benchmark report
airline marketing
30 days of friendly
#tellMOL #grillMOL
UNITED
To celebrate and promote United’s new brand campaign ‘Flyer Friendly ’, the airline between September 27th and October 26th offered its social media followers the chance to win daily prizes including Economy Plus seats, MileagePlus miles and domestic roundtrip tickets during a ‘30 Days of Friendly ’ ‘random acts of kindness’ initiative. To kick off the month-long event, on the first day of the competition United offered a tour of the SFO Maintenance Centre, which could be won by answering a simple question on its social media channels. The giveaway campaign ran on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, although all winners were announced on Twitter. The ‘generosity’ competition is part of United’s much larger ‘Fly the Friendly
NOVEMBER 2013 ISSUE
RYANAIR
Skies ’ campaign (featured in the October edition of this repor t), which includes radio, magazine, newspaper, outof-home and digital adver tising. The continuously expanding campaign also includes two videos recently launched on YouTube, showcasing the needs and experiences of the airline’s travelers, from rock stars to entrepreneurs .
Ryanair – Europe’s largest carrier and the world’s 2nd largest LCC (after Southwest) in terms of passengers carried – is perhaps one of the most disliked at the same time, with most comments on social media focussing on the negatives rather than the positives of the airline. These comments have been fueled and cour ted by outspoken CEO Michael O’Leary (MOL in shor t), who has constantly belittled it’s travelers, even publicly calling them stupid . Recently however, O’Leary announced a change in his attitude (possibly forced by his board), saying he wanted to change the airline’s brash nature and is welcoming input from passengers to help change the carrier and improve its service offering. Changes are already underway, including more relaxed bag and boarding pass re-
issue policies, while a new website is also being developed. At the star t of October an online suggestion platform and a twitter feed, using the tag #TellMOL , were launched to allow the public to send suggestions to the airline’s CEO and open a dialogue. To suppor t this campaign, Ryanair on 22nd October hosted a live twitter conversation with O’Leary using the tag #GrillMOL on its month-old twitter feed. Sadly, the twitter conversation didn’t go fully to plan, as it star ted at the wrong time and resulted in several remarks coming from the CEO that were inappropriate .
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TRADITIONAL
