Customer-centric shopping in action

How ATPCO and United partnered to get sports fans to the big game By Zachary Wynne, Manager of Airline Solutions within the Airline Retailing team, ATPCO

The American college football season has begun, with universities across the USA ready to vie for on-field supremacy in this long-held US tradition.

But through a peculiarity of geography, many of the games involve teams traveling between cities with limited flight connections.

United Airlines saw an opportunity to add nonstop service between these cities to cater to the far-flung students, university alumni, and fans who want to attend the most anticipated matches.

By partnering w ith ATPCO, United expanded its retailing reach and successfully bridged the gap between marketing initiatives and the flight shopping experience.

“We’re always looking for new ways to represent branding initiatives within flight shopping,” explained ATPCO Senior Merchandising Strategist Darí Brooks Ahye.

“I saw the football flights promotion on social media and realized rich content would be the perfect outlet to align the United marketing pushes with what flight shoppers are looking for.”

The ATPCO team reached for its playbook and proposed creating unique Universal Product Attributes (UPAs) with custom graphics to illustrate a sample promotion during a meeting at United’s headquarters in Chicago.

Seeing the potential value of a campaign like this, United agreed to the approach and in just a few weeks, ATPCO had created and deployed custom graphics that are currently live in sales channels.

Just in time for the big game. Hop on a direct flight between Los Angees, CA, and South Bend, IN, w ith United to catch the big college football game this fall.

“Channel strategy was critical to this project,” Darí said.

“Targeting UPAs to online travel agencies and metasearch engines helps broaden the distribution reach of United’s initiative and gets the content in front of flight shoppers as they search.” And United has responded positively to this approach.

This partnership with United demonstrates how ATPCO is building and enhancing the foundation of a modern, customer-centric flight shopping experience.

“It’s innovative of United to do this,” said Darí. “So many airlines say they are trying to connect with their customers. United takes the next step to not only understand what their customers really want, but then puts it in front of them throughout the customer journey.”

ATPCO isn’t just talking about the future of retailing, but is implementing it with airline and channel partners every single day.

In early October, ATPCO is gathering leading innovators in the airline business together at the Elevate 2019 conference in Washington, DC, to show great examples of what United and others have done to further the cause of a more modern retail experience for the flight shopper, and what’s coming next.

Learn more about how to use rich content to differentiate your offer by going to the ATPCO website.