A picture speaks a thousand words, so I’ll share with you the screen shot of an email by Virgin America that was posted by a blogger last week. Three words to describe this marketing effort – appropriate, effective and spreadable.

Don’t you think?

• Reality check: Why social media can be the solution for airlines’ grey skies
• Virgin America takes in-flight experience to a new level
• Virgin America’s online community – bull’s eye, or a flop?
• What makes Virgin America an outstanding airline brand? The delivery.
• Richard Branson’s interview about Virgin America goes viral. But why?

I have another confession to make. I haven’t been on Virgin America, and I really want to try it! (the first confession was a couple of weeks back that I haven’t been on Southwest, and that I wanted to meet the rapping flight attendant). Why the sudden burst of emotions? Well, because I just watched an interview of Richard Branson in one of those purple-blue cabins and I was mesmerized, yet again.

Why is it all the rave? Thanks to The Nerdist.

Because this time, Richard was interviewed by Chris Hardwick, “The Nerdist“, and Chris has been generating lots of comments on the interview, been Tweeting about it and making a lot more fans for the airline than probably a Virgin America advertisement in the morning daily would have. Why am I so sure? May be because on Twitter, Chris has 20 times the “followers” that Virgin America has! And I bet his website gets more hits than the Virgin America website too.

The point I’m trying to make? Airlines are in the service business, and not in the transport business. And because of that, airlines cannot shy away from social media anymore. Be it working with influencers like Chris or The Cranky Flier, or providing accelerated customer service through Twitter. In an interview with USA Today. JetBlue’s CEO Dave Barger summed up my emotions about social media best:

“My sense is that really – not just in America – but the around world there’s what’s known as mainstream media. But, new social media, it’s there. It’s real-time…. It’s Real.”

I just think that Dave Barger makes a lot of sense. What do you think? Watch the Branson video below and share your thoughts in the comments section, or come talk to me (@simpliflying)  on Twitter.

There are still two more autographed copies of the book on Singapore Airlines to be given away, and a 4gb Apple iPod to be won. You too can be a winner, just by re-tweeting a comment from SimpliFlying or leaving a comment on this site. Learn more here.

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• Virgin America’s online community – bull’s eye, or a flop?

In my conversation with airline executives, I often emphasize my belief that an airline’s brand is what it does, not what it says it does.  And Virgin America in the US is proving to be very good at delivering their brand promises – that of presenting the customer a new way to fly.

I’ve written in the past that Virgin America  is good at living up to a highly-differentiated brand positioning. Be it Sir Richard Branson or the zingy flight attendants. Be it the smaller-than-usual boarding passes or the in-flight safety video. All elements enforce a strong Virginisque brand personality, and it is this which continues to linger in the customers’ minds long after they leave the plane.

Here’s a true account of a passenger who’s comparing her flights from Boston on Virgin America and Delta, and you can clearly tell why Virgin America is a clear-cut winner – because of their impeccable brand delivery.

• Top five branding insights from Virgin America
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• Virgin America’s online community – bull’s eye, or a flop?

….
In the last part of his three-part interview, Joe Crump,  the VP of Strategic Planning at Razorfish, reveals that instead of fearing the recession, airlines around the world can use it as a catalyst to build strong brands. Joe believes that “incredibly narrow constraints usually present the biggest opportunity for innovation”. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Companies like Apple, GE and Toyota have emerged stronger by just doing that in the past. In fact, the airline industry is full of success stories from the recession as well, like AirAsia and JetBlue. Right now, Virgin America in the US is doing a fabulous job at building a strong brand by offering great value in the recession.

Digital investments = greater ROI

Joe makes a startling revelation in his interview below. He shares that contrary to popular belief, investments in product upgrades on-board an aircraft, as well as other “hard” invesments like frequent flier lounges seldom match the return possible from “soft” investments like online media and a solid SEO (search engine optimization) strategy.

As I’ve stated in my previous articles on the topic, investments in building a strong digital brand presents a tremendous opportunity for airlines in a recession. Just the effeciency of the medium is often far beyond traditional mediums and investments that Joe mentioned. It’s something airlines should be seriously considering. Joe states that “airlines can use digital to drive loyalty, by using the medium to add a voice to the airline”.

Predictions for 2009

As shared in my first article of the year, Joe is looking forward to surfing the internet on-board airlines and is curious to see what opportunities arise from this developement. Moreover, he believes that “transactions” and “advertisements” will become much more seamless than they are right now, in 2009.

Here’s Joe Crump, un-cut. You can view all three parts of his interview here. 

• Airline brands need to emerge from the “jurassic era” – Joe Crump
• Joe Crump of Razorfish predicts doom for airlines that don’t build digital brands
• Airlines need to build strong digital brands to survive the recession in 2009
• Laura Reis of Reis & Reis feels airline social networks are “ridiculous”
• Landor Managing Director Allen Adamson reveals that creating a powerful airline brand is the ultimate test

Continuing the series of interviews with Joe Crump, the Vp of Strategic Planning at Razorfish, I’m pleased to share with you the second of his three part interview. Joe continues to amaze with his in-depth knowledge of not just the branding world, but also of the airline industry, since he’s a frequent flier himself.

Target the niche and appeal to the masses

When asked whether airlines should carve out a niche or target everyone, Joe responded with an intriguing answer – do both at the same time. He shares the example of Virgin America, which stongly markets itself to “the connected class”  but the budget conscious traveler often boards the airline too, since they offer such a great value product and service.

Do digital branding efforts need new measurement rules?

At the recent Interact 2008 conference in Washington DC, Joe had mentioned that the “Interbrand brand rankings are dead”. I dug in on his comment to find out what he really meant. Joe explained that the old rules of brand engagement have changed, since a brand’s digital presence now needs to be taken into account too. Hence the methods to measure them also need to be adapted to the current practices. And this is especially true for airline brands, since they’ve been operating by rules set in the 60s, and not those meant for the new millennium. Hence, they need to emerge out of the “Jurassic era” and adopt digital branding. Fast. 

“Before and After”, the true opportunity

Something very interesting Joe shared with me was how he defined brand experience as having a beginning, middle and end. It’s the middle that airlines currently focus on – the in-flight experience. Hence he sees an immense opportunity for airlines in the “before” and “after” flight brand experience. Adn the key to unlocking the true brand potential here will be going digital – since much of the entry brand experience with an airline happens online. Herein lies the hidden opportunities for airlines around the world.

I’m sure you’d enjoy hearing an industry thought leader’s ideas on airlines, branding and Web 2.0. Here’s Joe Crump, un-cut. You can view all three parts of his interview here.

What do you think of Joe’s ideas? Do you also feel that traditional brand rankings have lost their relevance? Is there a need to come up with a benchmark just for airlines? Let’s hear your thoughts.

• “Use the recession as a catalyst to build strong airline brands” – Joe Crump
• Joe Crump of Razorfish predicts doom for airlines that don’t build digital brands
• Airline industry and branding outlook for 2009: Experts speak
• Conde Nast Traveler 2008 airline rankings prove that product is the brand
• Can Jet Airways survive the recession (and what does the Kingfisher alliance mean)?

I’ve had the opportunity in the past few months of interviewing a number of distinguished thought leaders in the aviation and branding industry over the past few months on SimpliFlying. But a recent encounter in New York has left a deep impression on me, since this brand leader’s ideas truly resonated with what I’ve been writing about technology branding for airlines lately.

I’m referring to my conversation with Joe Crump, the VP of Strategy & Planning at Razorfish – the leading digital branding agency. At one point in the interview, he predicts that “any airline that doesn’t go digital pretty damn quick is going to find itself obsolete”. And he has 25 years of experience in branding and technology to back up his foresight.

Airline branding – “genuinely complicated”

In his interview, Joe shared that the fundamental problem of the airline industry is that “of over-promising and then inconsistently delivering”. And this is mainly because of the number of externalities airlines need to deal with – from fluctuating oil prices to severe weather conditions – all of which often impact the business negatively. Ultimately, it’s detrimental to the brand and makes airline branding “full of rich challenges”.

Expanding the brand “beyond the browser”

Joe also discloses that the “least important part of brand building is how you talk about it”. It’s the brand experience that matters most, and in case of airlines, begins much before a passenger steps on the plane. These days, it starts on the Internet. Joe believes that airlines cannot afford to have stale websites anymore, as they’re competing against the likes of Apple and Coke, when it comes to delivering an online brand experience.

He shares that airlines like Virgin America, JetBlue, Southwest and Ryanair are setting new benchmarks in web interaction. Personally, I’ve had great experiences with Cathay Pacific as well. But most of these airlines are pretty agile and generally young, without legacy baggage.

Joe’s advise for legacy carriers is that they need to renew their culture by imbibing a spirit of innovation across the airline. An example of this he gives is that of American Airlines adopting Go-Go for providing wifi in the air.

Without revealing much more about the man and his ideas, let me jump straight to the interview. Below, you’ll find the first of three parts of Joe’s interview. The other two parts of his interview will be posted on SimpliFlying on 21st and 23rd January.

What are your thoughts on Joe’s analysis? Do you agree with him, and my earlier assessment that airlines need to go digital with their brands? What’re some examples of airlines succeeding at such efforts, and failing too?

• Airline brands need to emerge from the “jurassic era” – Joe Crump
• “Use the recession as a catalyst to build strong airline brands” – Joe Crump
• How can legacy airlines, airports or hotels make an entry into social media? Start from within
• Social media mogul Chris Brogan joins SimpliFlying’s Board of Advisors
• Airlines need to build strong digital brands to survive the recession in 2009

Image via Wikipedia

Virgin America is the latest airline to foray into Web 2.0. It follows hot on the heels of similar initiatives by AirFrance-KLM, Lufthansa and sister-airline Virgin Atlantic. The big question is whether the effort is worth it, or is it yet another futile attempt? Will it help the brand? What else can be done to improve the website’s effectiveness?

What’s good about the “community” website?

…
Well… firstly, I think it’s a move in the right direction, and Virgin America has got a number of things right in their online community. Let me quickly review what’s good about the site, which will help the brand:

Reviews and stories: Site visitors are able to submit their stories of flying with Virgin America. There is also a section called “The Scoop”, which not only displays these stories, but also offers integration with leading online tools like Facebook and  Twitter. This is certainly good to get the customer warmed up to the Virgin America brand.

Engaging: The site has interactive features like the “toy box” where they can play games like “Voyage Simulator”. There is also a contest they can take part in, to be the “President of the Community”. These and other features are good for engaging the customers with the brand.

Tickets everywhere: The website has a panel on the left of the screen, which is essentially a flight booking form. Moreover, special offers sprout all over the website. This is a good strategy of inducing sales from visitors who have already “bit the bait”.

Now that Virgin America has already done a neat job with the website, how about some interesting ideas about increasing site adoption?

How abut engaging the passenger, in-flight?

Now that Virgin America has wi-fi on-board its planes, the airline should capitalize on this capability to engage the customer in-flight too. What better way to do this than by setting the community website as the homepage on the in-flight entertainment (IFE) system?

Those accessing the site from on-board the plane can have their personal details automatically added from the booking they would have made earlier (this can then be used to provide a custom homepage too!). They should be able to create an account online, and automatically be prompted to write a review for the flight they are on. After all, stories are best shared when fresh! Passengers should be able to store contact details of people they meet on-board while “chatting” through the plane’s entertainment system.  This would offer complete integration with their offline and online experience.

What do you think about these ideas? Do you think Virgin America has hit jackpot or is this another dud? What are some risks pursuing such an active online strategy? Let’s hear it in the comments section.

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Image by caribb via Flickr

………

Innovative products and services – the key ingredient for strong brands – ooze out all the chart-toppers in Conde Nast Traveler 2008 airline rankings released recently. Last week, in an interview with this blog, Gary Leopold, the CEO of ISM Boston shared that “the product is the brand”. This certainly holds true for for the top few airlines in each category. Below, we’ve pointed out what the top two airlines in each category do right, that makes them so good.

Surprise! in the air

Before we get into what the to airlines do right, how about pointing out some surprises about this latest ranking? Interestingly, Singapore Airlines operates only one trans-Atlantic flight (Frankfurt – JFK), and yet they are in the top two airlines on this route. Even though they don’t use their latest and best planes on this route, the great brand leverage they’ve built for themselves continues to give them lots of mileage on this route.

Where are the US airlines? Bad product + Bad service = bad brand!

………

The US airlines are glaringly missing from the international rankings, but even in the domestic US rankings, where are the biggies? Right at the bottom. Only Continental is in the top three, and Delta just peeks in at the fifth place. Where is United Airlines? Where is American Airlines? Where is Northwest Airlines? The fact that these airlines are missing further enforces the importance of having a strong product to build a strong brand in the airline industry. Will the US airline industry ever get back its mojo? We wonder… May be the rest need to learn from the upstart, Virgin America, which has topped the ranking in just one year!

Here are some rankings from the annual Conde Nast Traveler business-travel awards 2008:

Top Trans-Atlantic Business Class

Top Trans-Pacific Business Class

Top U.S. First and/or Business Class

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A Virgin America boarding pass

In a recent blog post, Cam Beck at MarkeringProfs.com mentioned that he had attended a workshop by Stephen Anderson and Travis Isaacs on effectively organizing information. The result of that class was an airline ticket redesign Cam and friends did, as shown below. Cam went on to suggest in his article that once unnecessary information has been removed, there enough space for a special offer for the passenger too! Personally, I feel the both the re-designs below are an immense improvement from the existing ticket designs. So how can these better designed tickets help increase brand affinity?

Original airline ticket

Ticket 1: Re-designed air ticket

Ticket 2: Re-designed ticket with offer

Three ways air ticket re-design can increase brand value

We all recognize that an air ticket is one of the few ways that an airline brand physically interacts with the customer. So what’re some ways airlines can leverage on this?

1. The power of surprise: Can you imagine what a pleasant surprise it will be for the hapless traveler when he sees an easy-on-the-eyes and different looking ticket? Not only will it be a stark departure from traditional ways of getting someone’s attention, it will surely be etched in the memory of the customer as being out of the ordinary. This association will surely help brand recall – and he’s bound to tell other about it.
2. Increased brand affinity: Surely, airlines can find an inch or two on the re-designed ticket to stamp their logo. If the ticket fits nicely in a pocket or wallet, it is likely to remain there for a long time (people tend to be lazy and forgetful about these things). That means that whenever people take it out, they’ll recall their “pleasant surprise” and the hopefully pleasant flight experience that followed. What better than this for increasing brand affinity?
3. Win-win situation: As Cam suggested in his design, a portion of the ticket can be used to present an offer to the passenger. This can be anything from a free upgrade, a free meal coupon (since some airlines now even charge for water!), or an offer from a partner, like a 10% discount at the Apple store. Businesses would probably jump at this opportunity too, given the long “shelf-time” of a ticket. A perfect win-win situation. Customers are happy, and airlines cultivate an additional revenue source.

Surely a simple ticket re-design cannot solve all of an airline’s problems. But small steps can certainly be taken to make the passenger happier.

What do you think? Do you think this will work? Or is it over-optimistic?
What happens when e-tickets and e-boarding passes is all that exists and there are no boarding passes to be printed out?
How can airlines still use this as a means to increase brand affinity?

Let’s discuss…

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Image via Wikipedia

In service businesses like airlines, first impressions count. On my hour-long American Airlines flight last evening from Toronto to Boston, I was welcomed on-board by a cheerful flight attendant, Heather. She was genuinely pleasant (and not over-doing it) and extremely courteous, even though she was the only flight attendant on board the small Embraer jet. She played along when people were not paying close attention to the safety demonstration, and cracked jokes while serving beverages. A very pleasant experience – but that’s just one tenth of the job done for the airline when it comes to creating first impressions.

Creating lasting first impressions – a hundred million times

Air Canada’s Robert Milton mentions in his book that on average each passenger comes in contact with the airline ten times, every time he flies. This may be through the call center, website, at the check-in counter and of course, on-board the plane. So if an airline flies 10 million passengers per year, there would be a total of 100 million interactions on average! So how can airlines create a lasting first impression, every customer interaction? Here are three ways.

1. Exceed expectations. Before a customer interacts with an airline, he has certain expectations formed through advertisements, word-of-mouth or previous experiences. Airlines should aim to exceed them. Reduce the waiting time at the call center. Have pleasant check-in counter staff. Cater to the fliers’ needs on-board. This is not to say that each and every airline must spend millions in sprucing up service levels, but rather exceed the expectations they have set themselves. For example, budget airlines like AirAsia promise on-time performance and not in-flight luxuries. They then ensure these metrics are adhered to. Airlines like Thai Airways and Qatar Airways promise a pampered service for their business class passengers, and then deliver it. Prioritize, then execute and keep the word.
2. Stay consistent. Every time a customer interacts with an element of the airline, from the website to the stewardess, he registers the moment as a future reference point. There is no substitute for a consistently good experience across multiple interaction points. An airline cannot afford to let the customer wait for 35 mins before speaking to a call center officer, or have unfriendly staff in a frequent flier lounge operated by a partner airline while having extremely courteous flight attendants. It is not just the on-board service that a customer cares about. An unusable website can chase away customers just as much as a dirty plane. Hence, consistency is key to creating a lasting impression.
3. Be different. A pleasant surprise almost always makes for a great first impression. Virgin America’s  famous safety video surprised even the most seasoned traveler with their off-beat safety instructions. Kulula.com’s advertisements never show any planes, but rather everyday travelers and common South African folks stuck in a funny situation. Their advertisements often contain more slapstick humor than a stand up comedy show. Again, creating a very different first impression than a screen full of smiling stewardesses and jumbo jets.

At the end of the day, an airline must maximize every interaction it has with the consumers. The easiest way to do that is to create a lasting first impression.

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