The new kid on the social block
In the world of social media Google Plus is currently the youngest and least understood (albeit, fast rising in popularity) kid on the block. Over its relatively short life it has earned its fair share of both lovers and haters, generating an interesting debate on what it will become when it grows up, and whether it is worth investing in it.

When Google Plus was finally opened to businesses with the launch of its business pages there was a rush from companies all over the world to get a G+ page, but as our CEO Shashank Nigam warned in an article about the potential pitfalls for airlines using Google Plus, few of these companies seemed to have a clear idea of what to do with this new platform.
Let’s get some hard data
To get some clarity and hard data SimpliFlying did what it does best: walk the talk! We got ourselves a brand page on Google Plus and sent one of our team-members on a data-finding mission. While signs of progress on this particular social network is admittedly slow, after a week of relentless searching, we have come up with the first ever snapshot …

First, a bit of history. Social seating goes back a long time at SimpliFlying. We were actually the first to point out that choosing potential seating partners via an intelligent social seating system in an airplane would ultimately go mainstream – that was a product powered by our good friends at Satisfly. This was way back in 2009 – almost three years ago! Then in 2010, we discussed incorporating social media in the flying experience – and showcased Twitter seating charts.

Then, last year, there were significant indications of things to come with Malaysia Airlines allowing customers to sit next to their Facebook friends. However, a couple of months ago KLM announced that they would launch the first “truly” social seating system for airlines matching customer’s social profiles with those having similar profiles or interests.

So far, given the lack of details about how the system would exactly work, the announcement was both welcomed as well as met with trepidation by the online community. Some claimed they’d love to try this new system, saying that it would spare them long hours of boredom …

It might seem like an anxious start to the new year for AirAsia X, which recently announced that it would be introducing a daily KL-Sydney service and terminating all its flights to Europe and India. Far from being in the doldrums, it’s all part of the airline’s strategy to refocus and strengthen its brand, as its CEO Azran Osman-Rani shared with SimpliFlying in our latest airline strategy podcast.

Listen to the exclusive podcast below.

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(c) 2012 SimpliFlying Podcasts

Note: The HTML5 player above should work with most modern browsers including those in mobile devices such as the iPad and iPhone. However, if you’re having trouble playing the file, please use the flash player at the bottom of this post. Please also note that the podcast above has only a snippet of the interview with Azran. To delve deeper into the mind of …

Update: The campaign has been featured on Facebook Studio and also shortlisted for the Shorty Awards!
Airlines these days are chasing the elusive return on social media. And while the number of “likes” or “followers” and video views are all the rage, it’s ultimately the return on investment (ROI) that matters the most. About a year ago, AAdvantage ran possibly the most viral Facebook campaign for an airline – fans grew almost 100X in just 54 hours. But ROI numbers were not necessarily as impressive.
Now, COPA Airlines from Panama has numbers to prove a 50X ROI from their recent Facebook app – an effort for which Diego Quesada Grimaldo, their eCommerce Director, was nominated for the SimpliFlying Heroes Award last month!

Pasaporte America to promote destinations
To promote its network in the Americas, COPA recently held a Passport America sweepstakes, asking the public to tell the airline which 10 destinations they’d like to visit first if they were the winner. Participants could explore each of COPA Airlines’ 59 destinations on the map, and then select their favourite 10. One person won a trip for two to all of COPA’s 59 destinations.

The Facebook-centric campaign (app no …

In marketing, we often talk about the value of brand associations, of being at the top of the mind of consumers and having the brand instantly connect with a feeling, memory etc. However, putting all this into practice is probably one of the hardest things in the industry. According to researchers, there can only be 3 brands in of a consumer per category… don’t believe me?
A short brand-recognition exercise
Let’s do a little exercise: name 3 brands of Cola.

Now let me guess: The first one that you thought of was: Coca Cola? And maybe the color red? The second one was: Pepsi, perhaps? And the third one?  Maybe you struggled a bit with this one, but probably it was the top selling “white label” brand from your local supermarket

Let’s do one more:

Think of good times (or more specifically, the recent holiday season) and name a brand of soft drinks.

I guess that you probably thought of something similar to the image below:

One last test:
Can you think of the holiday season and an airline/airport in the same breath?

Having troubles? Well it’s understandable since no airline …

Since taking over the helm seven months ago, Estonian Air CEO Tero Taskila has been the driving force behind the airline’s makeover. But as he shares in our inaugural marketing strategy podcast, the changes that we’ve seen so far are just the beginning.

Being placed in charge of a company that has been losing money since 2005 isn’t exactly the kind of dream job that most people have in mind. However Tero Taskila has always relished a good challenge. After all, the Finn, who was previously the Chief Commercial Officer of Latvian competitor airBaltic, lives by the motto: “I want to have frustration and excitement in good balance.”

There’s certainly been no shortage of both and since assuming the position last June, Taskila has been busy overseeing the restructuring of the airline and introducing initiatives to increase the number of routes that it serves and the frequencies of its flights. And while there are plans to introduce long-haul services in the future, for now, Estonian Air is concentrating its efforts on becoming a leading regional airline and establishing a strong network in the Baltic States, Nordic countries and Russia….

Over the last year, SimpliFlying went pretty big with infographics. Big both in terms of the issues we tackled and the buzz we generated. We scored especially huge hits with our social future of loyalty and resources dedicated to social media infographics, apart from the regular Monthly Airlines on Twitter Report published in partnership with Eezeerdatalab.

And now, we’re kicking off the New Year with a bang as we present a new infographic, in partnership with our friends at Eyefortravel, on a burning issue that airlines and travel marketers in general will be looking to tackle over the next twelve months. Two questions in particular are addressed in this infographic:

In what direction does the industry see social media evolving?
What business goals travelers are driving and if they’re calculating ROI

While we do seem to have a consensus on the answer to the first question – the future is certainly mobile – uncertainty remains about how to measure ROI on social media. (We’ve tackled this briefly in a previous infographic as well). The uncertainty looms large primarily because while there are divergent ways in which people do measure ROI, there is also a section that questions the need to …

The past year has been an interesting and very successful one for Simpliflying with a number of new client acquisitions and tons of exciting free resources such as infographics and Top 10 case-packs posted regularly to the blog amongst other things. At the brink of the new year, we relive ten of the most popular articles on SimpliFlying in 2011:

10. Social seating: Have you read about the Malaysian Airline initiative that led the airline to create a much talked about Facebook booking engine that allowed people to sit with their friends on the airline’s flights?

9. Airports in social media: In the ninth place we have a Top 10 case-pack, an initiative helmed by our Senior Innovation Officer Shubhodeep Pal, on how airports have driven engagement trough social media.

8. Blockbuster social initiative: Next, in 8th place we find one, if not the, most successful social media campaigns of 2011, the AA Advantage “mystery miles” campaign that hit the headlines in February by achieving an 84 fold growth of its Facebook fans in 54 hours.

7. Airline Twitter initiatives: In the seventh place we find …

Our friends at Eezeer have analysed the Twitter habits of airlines as well as their fans/customers for the month of November and have produced the Monthly Twitter Report in continuation with their monthly coverage and analysis of the dynamic social media landscape for airlines.

At the close of the year, it’s worth pausing to consider how quickly the social landscape has evolved over the past year or so. Airlines have not only embraced Twitter but have also realised that there’s great value in using it to drive specific goals such as revenue, engagement and loyalty. Many innovative initiatives on Twitter have been captured in our Top 10 case-packs as well. It’s worth noting that as of November 2011 there were 198 airlines on Twitter with 90 actively tweeting. This, more than anything else, is a sign of changing times and even greater change to come.

A number of facts are immediately clear from this report:

Even though most airlines have jumped on to the Twitter bandwagon, the majority of the tweets are produced by a minority of airlines. 30 airlines provide more than 83% of tweets sent out by airlines.
Delta Air Lines is still the runaway champion, having been consistently been a …

Yes, I said it: branding!

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 …