A few progressive airlines are quietly using Social Media to re-invent client-facing parts of their businesses. Their success makes them great examples for the rest of the travel industry and big brands at large. A study of social media outreach in the airline industry reveals three major transformative opportunities:
Monitoring Feedback and Issue Resolution
Twitter is proving to be a very efficient way to monitor feedback in real time and resolve customer issues quickly. JetBlue, who is often cited as an example of smart corporate use of Twitter does a terrific job at it. Started as an experiment in the spring of 2007 by Manager of Corporate Communications, Morgan Johnston, their Twitter feed @JetBlue has now over a 1.6 million followers. During its 10th anniversary summit, @JetBlue even created a dedicated hash tag, #jblc10, to push people to voice their feedback.
Southwest learned the need to monitor social conversations in real time the hard way. In February 2010, an incident involving movie director Kevin Smith and the Airline almost turned into a PR debacle for the brand. Thankfully, Southwest, an early adopter of social media (July 2007) was ready to respond quickly and personally to the incident, using twitter to make public amends. Today @southwestair has over a million followers.
Obviously, waiting for an unhappy customer to ‘call’ customer service makes it unacceptably late in the new real time world.
Increasing Branding and Brand Loyalty
Engaging customers using Social Media networks are a great way for airlines to build brand experiences outside of the actual flight. One brand that does an outstanding job of building brand loyalty via personalized conversations on Facebook and Twitter is Virgin America. @virginamerica has almost 80,000 followers on Twitter and about 60,000 fans on Facebook. This week, Virgin America’s Facebook page featured the story of a couple who first met on a Virgin America flight and got engaged this week at the airport in front of the baggage carousel. These types of posts are usually interspersed news and announcements effectively humanizing the entire communications stream. Virgin America has earned a lot of good press for extending their customer-focused, tech-savvy and fun branding on to the web using social media. Twitter even selected them as one of the first brands to roll out their paid ‘sponsored tweets’ program.
Direct Marketing
It should surprise no-one that airlines are capitalizing on customer engagement goodwill to sell tickets. JetBlue has a separate twitter feed, @jetbluecheeps, to post deals (typically on Mondays) giving “the already spontaneous audience of Twitter users a chance to grab great last-minute fares”. @jetbluecheeps has over 78,000 followers. Virgin America and SouthWest broadcasts deals on their main feeds, effectively merging sales with customer stories, service and corporate communications. Occasionally these airlines run contests to stimulate growth and engagement, say 50% off the ticket for the next 50 Twitter followers. As with other channels on the web, actual ROI in dollars can be measured by embedding web analytics tags into outbound message links.
It will be interesting to see how the recent Passenger Bills of Rights affects airlines’ use of social media. David Martin, CEO of the social networking site Kontain.com probably articulated it best as quoted in a CNN article “You can’t just write in a complaint or call customer service anymore… social media, it’s the only weapon,” he said. “Airlines need to be more terrified of that than the actual bill, because they’re going to have to compensate passengers anyway each time they get held up on the tarmac, but they’re also going to lose passengers because their brand will be destroyed every time a passenger uses social media.”
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Jun 10
Why luxury fashion brand marketers need to embrace Social Media faster?
Maintaining the aura of exclusivity has always been a goal for luxury marketing. High end brands have been fashionably late to the social media party. However, it appears that at least a few players in the industry are finally making an entrance on the social media catwalk.
The trend started in early 2009, when new bloggers started appearing in the first row of fashion shows along high-stake buyers and fashion magazine editors. Bloggers like Bryan Grey-Yambao, the founder of BryanBoy.com (@bryanboy) and Scott Schuman creator of the Sartorialist Blog, (@sartorialista) were quickly able to demonstrate the power of social media with impressive reach and engagement. BryanBoy.com alone gets 215,000 unique visitors a day. Compare that to alternatives like, say, the British Vogue magazine, which sells just over 200,000 copies a month.
While it appears that the luxury fashion industry is continuing to embrace social media slowly but steadily, here are three reasons why smart high end marketers should fast track their social media efforts:
Fashion is innately social: Luxury fashion audience tends to be passionate about the products they buy. And they are more loyal to and more engaged with brand. And being passionate, loyal and engaged is what social media is all about. Diane von Fustenberg, (@insidedvf), who seems to have been focusing its effort on Twitter has now over 68,000 followers. In 2009 both Dolce & Gabanna and Louis Vuitton live-streamed their fashion shows on their website, giving the public instant access to their new collections.
The elite crowd you seek may already be on social media: According to Nielsen’s Q1 2010 Consumer Confidence Survey, 75% of the active U.S. Internet households now visit a social networking site. More importantly, 96% of Generation Y, the next generation of luxury consumers, is using social media according to Facebook statistics. Twenty-seven percent of these people also claim that their purchase decisions are influenced by information gleaned from these sites, according to a study by Hill & Knowlton. The Oscar De La Renta Resort 2011 collection that was live streamed on Facebook, (@oscarprgirl) in June 2010, reached over 35,000 fans.
Social Media offers a low cost way to grow the customer base: Social media happens to be a low-cost way of launching ephemeral new products in a tough economy. It shortens the cycle between launch and reach to their audience which normally averages 3 to 6 months. Diane Von Fustenberg has seen its web-traffic increase by 13% and a noticeable upward jump in sales. Oscar De La Renta, is more focused on diversifying their audience when using social media. In their own words – “We’re a family-owned, relatively small business competing against big players (…) We have to constantly be looking for ways to get an edge, to punch above our weight”.
While major players like Chanel, Gucci and Kenneth Cole are noticeably absent on the social media scene, we expect them to come up with their own spin in this new and emerging channel. Mainstream brands are already embracing social media as a viable and measurable channel and it is only a question of time before luxury brands figure out how to make it work for them. Will these high end brands lose their luster of exclusivity by going social? Will increased revenue offset the loss of luster? Let us know what you think by leaving your comments.