers through social media. While most airlines scoff at the notion of giving anything away for—gasp!!—free (!!!), Cathay hasn’t been afraid to do this. And of course given the collective time and effort made by contest participants, when just a few are going to receive anything, I’d hardly say that “free” is the proper classification.
Contests to engage and develop advocates
As an engagement strategy, I believe that contests are far underused, given that they require targeted customers to opt in, take action, and when employed strategically, turn those customers into brand advocates. Given that airline analysts can easily predict what capacity goes unfilled, and the contest can be restricted to giving away those seats that would likely leave empty anyway, airlines can get a great return without giving away much. After all, what is the incremental cost of a butt in a seat that would otherwise go empty—ten, twenty dollars, tops?

I was a huge fan of Cathay’s “Why I Love Japan” contest. They also had an innovative contest where participants submitted dessert recipes, with the winning concoction actually being …

Over the last year, Grabaseat from Air New Zealand (we’re BIG fans) has been creating waves for its reverse auctions. Now, it’s an advanced system that’s well integrated into the airline’s main website. At the same time, it’s getting complex and not something other airlines can replicate easily. But it wasn’t long before another airline in another corner of the world latched upon the idea in the simplest possible way!
A small airline makes a big splash
Estonian Air just held its first ever reverse auction, by merely posting on the wall latest prices for flight tickets for two persons on assigned Estonian Air flights with fixed route and dates. To announce his or her intention to buy the Facebook fan had to post: “I buy” or in Estonian “Ostan” on the wall post. That’s really as simple as it gets!

According to Gunnar Mägi, the Development and Marketing Director of Estonian Air, the social media channels are used as very effective information channels, but also as the sales channel. “Our social media channels are becoming as ideas laboratory, where we try new solutions and sales opportunities. Estonian Air will continue launching unique offers …

Airlines, as we all know, seem to have taken to social media like a fish takes to water. Well, almost. Over the last three months we’ve shared with you 40 case-studies that have revealed how airlines have used the predominant platforms of social engagement via our Top 10 Facebook, Twitter and Location-Based-Service Initiatives and Crowdsourcing case-packs.

It is now fitting that we take a look at how airports are managing their social engagement models. Our latest Top 10 presentation brings to you 10 11 case-studies that showcase the best airports from around the world in terms of how well they’re evolving and adapting to newer technologies of driving customer engagement.
The Invisible Wall
No, this is in no way related to Harry Potter and Platform 9 and 3-quarters. What I refer to here is the seamless airport experience that leads most passengers to view the airport and airline as the same entity. Most airports would now like their passengers to be able to identify the invisible wall that delineates the airport experience from that of the airline.

This is important primarily because of two reasons:

Individuality: Most passengers probably …

As airlines continue to grow into the social media age, there seems to be a common, clumsy mistake that will likely become a major point of contention in this space:  a call to action without a communicated incentive.

Halfway through my flight from Washington (IAD) to Seattle last week, I received a special surprise along with my ginger ale…a napkin that doubled as the most useless piece of marketing communication I’d ever received:

Umm…well, I don’t really need any more friends, thanks.

It must have been my lucky day, because after I spilled my drink and grabbed my napkin to clean up, I found the second most useless piece of marketing communication I’d ever received on the back!

Why? Are you going to help me play the stock market?
Innocent though it may be, this United napkin is a classic example of communication without a point. Without making any effort to communicate a single benefit the passenger will receive in exchange for following the call to action, it goes beyond my reason why any passenger would rush to turn on their smart phones upon landing …

There seem to be two types of people in the world: Those who think check-ins using location-based services matter, and those who think they don’t. Much to the dismay of the latter, at the moment, location-based services are gaining traction. Fast! What seemed initially to be a frivolous plaything of over-zealous travelers and socializers is fast being leveraged by businesses (especially airlines and airports) to build their brands and provide more value to their customers while driving engagement and loyalty.

It is clear that not only are location-based services here to stay, but they are also fast becoming the next big rage in driving brand engagement. What started with services such as FourSquare, Loopt and Gowalla is now a playground where the big daddies have entered: namely, Facebook Places and Google Latitude. If nothing else, Facebook and Google’s interest in making their services location-based should offer ample proof to businesses that “check-ins” are here to stay.

But, businesses must also keep in mind that it’s not the check-ins themselves that matter. It’s what happens after the check-in that’s important. SimpliFlying has in the past written a number of articles discussing how location-based …

We’ve all seen how @DeltaAssist is helping travelers out on Twitter, and now on Facebook too. Then we learnt that 93.8% of all tweets to airlines in March 2011 were about customer service issues [see infographic]. Seeing these trends, it was only a matter of time before we saw more customer service functions go social. And the latest airline to make this move is AirAsia.
Airline Customer Service on Facebook and Twitter
AirAsia, which is already the airline that replies to the highest percentage of tweets in the world (>40%), has created an AskAirAsia account on Twitter, and also a “tab” on Facebook. They’ve taken a dig at travelers’ frustrations with the call-center and asked them to direct questions to the CEO, Tony Fernandes (though the photo looks a few years old!). Quite a neat way to connect with the customers – or “guest” as they call them on AirAsia.

On Twitter, you can simply tweet a question and expect a quick reply during Malaysia working hours. What will be interesting to note is that the AskAirAsia twitter account doesn’t reply to any issues …

After Delta Airlines pioneered the booking engine on Facebook, they have now brought their popular Twitter channel, @deltaassist to Facebook. As some of you might be aware, the service aims to resolve customer service issues online by directly interacting with them in real-time. The service has more than 17,000 followers on Twitter, so there’s certainly customer interest. Delta has also put serious resources behind this, with almost 10 people interacting with customers!

So, if Twitter is already working well, and there’s call center, then why would Delta move this to Facebook – you may wonder? Because that’s where their customers are hanging out, and that’s where their needs are to be addressed. In fact, you can read an interview with Delta Assist manager, Jerry Fletcher, to learn more about this effort.

Overall, a great move, and a big sign of things to come! Good job, Delta

For creating innovative Facebook and Twitter campaigns like KLM Surprises and various crowdsourcing projects, guiding KLM during the the ashcloud crises and being a key part of a team of 16 people engaging customers on social media,  Lonneke Verbiezen is the SimpliFlying Hero for Feb 2011 (Yes! Heroes is back!)
The volcanic explosion that led to explosive growth
The ashcloud crises about a year ago was a catalyst for many airlines, especially in Europe, to start engaging their customers through means they were familiar with – often tools like Facebook and Twitter (click here to see case studies). It was also then, that social media tools became the necessity for airlines to communicate during crises with their customers.

One of the airlines that transformed its customer interaction methods after the ashcloud crisis was KLM – and Lonneke Verbiezen was in the center of all the action. And the impact of her team’s work is truly felt today. In the last year, KLM has come up with various innovative campaigns like KLM Surprises (see video below), Fly2Miami – where the first flight to Miami will transformed into a party flight on the request of a Dutch DJ, and …