benchmark report
airline marketing
one million points
igital
fly my meal
QANTAS FREQUENT FLYER
The concept of generosity has been an increasingly popular marketing concept in recent years. As WPP agency Fitch puts it: “We have identif ied a loose family of brands we call Generous Brands. By ‘generous’ we mean that these brands are prepared to make gestures that are not just commercially motivated but empathise with consumers: these brands show their hear tbeat.” To celebrate the milestone of 10 million members, the Qantas Frequent Flyer program launched an initiative that showed how air travel can really make a difference in people’s lives. Qantas par tnered with News Corp Australia and The New Zealand Herald to give away one million Qantas Frequent Flyer Points to readers who submitted an inspirational story how one million Qantas Points would change their life. About 200,000 people around Australia
AUGUST 2014 ISSUE
MONARCH
entered the competition and the winning stories were picked by a Qantas’ Frequent Flyer member judging panel. The campaign generated many moving stories , including the following one from Dan from NSW, who was among the winning entries. “My 24 year old daughter Victoria is disabled. She suffers from Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia. Vikki is likely to be in a wheelchair by the age of 30. But this isn’t a sob story. Vikki is passionate about travelling and working with disadvantaged kids. She has visited many places in the past 3 years as a suppor t worker for special needs children in Queenstown and worked in an orphanage in Chang Mai. Vikki’s travel and helping all these wonderful children will inevitably stop if/when she is conf ined to a wheelchair. A million Qantas Frequent Flyer points means she can travel ex tensively before this happens.”
Many airlines have been experimenting with co-creation campaigns in which the general public creates, or has a say, in the development of new products and services. For example, in the f ield of inf light catering, Cathay Pacif ic a few years ago held a ‘The Ar t of the Deser t’ contest in the USA in which it asked its Facebook fans to come up with an Asian-inspired desser t, snap a photo of their creation, and submit it online for voting. The winner then had her desser t served on the airline’s f lights out of Nor th America. Meanwhile, ANA currently lets its social media fans on Facebook, Twitter and Weibo vote on which meal they would like to see added to the Economy Class menu, with the most recent voting round receiving over 6,000 votes in total. In the UK, leisure carrier Monarch and its
onboard par tner Alpha LSG this summer are calling on children to enter their Fly My Meal competition, the winners of which will have their say on Monarch’s new kids’ inf light menu. The competition asked kids local to each of Monarch’s six UK bases to submit a photo of themselves holding a handwritten description or drawing of their favourite meal. Closing date for entries was on 3rd August 2014. Two children from each region have been chosen to attend an off icial tasting session in London on 13th August. There, they will taste-test a shor tlist of dishes created by Alpha LSG’s head chef from competition entries nationwide, before deciding the f inal menus for Monarch’s onboard meals served to over 19,000 children every year.
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EXPERIENTIAL SOCIAL DIGITAL TRADITIONAL
