Airline Marketing Benchmark Report May 2017

AIRLINE MARKETING BENCHMARK REPORT May 2017 and Issue 56

THE AMSTERDAM SNEAKER BY KLM CITY2CITY

BY ETIHAD

AIRLINES REACT

TO UNITED EXPRESS FLIGHT 3411

WELCOME Published by aviation marketing strategy consulting firm SimpliFlying, the Airline Marketing Benchmark Report contains a wide range of airline marketing case studies each month, providing you with the latest and most innovative social, digital, experiential and traditional airline marketing campaigns recently launched by airlines around the world.

Whether you’re looking for inspiration or are eager to help your airline move into the next stage of engagement, while also understanding how your airline marketing initiatives compare to campaigns from competitors in general, these repor ts are indispensable for airline professionals working in the field of marketing and corporate communications.

The monthly reports also help agencies that work with airlines stay on top of the latest innovative airline marketing initiatives.

For any questions about the report, please contact Dirk Singer at dirk@simpliflying.com.

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INSIDE This issue features: 1. Air France Marathon Scouts 2. Air New Zealand This is How We Fly 3. British Airways and American Airlines British Famous 4. Delta - Alessi in-flight tableware 5. Etihad - City2City 6. KLM - The KLM Sneaker 7. Qantas - Qantas Safety Video 8. Various - Airlines react to United Express Flight 3411 9. Various - Airlines and April Fools’ Day 10. Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair Entrepreneurship Campaigns

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AIR FRANCE MARATHON SCOUTS

If you are a business traveller, what’s one way of seeing a city if you are going to be stuck in a meeting room for much of the day? Take an early morning run out of your hotel. It’s one reason why so many four and five star hotels provide running maps of their local area.

With business travellers being a key audience for any major airline, it’s also why Air France’s focus on marathons and running makes sense.

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To promote its partnership with the Paris Marathon, Air France recruited five team members, its ‘Marathon Scouts’ to run the 26 miles before the event. Their exploits were then captured on a dedicated micro-site.

and marketing websites (see the Los Angeles Olympics site for one high profile example of this)

When accessing the site, users choose to view it in either ‘effort’ or ‘recovery’ mode. If looking at it in effort mode, The site itself takes the form of a single users are taken on a tour of the Marathon page with a video at the top followed route complete with tips. by ‘infinite scroll’ navigation, something that’s increasingly popular in destination Meanwhile ‘Recovery’ is essentially a city

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tour of Paris, where the Marathon scouts talk about hints and tips en route, from how to ascend Montmartre without the climb, to how you can go swimming a stone’s throw away from Notre Dame.

If you want your brand to be associated with an activity or a trend, any sponsorship of course can’t just be a one-off, but it has to be supported with other activity.

Hence Air France has also worked with other running events around the world, for example the airline was a sponsor of the Sketchers Los Angeles marathon in March.

On a wider level, Flying Blue, the loyalty programme of both Air France and KLM has its own running programme, ‘Flying Blue Running’ . By signing up, members get information on the best running routes at different destinations and can even use miles to enter races.

Air France is of course not the first airline to run marketing campaigns around marathons, to mark its sponsorship of the Athens Marathon two years ago, Aegean Airlines surprised runners by flying in friends and relatives from abroad who cheered them on over the final stages of the route to give them the strength to finish the race.

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KEY TAKE-AWAY Rather than just carry out a brand badging exercise, Air France has managed to really maximise its sponsorship.

The ‘Marathon Scouts’ are staff, which gives both the brand and sponsorship a human face. With its tour of Paris, the micro-site is relevant for runners and nonrunners alike and so reaches a potentially wide audience. And it’s consistent with other activity that both Air France and the Flying Blue programme have carried out in the past, you don’t question ‘why is Air France doing this?’

AIR NEW ZEALAND - THIS IS HOW WE FLY

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‘Pop up’ installations ranging from popup shops to restaurants to cinemas have become increasingly popular over the past few years. At the end of April Air New Zealand tapped into this trend by creating a two day immersive pop-up event in London called “This is How We Fly.”

Upon arrival, guests were checked in before being given a chance to “fly” from London to Auckland. As part of that, guests were able to sample Air New Zealand’s in-flight food and wine with the on-board menus designed

by Peter Gordon and fellow Kiwi chef Michael Meredith.

Housed within the Unit One Gallery in London’s Soho district, ‘This is How We Fly’ took place on 25 and 26 April and provided anyone who came into the gallery with a taste of what it is like to travel with Air New Zealand.

Visitors could relax on Air New Zealand seats, but crucially the airline didn’t just showcase its Business Premier seats.

Guests were also shown the Air New Zealand economy ‘skycouches’ designed for couples or families with young children.

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showcased Swiss, which staged a giant snowball fight in Spitalfields Market, as well as creating the world’s longest ski lift queue. Meanwhile Norwegian regularly stages events in London shopping centres. For example to launch Part of the pop-up event included a its Oakland route, the airline created an cinema featuring the screening of the LA- “Alcatraz Escape Room” in the Westfield themed film Dogtown and the Z-Boys. Mall.

Hosted in association with Visit California, this film looks at the Southern California skateboarding scene. Air New Zealand used its Facebook page to give tickets away for the screening.

Guests were encouraged to hang around thanks to the provision of free WiFi and to explore the two destinations Air New Zealand flies to from London - Los Angeles and Auckland.

Air New Zealand said that the aim of the London event was to break down some of the perceived negatives that exist around long-haul flights. According to spokesperson Chris Allison, “We’ve done a lot of research in the past year around the misperceptions of travelling long haul, and some people have a few trepidations about longer flights. We’re here to showcase everything about the Air New Zealand long haul experience, and it’s based around our on-board features.”

A number of airlines have staged experiential activity in London over the past year. In the January report we

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KEY TAKE-AWAY Air New Zealand’s thinking was simple - show confidence in your product and give passengers the chance to “buy before they fly.” However experiential events are of course not cheap and it is always an idea to widen its reach beyond the people who are physically there.

That involves inviting press down (and the trade press did cover ‘This is How We Fly’), producing short promotional films and also looking to see how you can get coverage on social media, for example by staging competitions around the event.

BRITISH AIRWAYS AND AMERICAN AIRLINES BRITISH FAMOUS

Proving the effectiveness of both international partnerships and the use of humour in advertising British Airways, American Airlines and VisitBritain, the official tourism website of Great Britain, have teamed up to spend $3.7 Million in a very funny year-long campaign entitled “British Famous”

vacation and of course to fly with either British Airways or American Airlines.

Headlined by popular, U.K.-based, cult comedienne, Diane Morgan - who is probably best know for her dimwitted Philomena Cunk character on BBC2 TV the campaign highlights Morgan’s efforts to become famous in America, by doing The aim of the campaign is to encourage things she thinks Americans will like. more Americans to travel to the U.K on

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The title ‘British Famous’ denotes the fact that she’s only popular in Britain, but is as yet unknown outside the UK. At the same time, the name also applies to the sights that form the backdrop to the campaign.

Designed to highlight Morgan’s uniquely British sense of humor while cheekily “having a go” at the world’s perception of American fame, the spots highlight the many cool, unusual destinations featured on the VisitBritain website while steering The first two spots saw Morgan pursuing visitors towards targeted travel offers for a career as a self-help guru in Wales and both carriers. a hard-partying rock star in Manchester.

The latest one shows her trying to The brainchild of advertising giant Ogilvy become an action hero by persuading a & Mather, the promotion is the first joint, couple in a remote Scottish cottage to three-way partnership between British take part in a road chase scene, complete Airways, American Airlines and VisitBritain with a mountain explosion all the way at and has already been generating loads of the end. positive buzz online.

The fourth one, due for release in the next On YouTube Morgan’s The Self-Help Guru few weeks, sees Morgan play the role of a clip has been viewed more that 6,000 foodie in London. times and The Rock Star spot is already

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KEY TAKE-AWAY

well on its way to 3K views in just under a month.

Profiled on news websites such as Travel HQ, TravelPulse.com, TravelMole.com and TheDrum.com , the cheeky, muchbuzzed about campaign looks to be a slam dunk for all involved, especially travellers with a fondness for Morgan’s decidedly off the wall sense of humour.

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Once again funny sells, and this campaign successfully plays on the kind of off the wall humour the Brits are known for. In particular the campaign draws on what Inc.com has referred to as the three elements of Millennial humour - absurdity, universality and self depreciation.

But humour in this case is really just a way to keep people watching. In particular to put ideas in North American Travellers’ minds about what there is to see and do in the UK, with of course a handy link to go and experience it for themselves by booking a flight with either British Airways or American.

DELTA - ALESSI IN-FLIGHT TABLEWARE

Ask a passenger what they ate for breakfast last Wednesday and they’ll struggle, but ask a passenger about their meal the last time they flew and they’ll probably remember – so says founder of the Inflight feed website Nik Loukas.

Not all of the memories come from the food, however. Presentation and tableware leave an impression as well.

In our March report we talked about how Delta teamed up with artists to transform seat back tray tables into works of art.

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turned its attention to what goes on them by partnering with iconic design company Alessi to produce a range of #AlessiforDelta tableware.

However not only did the range have to look good, it also had to meet airline and aircraft requirements. According to company President Alberto Alessi, “it was important that the items look beautiful, This is the first time Alessi has cooperated but we also had to focus on space and with an airline in a collaboration of weight reduction.� this nature and the tableware has now started making an appearance in According to Alessi the whole project Delta’s premium cabins, including Delta took three years to come to fruition One, First Class and, in late 2017 Delta and involved input from the people who Premium Select. actually have to deliver meals to seats the cabin crew.

The range includes 86 individual items spans flatware, crystal glassware, new One example of the emphasis on storage bone china, stainless steel serving pieces, as well as design comes from the Wine tabletop accessories such as napkin rings glass, which Wired magazine says and salt and pepper shakers and trays. requires 33% less room to store, a key

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benefit when working in an environment where space is limited.

With Alessi being very well known among style conscious consumers worldwide, the initiative has had extensive coverage in design, travel and business publications.

In addition to the lengthy feature in Wired, pieces also appeared on Conde Nast Traveler, Curbed and Dezeen, to name a few.

As Bloomberg reports, the Alessi partnership fits into airlines trying to woo passengers with their so-called ‘soft product.’

For example, while Delta has chosen to work with Alessi, KLM’s business class tableware and linen comes from Dutch designer Marcel Wanders (who also happens to count Alessi as a client).

Meanwhile Finnair has for the past five years had a very successful partnership with Finnish design house Marimekko.

In addition to appearing on-board, the items are available for purchase on the Finnair online store.

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KEY TAKE-AWAY While airline / design company partnerships are not new, the Delta initiative worked for two reasons. First, most premium cabin passengers will be aware of Alessi and quite possibly even have items in their own homes.

It’s a household name among a certain demographic.

Secondly, Delta and Alessi were able to maximise the PR value of the story through ‘making of’ features where they talked about the process of getting the tableware from the design studio into the air, including some of the very specific challenges that an airline faces.

ETIHAD - CITY2CITY

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It has long been a trend for airlines, among those in the Gulf in particular, to sponsor some of the world’s most famous sports teams in a bid to become involved with the passionate communities surrounding them.

for example Emirates shot a video at a Benfica match, while a Qatar Airways video featuring the FC Barcelona players notched up 25 million views within three weeks of going live.

Recently Etihad took its football sponsorship programme one stage further to show how it helps the sport at a community, as well as a professional level.

For example when looking at football / soccer, Qatar Airways sponsors FC Barcelona, Emirates supports a range of clubs including Real Madrid and Arsenal, while Etihad has since 2009 sponsored Manchester City.

“City2City” is a joint venture between Manchester City and Etihad, which These sponsorships have in the past takes the form of a micro-site and a translated into in-flight safety videos, series of short documentary films. Each

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film features the “untold stories of the grassroots game” in a different city.

The first episode featured the Chinese capital Beijing, following the story of local footballers Huang and Ding who are helping train a new generation of footballers in China.

The second episode was released on 20 April with the focus being New York.

Introduced by football legend and New York FC head coach Patrick Viera, the film revolves around the story of Spanish Harlem resident and up and coming women’s soccer player Shaeline Diaz. So far this video has notched up over 750k views on YouTube.

20 minute films and three minute short versions) are shot in a punchy, engaging Future cities in the series include Paris style. And by having a mix of sporting and Mumbai. celebrities such as Patrick Viera and human interest stories, the videos really The videos were produced by acclaimed draw the viewer in. youth media brand VICE Media, which founder Shane Smith has said he wants On the website, each film has a ‘call to to turn into the next CNN. This year the action’ where visitors are invited to media company announced plans to watch the clip and then answer a simple more than double its presence by moving question in exchange for being in a draw from being in 34 to 80 countries, and to win Etihad tickets to Abu Dhabi. brand partnerships such as the one with Etihad are a key part of its strategy.

Finally the series of being promoted across Etihad’s social media channels, The tie-up has really paid off as the with Etihad cabin crew providing videos (which feature both full length 15- destination tips around each of the cities featured in the films.

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KEY TAKE-AWAY One theme we’ve talked about in our reports is the importance of making any sponsorship more than a logo badging exercise. After all, any brand with enough budget can pay money to be associated with a sport, event or a team.

But what can you do to add an element of realness and authenticity to it? Also, why you? Why can’t another brand do what you are doing and if you swapped the logos around would anyone notice?

Etihad is answering those questions by linking together three key elements: Its existing relationship with Manchester City, some of the key destinations that it flies to, and human interest stories via grassroots football.

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KLM - THE KLM SNEAKER

According to the Daily Beast, sneakers are a “hugely lucrative juggernaut”.

They are an integral part of fashion, music, style, street culture and they are worn by hundreds of millions of people every day. Little surprise then that airlines have recently been developing sneakerthemed marketing campaigns, most recently KLM.

KLM produced 150 limited edition orange and blue sneakers.

They were then auctioned off via a micro-site targeted at Scandinavians, the idea being to promote Amsterdam as a weekend break destination for regional travellers. The €5,000 raised from the sale was donated to UNICEF.

According to Pool copywriter, Ulf With the concepts and designs coming Rönnbäck, “We had the shoe made after from Swedish advertising agency Pool, a few criteria—it had to be durable since

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it really should be used for walking, it should support the foot, the outer had to be durable as well, as the weather in Amsterdam is not always sunny, and we figured it had to be able to bear a spill of beer too.”

With only 150 produced, you can imagine the sneakers becoming collectors’ items that will soon be appearing on eBay. However now that KLM has done the initial design, you can also see the potential of how these sneakers can be used in future. KLM’s marketers could for example give them away to certain key account customers, or they could be used as a tool to promote Amsterdam as

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a stop-over destination for KLM transit passengers.

Another airline that has worked with sneakers is easyJet. Last year, the British LCC produced a ‘vibrating sneaker’ prototype.

Tested on the streets of Barcelona, the easyJet “Sneakairs” linked to Google Maps and vibrated when it was time to turn left or right. Meanwhile earlier this year, HOP! Air France staged a stunt where parents bought sneakers for their children who were living away from home. One shoe was sent to the child, the other had to be collected via a HOP! Air France flight.

KEY TAKE-AWAY The KLM Sneaker ticks a lot of boxes. It’s something practically every millennial, a core audience for Amsterdam citybreaks, wears. The fact that only 150 were produced gave it a scarcity value.

KLM was able to create content around the sneaker and Amsterdam walks on its social media channels. And as we’ve explained, it is a tactic that could easily be brought to life again to be used in other marketing campaigns and initiatives.

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QANTAS - QANTAS SAFETY VIDEO

In 2016, Qantas rolled out its first campaign with national tourism body Tourism Australia since 2012 by launching a new in-flight safety video showcasing a range of Australian destinations.

The video didn’t feature images of the aircraft, instead “ordinary” Australians took passengers on a tour of their home country, providing safety briefings in different iconic locations (for example, the lifejacket demonstration happened at Bondi Icebergs).

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The 2017 safety video builds on last year’s film by having a similar style and theme. Regular members of the public show off different places in Australia while providing the all important safety information .

As a result, by featuring everyone from a troop of indigenous dancers in New South Wales to a window washer at the towering Q1 skyscraper at Queensland’s Surfers Paradise beach the spot doubles as a sensational down under tourism spot as well as a safety video.

Shot over 12 days in 15 breathtakingly beautiful locales across the country, including Sydney Harbour, the ski slopes of Victoria’s Mt. Hotham, a beach teaming with kangaroos in Cape Hillsborough, and the runaway of a fashion show in Melbourne, the clip was so epic in scope that it even had a world-class Hollywood premiere at the Loew’s Hotel in Lost Angeles.

At the Hollywood launch of the video, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce explained that the goal was to ”make the safety video engaging as well as informative. We know the combination of beautiful landscapes and laidback Aussie charm really cuts

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through. It’s also why this video doubles as a perfect tourism ad.”

Sixty versions of the video have been produced to accommodate eleven different languages and the different types of aircraft across the Qantas fleet.

Last year’s video was viewed a whopping 90 million times across social media and Qantas is hoping for a similar success this year. At time of writing, the video has received extensive coverage in travel and marketing media such as Traveller.com. au, news.com and the Australian media and marketing hotspot Mumbrella.

KEY TAKE-AWAY Australia is incredibly photogenic and it regularly appears on top destination of the year lists from publishers such as Lonely Planet.

Tourism Australia also has the distinction of hosting the largest (in terms of followers) destination social media channels in the world.

Another airline which used its home country in a safety video was Lebanese airline MEA. The video, which we featured last year, shows cabin crew and a dance troupe around landmarks such as the ruins of Baalbek and the Pigeon Rocks in Beirut.

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As a result, the video serves several purposes. It gets passengers’ attention by visually and mentally taking them outside the aircraft environment.

It ties the Qantas brand into the warm big-hearted spirit of the Aussies featured on the film.

And if leaving the country, it provides a prompt for passengers to travel with the airline again, by making them think about another holiday to Australia.

VARIOUS - AIRLINES REACT TO UNITED EXPRESS FLIGHT 3411

Readers will need no introduction to United’s recent crisis, when David Dao suffered injuries after being forcibly dragged from United Express Flight 3411.

This made news worldwide to the point that the incident now even has its own Wikipedia entry.

on the back of this to produce their own marketing campaigns in response to United’s misfortunes, in particular Emirates, Qatar Airways and Royal Jordanian.

Royal Jordanian has featured prominently in past issues for award-winning A number of airlines have since jumped campaigns where they trolled Donald

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Trump and his Muslim ban. In the same spirit, the airline released two tweets, one had a smoking ban image with the words ‘Dragging is strictly prohibited’ accompanied by the hashtag #United. A second one had a smiling pilot with the words, “our pilots happily welcome you on board.”

Qatar Airways made a joke about United’s smartphone app supporting a ‘drag and drop feature’, by changing the description of its own app to read “doesn’t support drag and drop. We take care of our customers as we unite them with their destination.’

The biggest splash of all was made by Emirates which produced a short video ad, sent out by social media.

changed United’s ‘Fly the Friendly Skies’ motto into ‘Fly the Friendly Skies….This Time For Real.’

As it appeared on social media and used stock footage, the Emirates video will have cost very little to produce.

Yet at time of writing it had been retweeted over 10,000 times, reaching according to Tweetreach 518,000 individual Twitter users. It also generated global media coverage, with Bloomberg, The Daily Mail and the Chicago Tribune being just some of the outlets to devote articles to it.

Following the incident SimpliFlying has decided to boycott United Airlines for the foreseeable future. In a video CEO Shashank Nigam explained that this decision is due to United’s poor customer service record through the years, culminating in what happened on Flight 3411.

This simultaneously celebrated the fact that Tripadvisor had chosen Emirates as its airline of the year and mocked United CEO Oscar Munoz for calling the Gulf carriers ‘not real airlines.’

In a follow-up video, Shashank Nigam commended United for some of the The video highlighted that Emirates was operational steps it has taken in response selected for having both the World’s best to the incident, but pointed out that economy and first class cabin, before communications and social media are showing images of the Emirates flight still areas that need to be addressed. experience. The social media ad then

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KEY TAKE-AWAY Capitalising on another brand’s PR disaster is always risky. Emirates was able to do it because of consistently high customer satisfaction scores, and because it could link back to previous disparaging comments about it from Oscar Munoz.

Before trying something like this, question whether your brand will stand up to similar scrutiny and whether there are any skeletons in your closet that an enterprising journalist could unearth.

Needless to say, never do something like this if there is actual loss of life involved.

This is what London Luton Airport did several years ago. The airport used a photo of a Chicago plane crash on Facebook to illustrate the fact that it could deal with any snow problems, leading to the airport receiving extensive negative news coverage and having to make multiple public apologies.

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VARIOUS - APRIL FOOL’S DAY COMPILATION

Christmas-themed airline spots have become holiday staples over the years - and the bigger, the better.

But these days, a new holiday has emerged as a major marketing force to be reckoned with and the results are often off-the-charts hilarious.

We are talking of course, about April Fool’s Day.

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This year, the pranks reached new heights that its April Fool’s joke revolved around with airlines outdoing themselves in the aircraft size, in particular the debut of the spoof stories they pushed out on the day. world’s first triple decker aircraft.

Some of the highlights are as follows: The new APR001 (get it?), features a Southwest kicked things off in high style swimming pool, games room and an with a cheeky clip highlighting their new actual park on one of its flight decks.

Bucklr dating app which supposedly pairs single travellers up inflight. The film Qatar Airways meanwhile posted a pic showed a young woman walking into an on Facebook touting their new YouSuite aircraft and swiping up or down much like which is a solitary chair in a spacious, with Tinder on viewing other passengers. tastefully-appointed aircraft cabin.

Low cost carrier Scoot created a hilariously retro, informercial-style spot for something they called the Velcro Suit 2000, which would not only make remembering to pack all those extra carry-ons a breeze but also featured a Emirates is the largest operator of A380 link touting Scoot’s real-life extra 7kg aircraft worldwide and so it’s no surprise cabin bag promotion.

That particular idea isn’t of course that far removed from reality, with KLM already offering a ‘Meet and Seat’ facility via Facebook (though not a dating feature, in theory it could of course be one!)

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Not to be outdone, Russian carrier S7 posted a pic on Facebook of their new astronaut-inspired Borscht in a tube. This again ties into a campaign the airline has done before, last year Cosmonaut Andrei Borisenko fronted S7’s “Best of Planets.”

Atlantic CEO Sir Richard Branson himself appeared in a spot promoting the airline’s new “flapenergy”-fueled aircraft, the Dreambird 1417 which flies by flapping its metal wings like a bird.

Air Baltic took the first two letters of their newest destinations - “Ma” for Madrid, “Ge” for Geneva, “Go” for Gothenburg, and “Od” for Odessa - to create an entirely fictional place they called Magegood.

However the airline also offered passengers a 15% discount on future flights when using the e-voucher code: Magegood.

UK regional carrier Flybe announced that their new Welfare Of Our Passengers Officer would be a very cute dog and as usual, Ryanair went against the grain by promoting services that they actually offer -- like cheap package holidays, two carry-on bags and fares as low as €9.99.

But when it comes to airline April Fool’s pranks, it’s hard to top old pros like WestJet and Virgin Atlantic.

WestJet pushed out a very funny spot touting a name change to Canada Air using the hashtag and discount promo code #MostCanadian airline , and Virgin

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KEY TAKE-AWAY While April Fools’ Day is an opportunity, it’s also a challenge - practically everyone is at it, and you can’t always cut through the noise. As Mashable explained last year, this makes it tough to get right especially as “humour is not right for every brand.”

However by and large the airlines succeeded for two reasons. First of all the things they did were in-line with previous brand efforts.

So, S7 had a space theme, which links into a previous campaign. Virgin Atlantic used Sir Richard Branson fronting the kind of video you could imagine him doing anyway.

Meanwhile in the case of Air Baltic, the joke tied into actual destination launches and gave fans a real incentive (a money off voucher) to be in on the joke.

VIRGIN ATLANTIC AND RYANAIR ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAMMES

Virgin Atlantic founder Sir Richard Branson is of course one of the world’s most high profile entrepreneurs, so it is only fitting that his airline has released a podcast devoted entrepreneurship.

Launched on April 25th, ‘The Venture’ is a branded podcast that explores the adventures of starting and running an industry-changing business by interviewing different entrepreneurs.

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Designed to be a six part series, at the time of writing one episode has been released. The subject of the first episode is record label ‘Kill Rockstars’, an independent company formed in 1991 in Olympia Washington and known for signing underground punk bands.

with podcast creator Gimlet Media.

None of the six episodes will look at aviation, instead each one will follow the stories of entrepreneurs from outside the airline industry.

While the link between Richard Branson and entrepreneurship is clear, there is of The podcast series is available on social course a question on using podcasting as network Soundcloud, as well as on a medium.

Spotify, Google Play and Apple Podcasts.

It is being produced in cooperation In fact, despite being around for over

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ten years, podcasts have a respectable audience so much so that in a recent LinkedIn post, author Jason Miller wondered why more marketers aren’t using them.

Ryanair isn’t the only airline to be working with a leading business school.

For example, Emirates has a partnership with Carnegie-Mellon University and currently funds an ‘CMU-Emirates-Silicon Valley Innovation’ Lab.

In his post, Miller cited a survey of 2,700 LinkedIn members worldwide which showed that among department heads, VPs, business owners, and board members, 44% tune in. “Put something imaginative and original together and they could be listening to you.”

Another airline that has been promoting entrepreneurship is Irish LCC Ryanair, which in April announced that it was donating €1.5 million to Trinity College University Dublin. This money will be used to fund a Ryanair Professor of Entrepreneurship. Ryanair’s money is being channeled through the Ryanair Foundation, which exists to support charitable and educational projects across Europe.

Arguably a sponsorship of this nature would have been unimaginable under the ‘old’ Ryanair even five years ago, and it shows how far the brand has travelled over the past few years.

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KEY TAKE-AWAY Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair’s focus on entrepreneurship works because it has credibility.

Both Richard Branson and Michael O’Leary are instantly recognisable business figures, as well as being known for shaking up the airline industry in different ways.

Virgin Atlantic focus on podcasting is interesting especially given the increased popularity of audio based social media, with companies such as Soundcloud, Anchor and Pundit, all having made waves over the past few years.

ABOUT US

SimpliFlying is a global consultancy that believes in thinking differently about aviation marketing. Having worked with over 50 airlines and airports around the world, it has presences in Singapore, UK, Spain, Canada and India.

Today, SimpliFlying advises airlines and airpor ts on customer engagement strategy, achieving aviation business goals by harnessing the latest innovations in the social media space.

The firm also conducts MasterClasses to train and develop airline and airport teams to become self-sufficient in executing measurable and rewarding social campaigns.

SimpliFlying’s growing list of clients includes Lufthansa, Emirates, Toronto Pearson Airport, Halifax International, KLIA, Jet Airways, LAN Airlines, airBaltic, Airbus and Bombardier.

Get in touch at engage@simpliflying. com or visit simplifying.com.

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