Brand: BA
Initiative: METROTWIN
Markets: Global (UK & US centric)
Dates: Ongoing
Background
London-New York is the most frequent daily flight within British Airway’s transatlantic offering and as such it is a very important route for the company. BA have to work hard to defend market share for this route in a very competitive and aggressively price driven market.
Challenge
How can BA connect with the core audience, urban professionals who are frequent flyers between the two cities, in order to maintain brand loyalty amongst exciting customers and attract new ones.
Approach
As their target audience are the sorts of people who are always looking for new and interesting things to do, whether at home or away, on work or on business, BA developed a solution that would meet this need.
They also understood that their audience like to share this sort of information with like-minded people, and had high propensity to do so online.
They used these key insights to come up with an innovative marketing solution.
The Idea
- METROTWIN was launched with a clear strategy which aimed at giving their target audience something back, allowing them contribute to the collective knowledge of the two cities. The idea was to create a central-hub for people to seek advice on what’s hot and what’s not between London and New York.
- The website is now managed and moderated by a few BA agency-staff members, however the majority of the content comes from the general audience and selected contributors who get to gain BA Miles based on the level of participation.
- The website includes a list of categories where people can add content, from Arts & Entertainment to Bars, Pubs and Clubs. Here, people are invited to leave comments, rate venues and events and add these to
- The website also has a blog to keep people up-to-date including key partnerships in both cities (i.e. famous mum bloggers, professional event organisers etc…), local events definitely not to miss and digital news on ‘cool stuff’
- The site also provides free media space for BA advertising, highlighting flight offers, driving sales of the back of the core brand experience.
The Outcome
- METROTWIN is now one of the few key destination sites for people to find out what’s happening in the two cities of the world (the BA name behind it has definitely helped)
- During December 08, the website was visited from 46.000 unique visitors per day – which is pretty impressive if we compare it to a similar website like TIPPED (which had 60.000 UV.) or MySpace (which received 90.000 U.V.) …And this is solely UK results after only being launched for 2 months!
- Each user has spent on average 10min. and 52sec. on the site which is astonishing for any website (Facebook users spend on average 17min. per visit)
- BA is receiving a lot of free publicity from the site, of course free advertising space, and it has become an excellent benchmark for any brand’s use of social media (especially for the competitors).
- While we don’t have the data, it would be safe to assume, based on our experience with working on J&J and our understanding of babycentre, that METROTWIN has had a positive effect on brand loyalty, while also helping to drive sales.
The Learnings
- Produce something your consumers will benefit from
- Open a two-way conversation and get people involved in creating the content within your branded space, they will feel more considered
- Crowd-sourcing and knowledge-sharing are strong communication techniques if used in the right way. You should offer a place where like-minded users can communicate and share information relevant to them, and somehow reflecting the values of the brand.
- Give something back: you don’t gain loyalty only with incentives. Think outside the box – You don’t have to offer money-off vouchers to retain your consumers, but you could easily connect at an emotional level.
- Just because you are marketing a specific audience, it doesn’t mean you have to limit the website’s usability to this niche audience. In fact, METROTWIN is not only visited by BA frequent flyers but also from anyone interested in the two cities
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Profero Thumbs/UP: METROTWIN
Brand: BA
Initiative: METROTWIN
Markets: Global (UK & US centric)
Dates: Ongoing
Background
London-New York is the most frequent daily flight within British Airway’s transatlantic offering and as such it is a very important route for the company. BA have to work hard to defend market share for this route in a very competitive and aggressively price driven market.
Challenge
How can BA connect with the core audience, urban professionals who are frequent flyers between the two cities, in order to maintain brand loyalty amongst exciting customers and attract new ones.
Approach
As their target audience are the sorts of people who are always looking for new and interesting things to do, whether at home or away, on work or on business, BA developed a solution that would meet this need.
They also understood that their audience like to share this sort of information with like-minded people, and had high propensity to do so online.
They used these key insights to come up with an innovative marketing solution.
The Idea
The Outcome
The Learnings