Search results matching tag 'British Airways'

Welcome to Britain Mr T - I doubt you'll want to stay

1704826 — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:44:00 GMT

In the same week that Mr T landed in Britain to flog Snickers bars, Britain welcomed back Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyan Mohamed who arrived after the Foreign Office successfully lobbied the US for his release.

At the end of last year British Airways announced that it would offer Mr T, who found fame as BA Baracus who had a fear of flying, a free flight ahead of his ‘Get some nuts’ marketing campaign for Snickers. Ethiopian Mohamed, on the other hand, was arrested in Pakistan and accused of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb.

While Binyan Mohamed and BA Baracus can both share the claim that ‘they were convicted of crimes they did not commit’, what this incidence also shows is the mendacious power of PR.

For British Airways, it’s quite a smart stunt given that these things usually leave me cold; for the Government, however, to claim that Mohamed’s release is some kind of victory and that he should be welcomed back (although his presence in Pakistan has never been fully explained) is I think rather perverse.

Thank goodness BA doesn't select the Lions

1715701 — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:09:00 GMT

If the British & Irish Lions were selected today not a single English player could be sure of his selection.

And certainly any English player unable to break into our shambolic national team can probably go ahead and book his summer hols without to much worry of a Lions call up.

So it is puzzling that when BA chose its two players to PR its new official airline status of the British & Irish Lions, one would be Josh Lewsey.

The fullback is a fine player but has been out of the England set up since that remarkable night in Paris last autumn when the team advanced to the World Cup final. Someone at BA should have known that.

To make the odds on the player making the Lions squad even longer than they already were, the player chose this week to announce his retirement from international rugby.

Who else would be a terrible choice to PR the airline's sponsorship deal? Gavin Henson - tucked in next to Josh waiting for take off.

Henson has stuggled with injury for a while now and when he was fit managed to get himself dropped from the Welsh team due to his ‘state of mind'. Someone at BA really should have known that.

Let's face it, the only one of these three likely to be on the plane to South Africa next summer is the stewardess.

Where next for social media as adspend shrinks

255762 — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:17:00 GMT

Despite social media being the biggest buzz topic this year, 2009 is not going to be easy. Yet another study says the amount of advertising revenue these sites were expected to pull in is going to sink.

Emarketer says the social media phenomenon will continue to grow, but not the revenues being generated. It is almost a cause and effect scenario. People have been commenting all year that sites like Facebook and Twitter are exciting and offer new opportunities, but do not pull in the revenues.

EMarketer has revised its projections for US social network ad spending down for 2008 from $1.4bn to $1.2bn.

But its 2009 downward revision is much greater, from $1.8bn to $1.3bn - barely any increase on 2008.

The two factors that have caused this to happen are slower-than-expected revenue growth at MySpace (still the big daddy in the US) and the recession. eMarketer has revised its forecast for MySpace and Facebook down. It had previously predicted that MySpace would bring in $755m in US adspending in 2008, but it has cut that by a whopping 22.5% to $585m. It has opted for a similar large cut at Facebook saying it will bring in 20.8% less than thought - $210m instead of $265m.

It is really difficult to say what impact this will have on marketers. Experimentation in marketing can often be the first casualty when budgets are cut. Clearly this is even more correct when you have an area of the digital space such as social media that has yet to prove itself in a commercial sense.

That said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson is warning marketers not to write off social networks completely.

"In a difficult economy it is usually easier to market to an existing customer than to acquire a new one. With a relatively small investment, companies can use social networks to cultivate relationships with customers who have already raised their hand and expressed interest in their brand or product."

The eMarketer report follows one last month by IDC (U.S. Consumer Online Attitudes Survey Results Part III), that was critical of marketers' efforts in social media (it called them "stillborn"). Harsh, but there are plenty of stillborn efforts out there that have simply been abandoned, such as blogs that were started but failed to get traction and communities that were launched but did not have any errr community?

In a way the problem is at both ends of the equation. Marketers are still not totally sure what they are doing or are going to do or how they are going to successfully work with these sites (or exploit the medium themselves) and social networking sites have yet to reach their destination in terms of defining themselves: what they are and what they offer.

Maybe it does come back to the debate about how you can monetize someone's chitchat and social life? And, ahem, then there is the fact that not enough people click on ads.

That was the message recently from Procter & Gamble's head of marketing, Ted McConnell, who said companies should not advertise on Facebook, saying social networks have no right to monetise their customer's conversations and that it is "arrogant" to monetise social networking platforms.

Well tell Facebook and MySpace about it - they have enormous amounts of advertising inventory but have had a hard time selling it.

In its report IDC said the way forward for social networking sites was to become more like portals, which suggests services like Facebook need to bolt on additional attractions.

Does that mean services like Twitter? Twitter spurned it once, but a deal could still be done.

At this rate Facebook could snap up what's left of Yahoo! and bolt its entire service on to a larger portal. There is also talk of Facebook launching some kind of TV channel. MySpace with its music offering is well on the way to doing something similar in owning that space.

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Future of Social media - (3) BA does social media

255762 — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:29:00 GMT

Final bit from the Future of Social Media Conference, Chris Davies, digital marketing manager from BA, was good on the challenges that new media marketers can face internally and he did with the world's (sometime) favourite airline. Bit of an update also on its new social media site (MetroTwin.com).

He kicked off by talking about the BA Pam Ann viral, which was a big hit and a challenging project for BA.

I'd seen this and thought at the time it was a smart move. It is funny, a little edgy, and not the kind of thing you expect BA to do. Davies said he had a difficult time getting these through senior management who were clearly nervous about the implications for the brand.

You can see why, but it was a big hit. He says the first, second and third efforts were largely rejected and it was not until the fourth pass that this viral bit of content reached the web.

The results speak for themselves. It attracted millions of views and 5,000 referrals to the BA jobsite for cabin crew, which was one of the main goals of the viral along with showing the professionalism of its onboard staff.

He estimates it probably achieved £700k worth of media spend and it is still going. Davies also revealed that comedienne Pam Ann could be set to make a return in a new set of BA virals.

The next project he highlighted was BA's Caribbean Challenge, which the airline launched to educate consumers about its routes and to capture data. Nothing really inspiring here, an online game with entrants going through to a prize draw, but that said the seeding work that BA did here was what was most valuable.

The airline working with Agency.com seeded the game to blogs, communities and discussion forums and it is building those links that helps marketers succeed in social media.

Finally he gave a little news on its latest venture, which is truly social media: MetroTwin.com BA's new London and New York social networking site, which builds on all things NYLON. If you've not seen it take a look. There's lot to admire.

The idea is to partner with various sites, Beauty & The Dirt, Xfm, VisitLondon, Not for Tourists and Dandy & Witt among others, to bring the best of London to New Yorkers (and visa versa) in terms of food, drink, culture et cetera.

The idea is to offer the best and cut through the clutter. Time will tell. I think personally it is a smart idea. It was interesting to hear him talk about how BA weighed up the pros and cons of "should we launch our own social media site or partner with an existing one" before launching. In the end BA clearly voted to go it alone and create a new social media property because it was so strongly associated with the London/NT route (it’s the airlines bread and butter) and because it has a large database via its executive club.

The site has only been up for a month and so far has racked up 3,000 registered users in three weeks.

The site's USP is its twinning of venues/places in London and New York and allowing people to vote and rate them. For instance the Peculier Pub in New York (rated 48 by users on the site) is twinned in London with Ain't Nothin' But...(rated 61).

This brought him on to the potential perils of user generated content and the legal implications, which he said was another tough sell inside the organisation. It is amazing sometimes to hear the resistance that brands have to opening up and allowing the consumers in. Do they not now realise that if they don't let them in they will stand outside and make a bloody (social media) racket?

He was spot on though when he said that the key to UGC is an excellent moderation policy. He also reiterated his views on seeding. So repeat after me: seeding, seeding and more seeding.

I could be wrong, but I don't think he mentioned Twitter. First one of the day I think.

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The easy way to customer relationship management, not.

322703 — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:22:00 GMT

When you fly on a cheap airline you can expect to be travelling cattle class but that doesn't mean that brands like EasyJet and Ryanair (especially given their profit warnings) can afford to treat customers like cattle. In today's consumer dominated marketplace and credit crunching times, the customer may want cheap prices but still expects to be treated well.

Our railway system may be one of the worse in Europe but it could still teach brands like EasyJet a few things about customer service. I don't usually use blogging as a way to publicly moan but then this piece is all about customer experience and my recent joyless trip on EasyJet wasn't a good one. If I were Andy Harrison (Chief Executive of EasyJet) I'd get a team of customer relationship consultants in very quick.

This is one area they are failing at, given my experience and almost 200 passengers who travelled from Madrid recently. I've always wondered in this modern age why check in desks are so slow? Why have technology if you can't use it? If McDonalds ran check-ins we'd all be through them in seconds not hours. If there's two thing that many pieces of research have told brands it's queuing and lack of information really upsets customers. Especially when they are waiting in stressful situations.

It was this customer insight that motivated the Underground to install the dot matrix system to inform passengers of train arrivals and got Tesco's to put more check outs in. It often pays just to have someone walking about reassuring customers and keeping them informed. Yet with this wisdom freely available, why do so many airlines go one step worse - even their own staff haven't a clue what's going on. Instead you get rumour and passengers soon start to voice their frustrations to each other, just adding fuel to the fire.

I'd planned to use the waiting area to do a survey into attitudes towards flying and the environment but instead all I got was a lot of moaning about customer service. After several hours of having my ear bent all I'd established was that most people agreed that we needed to fly less but somehow they didn't feel part of the problem. Finally, almost 4 hours later, we were on the plane. It's that point when you think, "oh well at least we're on our way home." But there was another problem.

We had one too many passengers. How can that happen with modern computers you may well ask? Well the staff didn't know either. I suspect human error. Now there's a saying that ‘it's not how hard you fall buy how high you bounce'. When a Virgin customer complained that a bag had fallen on his head (through no fault of the airline) Branson rang him up personally and offered him a pair of free flights anywhere in the world. You can imagine the situation in the office, "John, there's a call for you and it's some guy called Richard."

Even if that was a PR stunt it worked, many punters know the story and it's one that gives Virgin a good image. We probably all suspect BA's response would have been less than friendly, whereas Rynair would probably have found a way to charge the customer for the pleasure of getting bashed. Having worked on several airline marketing accounts, including BA, the one thing that makes or breaks a brand is not the advertising or the lure of cheap prices but the customer experience.

A brand isn't a nice colour scheme, typeface and slogan, a brand is what people feel and say about it - reputation is all. And in these times of social networking and blogging, word travels fast (the fact I'm writing to a potential audience of 300,000 proves it). It was Branson who said (referring to BA's big ad spend) "instead of spending millions trying to tell people I have a better airline, I spend my money on making it a better airline. My satisfied customers do the rest."

Branson has always put his customers first - value the customer and they'll value you. It's a good warning to all brands that in these credit crunching times you need to keep focused on the customer. Now with the extra passenger problem solved (no one knew what happened to him) we finally take off. Surprisingly we aren't offered free drinks or food, unlike GNER or National Express who give it free after any major delay (and a refund on your fair).

After much wrangling I finally got a free coffee but having missed my evening meal the only way I was going to get a bite was by paying for it. That option didn't last long. A short while later we're told all the sandwiches have run out so no food. Thank goodness I'd packed an Eat Natural bar, always a life saver. I can't say that there was a lot of enthusiasm from many passengers I spoke to after we landed for flying EasyJet again.

"Easy? it was anything but," commented one irate passenger. The few parents on board were especially frustrated. Yet it would have been so easy to have made them happy customers. In my free copy of the EasyJet in-flight magazine Andy Harrison invites his passengers to write in with suggestions. So I did. That was over a week ago (you can't say I didn't give them a chance to reply). I waited. Two days passed. Four. Six. Eight days...no reply. So much for customer relationship marketing.