Socially Catering Airline Passengers and Brand Loyalty in the World of Social and Mobile Media
Missed Connection, Missed Opportunity to Positively Socially Connect with Airline Brand
Can this really be happening to you?! After you waited 45 minutes on the tarmac, just to be moved to another plane that did not have enough flight crew, which caused a you to have an overnight stay in a in a connecting city that you had no desire to stay in, without luggage, and no cell phone charger. To make matters worse, you now have to wait in line behind the other 80 people that missed their connection, with only two customer service agents that have no authority to do anything other than give you a card to call customer service (that happened to have closed 15 minutes prior to you calling). This makes you have to rearrange your other flight plans for the week, because you now have to re-schedule tomorrow’s $500,000+ client presentation (with one power bar left on my phone) which you will now have to fly to them as opposed to them meeting them at your office. This has probably put you in a very bad place… at least in mind and temperament. Ok, I could be projecting my most recent airline encounter.
Yet, I know I am not alone. With over 2 billion airline flights worldwide each year, it is estimated that 15-25% of flights are delayed, with 2.5% of airline flights canceled (Source AirlineComplaints.org & NY Daily Journal). In travel requiring multiple connections, an additional 2-6% of airline passenger flights are missed do to carrier connection delays in which the first carrier was late on arrival causing the air traveler to miss their connecting flight (U.S. Department of Transportation). Additionally, flights missed outside of the airports ability to control, 7% of consumer missed flights is self inflicted by the consumer not giving themselves enough time to arrive to the airport to handle all the eccentricities’ of travelling in a post 911 world.
For the airlines marketing brand, ironically, and to the airlines dismay, fault, in today’s socially interconnected world of Facebook, YouTube, UStream and the 250+ other social networking communities, is 90% of the time blamed on the airline (Adreka Social Analysis – Airline Industry). In 2010, within the social sphere, over 2.8 million blog entries depicting a strong dislike or bad airline experience has been reported since January of 2009 (Adreka Social Analytics). Given that the average social account averages 130 friends / syndicated connections, the net influence of an airlines brand name is potentially muddied in the eyes of 364 million future customers.
So what can the airlines do in the way of brand strategy to take the sting out of the consumer’s temperament and still maintain the bottom line?
The Reactive Airline Marketing Response
The frontline of an airlines brand defense is to know your customer! Give real time support, anywhere! Most customers just want access to quick information, to questions like where’s my gate, and is my flight on time. If a problem arises, over 90%+ of customers want to vent yell at someone. We want to feel that we are heard and understood. Given empathy and understanding is a majority of the battle. Peer to Peer (P2P) communication via teleconference is the easiest way to deploy massive, centralized, and real-time customer support over the footprint of X major airlines, servicing on average X hubs domestically, Y worldwide.
Create a positive outcome, syndicated brand strategy – Problems will always arise, you’re your organization handles crisis as it occurs will define your brand socially. Whether it be voice, video, or an online chat, record and socialized the consumers end result – they are already going to talk about it on their facebook page, beat them to the punch and turn a consumer question, or resolved issue into a marketing opportunity.
The Proactive Airline Marketing Response
Monitor and engage all social media. There are over 500K new blogs posts daily, with approximately 5% being travel related, allows ample opportunity for an airline to measure, monitor, engage and positively re-enforce brand daily.
Create Tools and Mediums to better foster proactive communication. P2P in customer service kiosks, Iphone / Ipad apps, 24/7 customer service lines, allow the customer to be engaged early, prior to their issue being turned into a negative experience and shared with prospective future customers through socialization.
Provide automated or real person follow up dependent upon the severity of the situation. Reaching out to your customers, post a rectified bad customer experience, adds an additional layer of we care.
Airlines that implement a portion of the strategy points above will have in essence an unfair competitive advantage over those that ignore the socialization of their consumers negative travel experiences. Not to mention, it any of the above airline brand strategy steps would have turned my negative experience into a positive story about an airline that had a unified brand and loyalty program. Because of my negative airline experience, I was able to create a real world case study with a simple solution that I will potentially save the airlines tens of millions of dollars in brand loyalty loss, and provide consumers everywhere with a better travel experience. I believe I just proved capitalism and karma can co-exist!
Happy travels to where ever your final destination may take you – John Cataldi – The Real Mad Man
Twittiquette, most get it, some don’t, this post may not save your life, but potentially your reputation. This is my personal RANT on Twitter Twittiquette, or the lack there of. Personally, first, I like to Tweet. For those less familiar with the medium, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users’ updates known as Tweets. As a social media tool, Twitter adds additional depth to social suspect of interest, whether that be an individual, group, celebrity, sports team, political candidate, etc.
Recently, I heard Twitter dubbed as the “SMS” of the Internet. Just then it all became clear, SOME Twitterers treat their Tweets as if it was a personal journal of communication between friends, though what most fail to consider is unlike SMS which can selectively send to an individual or select group, Twitter is a broadcast medium. Based upon your user name, subject criteria, and freshness of tweets, you may attract the wrong type of follower.
Thus the Twitter Rant on the Subject of Twittiquette:
Twittiquette Rule #1: THINK SAFETY: Always put your safety first. NEVER give out personal information. June 24th 2009, Man tweeted that he was going on vacation, gave dates of his departure, even syndicated his post to his Face Book page, good post, right?! Well is may have been, but in the end his home got robbed, which was a likely result of Twitter’s ability to reach hundreds of thousands of people, by making his post searchable to everyone, including the thief.
Twittiquette Rule #2: DON’T TWEET ACTIVITIES YOU DON’T WANT TO TELL YOUR MOM: What goes on the Internet, stays on the Internet, especially when you may be syndicating your message to the dozens of search bots that will help add your posts in the form of search queries to leading search engines and social networks. Case in point, when I am looking to hire new talent or research a potential business relationship, I use social media as a research tool. For twitter, doing an advanced twitter search is easy http://search.twitter.com/advanced . A few weeks ago I was interviewing new candidate for a sales position. The young man that posted, “omg it was only 10 thirtay and im already drunk!!”, did not get the job.
Twittiquette Rule #3: I DON’T CARE IF YOUR BOWELS ARE REGULAR: Please be interesting, NOONE Cares that you clogged a toilet from your big dinner last night, and we certainly do not need a picture or GPS location of the offending download to the porcelain receptacle. Yes, share yourself, write about the interesting things that shape your life, random thoughts that make your laugh, the places your go , the people you meet, but for god sake, sometimes there is REALLY NO NEED TO SHARE!
Twittiquette Rule #4: FRIEND COLLECTORS BE GONE: Your no TOM, you don’t need to be everyone friend just for the sake of saying you have 100,000 friends, Really stop it.
Twittiquette Rule #5: DON’T BE A TWEET WHORE: There is no need to dominate a conversation, in person or on Twitter. If you send more than 2-3 tweets out at a time, you will come off as obnoxious, and I don’t think that is the look you were going for.
Twittiquette Rule #6: LESS SELF PROMOTION MR MARKET GURU: Twitter is a good way to promote your business. I have made both relationships and real dollars though the responsible use of social media. Tweeting gobs of self plugging is just wrong….. in Twitter terms… bird poop.
Can the application of perfectly targeted advertising go as far as predictable behavior modification?
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In the year 2015 people have access to a breath and depth of information, unmanageable in an earlier era. Everyone contributes in some way, participating to create a living breathing media scape,“ is the opening of one of the most compelling media presentations who’s plot consists of a series of real life events from 1989 to 2005, and continues through a series of hypothetical events to 2015 AD.
As an connoisseur of all things adverting, I am compelled to believe the more relevant and individualized content is package and delivered the more meaningful it would be to the end user. Though in 2008, most media is fairly generalized. Advertisers do their best to put their media messages where they believe it will best convert into potential customers, but I can assure your well over 50% of most media campaigns are wasted regardless of medium.
But the winds of change are upon us. People are becoming more free with their personalized data, whether they know it or not. Reminiscent of Minority Report, which depicted John Anderson, played by actor Tom Cruise, walking through a Subway where all of the advertisements were specifically targeted to his character that identified him by rental scan that seemly accessed a database of his consumption habits, lifestyle, demographic, and geographic, and served his advertising which was most relevant to him through a series of holographic billboards. Precursors of this technology exist today, though not at the point that would make it cost advantageous for agencies to spend the dollars to create the infrastructure to track, store, and disseminate the data feeds to external devices. To fast track a similar ad platform would require an advertising organization (Eg. Google, Yahoo, Interpublic, Omnicom, WPP) to joint partner with both a GPS / blue tooth enabled mobile network(s), and a physical media network that has locations in densely populated areas that could provide close proximity to their target customer (Eg Clear Channel, Lamar, CBS Outdoor).
So how would such a system work you make ask? Initially, GPS tracking via your mobile device would be the most likely choice. Current estimates reportedly suggest that “nearly 84-percent of the US population will have mobile phones by the end of 2008, which is projected 99% percent within the next 5 years,”according to SNL Kagen Mobile Research. GPS tracking would not only tell you where you are, but your continual geographic data feed overlapped with information on venues, business, and time is various locations would begin would build a fairly accurate depiction of your life and consumption habits. Moreover, through the utilization of blue tooth technology, RFID product tagging, could allow a secondary data concerning products of interest. Whereas, RFID tags could transmit every product you hold in proximity to your cell phone, as a suspect product of interest. Thus, a cumulative and combined database of geographic, demographic, travel habits, and interests are tabulated through an algorithm which then finds the most relevant advertisement given your current situation through a media device that is in proximity to your personal “blue tooth” envelope.
The end result of the proper application of timely media could go as far as predictable behavior modification. John always goes to Starbucks Coffee in the morning, but he was running late. Taking the subway to work. John notices the video panel playing a Starbucks commercial that says, “Did you miss your Vanilla Latte this morning (which happens to be the drink John always buys), there is a Starbucks location 1 block from your next stop across from the exit”. What luck John exclaims, I’m getting off at the next stop, its almost like they knew… or did they?!
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