benchmark report
airline marketing
social
trueblue badges
#Unitedin Chicago
JETBLUE
UNITED AIRLINES
JetBlue has launched TrueBlue Badges . They are ostensibly the first airline to merge two important ideas by adding, to their existing TrueBlue loyalty program, a social element that allows users to earn points for social actions. The point of difference in this case is that the airline does not run two seperate programs (a social and a “traditional” one) but has simply updated its existing one to reward users for their social advocacy.
rewards will carry a real world (miles) component.
The program allows users to earn social rewards such as virtual badges, and compete with each other in a mechanism very similar to that seen on FourSquare , or recently launched new smartphone app ‘Flying’ — in which users compete with each other to earn badges by checkingin more and more. In this case, and in a more appealing aspect, many of the social
What’s more interesting is seeing how the airline has attached real world value (in miles) to many social actions: like connecting to Facebook (500 points) or sharing 5 times updates on Twitter (50 points). Often, these actions hold considerable value, as social interactions are seen as a more trusted advocate of a brand.
SEPTEMBER 2013 ISSUE
The program also has some travel-specific badges that are earned when a user travels to a JetBlue destination on the airline. Achievements are then displayed in a personalised map and transformed into rankings to allow users to compete against their friends and the wider True Blue community.
In a similar event to one hosted by Virgin Atlantic a few months ago in Boston, United Airlines ran a twitter treasure hunt in the streets of Chicago on the 27th June of this year. After posting a series of clues on twitter using the hashtag “#unitedinchicago” to their 280,000 following, Chicago based followers of @united were able to guess the location and try to hunt down a team of United employees in order to win a host of prizes, from sporting event tickets and free tickets on United through to model planes and retro United satchels, as described in an online promotional video . The driving concept of this social interaction was to get customers in front of the new United uniforms, which were launched a few weeks earlier and to
allow them to interact with both United staff and fellow travellers in a positive atmosphere. Many airline companies are becoming increasingly social media-minded and United like other brands, wants to use Twitter and Instagram and other social media tools to develop a closer dialogue with customers and get feedback about how United is doing and what it can do to be better. After a few issues with the merger between themselves and Continental United has stated it is entirely focused on improving their customer service experience.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TRADITIONAL
