FreshNetworks Blog

Air France-KLM launch Bluenity, the ‘first’ social network for the airline industry

Today Air France-KLM launch what they claim is the ‘first’ social network for the airline industry: Buenity. Once signed-up, members will be able to share tips on hotels, restaurants and shopping at destinations across the globe. But the real USP of the site is that is allows members to make their travel plans public – showing their flight bookings made through KLM or Air France. They can then find other members on the same flight or in the same locations when they are.

There are some obvious benefits to this – people to meet in the lounge and to travel, people to share taxis with, people to meet for dinner or business or just a way for people to share ideas with others who are similar to them. As Patrick Roux, Senior Vice President Marketing at Air France-KLM, says:

This is a response to those customers who would like to be proactive on their trip, whether they are travelling for professional or leisure purposes. From 7 November onwards, travellers and especially the 75 million customers who choose our two airlines every year, will be able, by using Bluenity, to meet before, during and after their flight

So what can we learn from this?

Whilst I’m not sure that this is the ‘first’ airline social network (see the launch of BA’s MetroTwin), but the proposition certainly is an interesting one. When we are working with clients at FreshNetworks, building online communities for them, we spend quite some time identifying why an online community could work in this situation and what the connection between and motivation of members would be. In this case it is clear that the commonality between members is first that they are both customers (maybe regular travellers on) Air France and/or KLM, and second that they might both share a closer experience – the same destination or flight.

I would expect the team who built this site to have looked into this shared experience in quite some detail. Do people who fly want to interact in this way? How do they currently meet people and spend their time in the lounge and on the place? How much do they actually want to engage and how much of this do they want to do online.

With the launch last week of LinkedIn Applications it is now possible for your TripIt travel plans to be visible there so that people can see where you are going and so that you can find others going to the same place. It will be interesting to see if users are more likely to use this kind of service than they are to use a site like Bluenity. Airfrance-KLM do have the significant benefit of a direct link to their reservations engine which makes the whole process much simpler, but I expect this will be a good case study of whether people prefer a separate social network or a widget to help them in this goal.

Of course, at FreshNetworks we know that travel is a vibrant market for online communities and social networks. It’s a sector that a lot of our clients come from and a sector where engagement with your customers and guests is critical. It should be no surprise that Air France-KLM have entered the fray. I’d expect most of the big players in this sector to be doing the same in 2009.

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Some more reading

• Alitalia on brink of bankruptcy as Air France-KLM talks collapse
• Air France and KLM launch Bluenity
• Air France-KLM launches social networking site
• Air France and KLM launch social networking site for travelers
• Avec Air France et KLM et Bluenity, vous savez à l’avance avec qui vous vous envoyez en l’air
• Bluenity, le réseau social d’Air France-KLM lancé vendredi
• Bluenity
• Air France et KLM lancent un réseau social pour les voyageurs aériens

Today we’re kicking off a regular post updating you every Friday on the latest news on how brands and businesses are using social media: our weekly brands and social media diary. We kick-off this week with British Airways.

British Airways launches online community

This week saw the pre-launch of a British Airways online community: Metrotwin. The site is invite-only at the moment, but you can add yourself to the list on the homepage and contact them through Twitter @Metrotwin.

The idea of the site is to take the concept of ‘town twinning’ to the very local level, providing recommendations on restaurants, events, shops, bars and other things in neighbourhoods across both cities. The benefit for BA is obvious, as Chris Davies, their Digital Marketing Manager states:

We fly more people between London and New York than anyone else. Creating a community website about the best of what’s on offer in the two cities we know best is a credible and useful tool.

From the press-releases and coverage so far the site is designed to help people navigate the range of recommendations and reviews on the web to help members of the community find the best things quickly. The site lets users review and rate recommendations, create their own profile and find ‘twins’. They can also follow other members’ recommendations. The features seem designed to foster a community that combines expert and user reviews and uses co-creation to source the best recommendations in both cities.

The benefits for BA are clear. In an increasingly challenging market, airlines need to retain their most profitable customers. And the business travel route between London and New York must be one of the most profitable routes out there. There is a clear gap in the market online for detailed peer-review sites specifically aimed at people making business trips to these cities. So if they get it right, I suspect this site will work.

So what can we learn from this?

The air industry is facing difficult times, the increasing price of oil and the Open Skies agreement are both hitting transatlantic carriers – increasing costs and increasing competition. What BA are doing here is something that all brands could learn from during difficult times. Their aim is to increase customer retention and their approach is to make their engagement with them sustainable. Rather than them being customers who buy individual experiences with BA (single flights), they want to create an ongoing experience.

At FreshNetworks we are working with a number of clients in the travel industry at the moment, and the aim in each of these is to create and provide a service that truly extends the experience beyond just individual trips. When designing and building online communities, it is important to work on what both the brand wants from the community, but also why a member would take part and what they want to do there. With Metrotwin, BA are providing a real service to their customers, and this should be central to any social media strategy a brand follows.

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Some more reading

• BA Metrotwin first impressions – inside the British Airways London-New York new social network

Last time we looked at mass customisation as a type of co-creation. Allowing people some control over how the product they buy looks or is, often choosing variants from a list of options that let the customer and brand co-create during the final stages of manufacture. A related area of customer co-creation is real-time self-service.

Manufacturing and services industries that use e-commerce and / or online platforms for deliveries are able to offer customers a deeper level of involvement. Whereas mass customisation allows co-creation only prior to the final stage of production, real-time self-service allows the customer to be involved right up to the point that they receive the product.

A typical example of this level of co-creation would be a delivery firm, like FedEx, who allow their customers to select and change their delivery times right up to the point of delivery. Many airlines also allow real-time self-service for their customers, allowing you to choose and change your seat, meal and even your departure time right up to (and in the latter case sometimes after) departure.

This level of co-creation is still short of the deep co-creation where the customer changes the experience for others. It is still very much about working with the brand to refine and change my own experience. And like mass-customisation, it is often used as a differentiators or a value-add by brands. The airline industry is a prime example of this differentiation. If you fly on a low-cost airline, like Ryanair or Easyjet in Europe), you are unlikely to have any level of real-time self-service with your ticket (although you may find you can buy this right for an additional fee). And for full-cost airlines, even though many offer some level of real-time self-service with all tickets, the amount typically increases with the cost of the ticket – fully-flexible tickets being more expensive and offering the greatest opportunities for this type of co-creation.

Both of the cases of co-creation we have looked at so far have highlighted areas where the customer works with the brand to improve their own personal experience. Their co-creations have limited or no impact on the experiences of other customers and, critically, it has no lasting effect on the product itself. The next few examples in the co-creation series will show how customers can work with the brands on a deeper level of engagement.

Some more reading

• Co-creation 1: Mass customisation

I’m a member of a number of different loyalty schemes. Virgin Atlantic, BA and Air France for airmiles, a credit card that gives me cashback every time I buy something and cards with a couple of retailers in the UK that give me money off future shopping.

One thing is common across all of these attempts to build my loyalty with the brands – they are market-based, transactional solutions. Am I really going to book my next flight on Virgin Atlantic for any reason but that I’ll then have enough miles for a return flight to Sydney? Do I use one credit card rather than another for any reason but that I’ll earn 1% cashback on everything I purchase?

The brands are effectively buying my loyalty and, to some extent it’s working. Through no conscious effort I susspect I only join the loyalty schemes that I think are financially effective for me. I am very loyal to the supermarket I do my grocery shopping at, for example, but don’t join their loyalty scheme because it’s not worth the effort – the chances of me getting somthing back rather than a real desire to be loyal to the brand or product for any intrinsic reason.

I think it’s disappointing that most loyalty schemes take this transactional approach. They are buying my loyalty rather than earning it and buildingit. There is another way you can build loyalty. Rather than take a market approach you can take a social approach. Make people feel like insiders in your brand and reward their loyalty by giving them access to exclusive events (of the ‘first to know, first to see, first to hear’ variety) or exclusive access to the brand (allow them to interact directly with the brand and feedback the impact of their contributions).

Building a social-based loyalty campaign is relatively easy and could be more cost effective than a marke-based loyalty scheme. It require a serious discussion about what a brand can offer its consumers – if you’re a broadcast media firm it may be previews or access to content before everybody else. If you are an FMCG firm it may be access to new products or products that are in testing so that people feel they are the first to try the new thing. But all businesses can find something – even if its just information or access to individuals in the business.

Whatever your product or service, people buy it; it is part of their life. Find why they use it, why they keep using it and then enhance their experience. Create a reason for them to keep coming back or add to their experience in a way that compliments the product. If you provide vitaminsm, for example, maybe offer tips and advice on healthy eating, exercise and beauty. Doing this online offers a great opportunity for brands to build a social-based loyalty campaign with a large number of people. Get it right and it could even be more effective than the transactional, market-based campaigns we see more regularly.

Take the supermarket I do all my grocery shopping at. I don’t think it’s worth my effort to join their existing loyalty scheme. If, however, they launched a social-based loyalty scheme, maybe one that gave me exclusive access to recipes from their celebrity chef front-man, I might be more enthusiastic