In this study, we reviewed a cross sample of 24 airlines across a spectrum of short-haul, long-haul, low cost and full service airlines from around the world with a focus on the Asia Pacific region, the world’s biggest economic growth market, to give an assessment of the industry’s use of the most relevant social networks from a traveller’s perspective. The full report, Social Landscape Review - Airline Industry 2012, with 480 pages of detailed analysis of social media assets of the 24 airlines listed in the whitepaper, is available for purchase.

1. WHITEPAPER
The State of Social Business
The Airline Industry 2012
10 July 2012
Deb Wiseman and Anne Bartlett-Bragg
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2. Overview
“…in the coming years digital channels will reshape more than just marketing and public relations.
These channels are set to impact all aspects of business. Today we can see increased use of
digital channels for customer service and employee engagement as two obvious examples. But
companies are also increasingly adopting enterprise communications to increase speed and
efficiency of operations. Social networks are being leveraged to make companies innovate and
shorten the time it takes to bring a new product or service to market.”1
The rapid developments in Social technologies over the last few years, the airline industry has
seen opportunities for Social Media and has increasingly pursued presences across various
platforms. These presences cover a wide variety of content strategies that simultaneously
experience differing levels of customer interaction and engagement.
In this study, we reviewed a cross sample of 24 airlines across a spectrum of short-haul, long-
haul, low cost and full service airlines from around the world with a focus on the Asia Pacific
region, the world’s biggest economic growth market2, to give an assessment of the industry’s use
of the most relevant social networks from a traveller’s perspective.
1 Asia-Pacific Corporate Social Media Study 2011, Burson Marsteller
http://www.slideshare.net/bmasia/burson-marsteller-asiapacific-corporate-social-media-study-2011
2 ATA Vision 2050 Report, February 2011
http://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/Documents/vision-2050.pdf
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3. In an industry based on service and experience, it is not enough to create a social presence to
only push content. The study assessed savvy content management as well as engagement
across each platform. The more consistently an airline engaged with the consumer to reach
resolution or simply responded to comment, the higher they scored.
The study uncovered the most successful airline brands, the weakest and the reasons behind
those placements. The most important finding was that all airlines seem to be failing in meeting
basic consumer expectation within social. When consumers interact with social technologies
there are expectations on service and experience that can be viewed as an extension of offering.
We call this shortfall “The Consumer Gap” and believe there is massive opportunity for airlines to
shift social to more than a communications channel and into a viable extension of the business, to
become socially optimised businesses.
Key !ndings
• Airlines predominantly use three social platforms- Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
• Airline activity ranges from mere presence, to sales drive, to considered engagement.
• The airlines which are more successful, tend to score highly across all the channels
they activate in, indicating more confident understanding and with a potentially
dedicated social team and strategy.
• The number of Facebook likes does not impact on success within the platform.
• Multiple Twitter accounts across region and communications purpose (e.g. Customer
Service versus Brand) seems to cause confusion amongst consumers, with
consumers choosing to approach the most popular accounts when they engage.
• YouTube usage is dwindling with increased activity on Facebook. Many videos do still
see high viewership figures and these successful videos explore inflight and service
experience. These are most likely found via search.
• Content sharing across Pinterest and Instagram is left to the most brave of the airlines,
which are still finding the best way to use these platforms. Flickr activity may have
been quite prevalent at one point, but with the rise of other more widespread
channels, activity here has dropped off.
• LinkedIn is a tricky medium to balance between recruitment of staff and engaging
corporates to fly on a particular airline. Even the airlines which have the recruitment
angle right, struggle to find engagement with corporates as potential travellers.
• A handful of blogs are still heavily active and include customer submissions in
addition to in-house created content. The main purpose of blogs has become to
capture any potential searches. Outside of that blogs are not seeing much interaction.
• Mobile applications are the future, with travel and mobility going hand in hand. Some
airlines are providing booking capabilities and flight information through mobile, a
handful more focus on promotion and less on the passenger needs. There is
significant potential for airlines to activate successfully within this channel to extend
the service and engagement experience.
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4. Assessment criteria
For this study, we have created specific scales of measurement for each platform to correctly
reflect airline proficiency within the channel. For example, relevant customisation on Facebook is
important in demonstrating that a brand is making serious effort to develop additional tools that
resonate with their customer. A brand knowing how to engage on Twitter with the relevant
conventions and displaying clear YouTube content strategies are all vital in determining the
scores for these airlines.
The platforms assessed included:
• Facebook;
• Twitter;
• YouTube;
• Content sharing across Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and Flickr;
• LinkedIn;
• Blogs; and
• Mobile Applications for smart phones.
We did not measure Google+ as actual consumer activity is weak in comparison to Facebook.
In general, scores reflected the following on a scale on 1 to 10:
• 1 to 3: reflects little use of the platform and presence as a placeholder only.
• 4 to 6: indicates some more frequent use but no real understanding of how to use the
platform to the airline’s advantage.
• 7 to 8: indicates more regular postings, engagement and appearance of a considered
strategy.
• 9 to 10: indicates that an airline is strategically using the platform in a way where both
consumer and airline derived value from the exchange. Creating a more social
business operation not just social communications messaging platform. This
exchange is relevant to each particular platform and appears to close the consumer
gap.
This data was captured in May 2012.
The Landscape
The nature of the aviation industry calls for high levels of customer service across the traveller’s
spectrum of airline experience, yielding a variety of negative and positive sentiment. On the
negative, delays or issues happen often and consumer dissatisfaction is voiced across the social
sphere, not always being handled well and sometimes not at all. On the positive side, most
people love to travel and engage with airlines to find the best cheap flights or an even overall
travel experience for booked travel arrangements.
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5. For the 24 airlines we examined on Social most activities are self-serving. Self-promotion is
rampant and the airlines that are the most successful are those that choose to combine their
marketing efforts with strong customer service. We see these airlines offering a combination of:
• The deals and promotions that customers want to take advantage of;
• Creating fun campaign elements to keep followers interested; and
• Handling customer service queries that are both positive and negative.
From a snapshot view, there appears to be an overall lack of effort by airlines to meet the social
consumer needs of engagement vs. broadcast or promotion.
The 6 airlines below provide a snapshot of the highest to the lowest scoring performers within the
report.
Airline Facebook Twitter YouTube Content LinkedIn Blogs Mobile Total
Sharing Apps
/10 /10 /10 /10 /10 /10 /10 /70
8 7 8 7 8 8 7 53
8 7 7 5 4 9 6 46
6 7 7 0 6 0 0 26
7 6 4 3 1 3 0 24
2 5 2 1 2 0 4 16
1 1 0 0 1 0 0 3
Top performer overview: KLM
KLM is well ahead of any other airline. Their strength lies in the ability to incorporate their brand
and offering into socialised components. This implies that different elements of the business work
together to create a cohesive experience for the traveller across the selected social channels.
Furthermore, their ability to customise tools to meet a consumer and traveller’s needs reflects their
focus on trying to enrich the traveller experience to build the brand image, over too frequent a
push on repetitive marketing messages. This is further demonstrated by the airline’s skill in
navigating between brand marketing push, handling customer enquiries and engaging
campaigns. These campaigns are strategically developed to both reinforce the brand message
and to benefit the traveller’s experience.
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6. Their mobile app is one of the most sophisticated in the industry. KLM begins to meet the shift in
expectation that mobile technology provides to consumers by implementing service extensions
that reshape the business socially. However, there is still opportunity to revolutionise this offering
and provide a more complete service experience through this channel.
Mid performer overview: Jetstar
Jetstar places in the middle of the pack because of their level of navigation between promotional
elements and customer service enquiries on Facebok and Twitter. It is a fairly basic engagement
without much customisation to Facebook providing a one-note experience to the consumer.
The remaining activity across channels is poor with activity established as a placeholder and
without strategy. A blog sits inactive for over a year and YouTube videos market the brand over
experience, reflecting an overall focus that is communications oriented instead of one which
embraces a more social business to benefit customer experience.
Jetstar could improve by adding more customisable features to Facebook which support the
brand image and benefit the community. Other platforms, which have little or no activity, should
be hidden from public view until a more robust strategy is established. Development of a useful
mobile app would see their score rise further.
Low performer overview: United
United is a large airline and to see their performance at the bottom of the pack is surprising,
especially when their key competitors head towards the top of the scale.
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7. United offers no customised features on Facebook and leaves customer queries unanswered.
Their Twitter account is more customer service friendly, yet they Tweet out a lot of marketing
messages and news. They have instigated a hashtag “UnitedPlaneChat” which is a novel idea
and should see more success, but reveals more unanswered customer service queries.
All other platforms are virtually non-existent aside from a useful mobile app which provides
functionality for check in, flight status and bookings. This is at a similar level to KLM. If United
improved their service levels on Facebook, understood customer needs on Twitter correctly and
bolstered their social business offering, they could easily be one of the leaders in the aviation
industry.
Conclusion
It’s good to see a large number of airlines increasingly participating in the Social world and
prepared to experiment with the vast array of Social technologies on offer. These technologies
present significant opportunities for airlines who understand that Social channels are not simply a
one-way communication or promotional channel.
In a recent CEO C-Suite Study from IBM, more than 70 percent of CEOs expect a change in the
use of social media. Over half of the CEOs interviewed expect social channels to be a primary
way of engaging customers within five years 3. However these CEOs also understand that long
term value is derived when organisations begin to help individual customers achieve their own
desired outcomes 4.
Airlines wishing to benefit and profit from the Social world need to develop an integrated and
strategic social business plan. A real opportunity presents itself to drastically shift each airline
according to the needs of their traveller, which will deliver strong returns on investment as seen in
other sectors embracing holistic social business practices (see our Whitepaper on The State of
Social Business in Australia 2012: who is achieving strategic results by design). This is the shift to
become a socially optimised business.
Airlines are finding their feet in handling service enquiries across the primary platforms of
Facebook and Twitter. Other platforms become support. However, this “Consumer Gap” presents
the biggest opportunity within aviation. There are expectations on service and experience that are
not being used as an extension of offering, particularly when the consumer is mobile. Airlines
instead are still focused on the marketing viewpoint that social has to offer instead of the bigger
picture.
For airlines to shift the experience, they need to align internal teams to provide a consolidated
social offering to consumers. From the analysis and our own experience to date, this would
provide consumers with:
• A more holistic experience with the consumer’s airline of choice;
• An easier combined data access point for airline staff when assisting consumers with
their queries; and
• More simplified management systems across a business.
3CEO C-Suite Studies. Leading Through Connections. Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study. IBM, 2012
http://www-935.ibm.com/services/uk/en/ceostudy.html
4 Ibid.
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8. The full report, Social Landscape Review - Airline Industry 2012, with 480 pages of detailed
analysis of social media assets of the 24 airlines listed in the whitepaper, is available for purchase
at A$495.
Please email your order to: hello@rippleffectgroup.com
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9. About the Authors
Deb Wiseman - Senior Manager Social Business
Deb has seven years of experience globally, including time in New York
and now back in Sydney with several media, advertising and
conversational agencies. She has been responsible for developing new
social communications tactics and methodologies for clients across a
range of categories. Her approach values simplicity to deliver solid
business results through stronger communication plans and more
efficient business strategies that are sustainable and outcome focused.
Deb’s ability to comprehend a business need paired with consumer outlook informs her capability
to develop viable recommendations using current trends and technologies. Her previous work
includes global and US brands such as PayPal, KMart, Mentos, Panasonic, American Airlines,
Kraft, EMI, Audi, Canadian Club and local brands that include SBS and Telstra. She has guided
and managed projects that take businesses in to new territories that incorporate the
understanding that company, consumer and platform must come together in a way where all
derive value.
Deb has a Bachelor of Science from UNSW, a Diploma in Design and the arduous AWARD School
Diploma to shape her strong analytical and creative thinking.
Anne Bartlett-Bragg - Managing Director
MEd (Adult Ed), BEd (Adult Ed), Dip HRM, Dip e-Learning, Cert IV TAA, PhD candidate
Anne specialises in the creation of innovative communication networks
with social media. Her designs are award winners: MentorNet, the first
national mentoring program for young women entrepreneurs in 2007
was a finalist in the Forrester Groundswell awards in 2008 and won the
LearnX Asia Pacific 2010 Best Mentoring Program. Her design for the
Institute of Executive Coaching's learning communities won the LearnX
Asia Pacific 2010 award for Best use of Social Learning Tools.
Anne has an extensive early career background in the travel and
hospitality industry and held management positions including National Reservations Manager,
Qantas Jetabout Holidays, Executive Assistant Manager, ANA Hotel Sydney, Concierge for the
Hyatt on Collins Melbourne, and National Marketing Manager for National World Travel franchise
group.
Anne is also a sessional academic at UTS in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences where she
researches, develops and lectures in organisational learning. She is a recognised keynote
speaker at academic conferences, both nationally and internationally. Her papers are published
in several textbooks and international journals. In addition, Anne is a sought after reviewer of
academic journals that specialise in social software and communication technologies.
She uses her research and studies into the communication aspects of social media to provide an
informed back drop to understanding how people are using new tools and changing traditional
models of communication. She constantly challenges organisations to reframe their models of
communication, service design, and workforce engagement.
Anne is currently in the final stages of completing her PhD which has explored the adult learners
experiences of developing learning networks through self-publishing technologies such as
weblogs.
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10. About Ripple E!ect
Ripple Effect is a specialist social consulting and development company. We bridge the gap
between existing IT, marketing, and operations to engage both employees and customers more
effectively, and help create the kind of network effects and energy that characterise successful
businesses and government agencies. We help organisations use smarter, simpler, social
technologies to improve business performance, communication and customer engagement. Our
services include:
• Strategic consulting and program management;
• Social intelligence - monitoring, audit and analysis;
• User experience design;
• Software design and development; and
• On-going editorial, marketing and user engagement support.
We work with clients, many of them household names, across a wide range of industries, from
blue chip multi-nationals and internationally renowned media brands to non-profit organisations
and government bodies.
Workshops
We've selected some of our most popular workshops and packaged them into a series that can
be customised to suit your context and objectives:
• Introduction to Social Business seminar
Demystify social business, including examples and insights, opportunities, barriers
and risks, while highlighting the benefits of engaging with customers, staff or business
partners online.
• Head Start workshop
Includes the Introduction to Social Business and extends to focus on design and
planning your strategy, developing a roadmap for engagement with social media.
• Innovation Lab
This popular approach uses a combination of visual thinking activities and user-
centred design techniques to drive the agenda, providing a 'hands on' method to
design opportunities for using social media in your organisation.
• Visual Thinking Sessions
Communicating effectively across all levels of the organisation in complex business
environments is becoming more challenging. Learn how to present your ideas visually
on a single page.
Each of the options enable your business to expand your knowledge and capabilities, while
developing specific outcomes or next steps. Please contact the Ripple Effect team at
hello@rippleffectgroup.com for more information any of these packages or an agenda tailored to
your specific requirements.
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11. Press enquiries: Consulting enquiries:
Anne Bartlett-Bragg Deb Wiseman
Managing Director Senior Manager | Social Business
M: +61 418 852 581 M: +61 412 405 201
annebb@rippleffectgroup.com deb.wiseman@rippleffectgroup.com
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