Innovation beyond the familiar.
VAA frequently wins awards for innovation— such as its in-flight entertainment systems and“ premium economy” class. Fresh insights from social media reinforce this aspect of the brand. For instance, Facebook interactions helped the company appreciate an important but largely unrecognized segment: consumers planning a big trip. Their planning starts well in advance and involves extensive discussions with other travelers, so VAA launched Vtravelled, a site dedicated to inspirational journeys. Customers moderate the conversation and exchange information, stories, and advice. They can create a Trip Pod, a personal scrapbook of ideas for a dream trip. VAA enters the discussion using a traveler’ s tone of voice, not pushing a product but offering advice. The site leads to some sales, but its main benefit to VAA comes from brand reinforcement and novel customer insights.
In an open innovation initiative, VAA in 2008 partnered with the UK’ s National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts to launch VJAM. In a daylong workshop it presented a diverse group of VAA customers, IT developers, and social digerati with this agenda:“ Social networking meets travel— magic happens.” Many ideas bubbled up at the workshop, and many others were submitted privately. Nine of them were short-listed, six received funding for proof of concept, and three have become products: the Flying Club and Facebook Flight Status app, a first for any airline; Taxi2, the aforementioned cab-sharing service; and VAA’ s first iPhone app, called Flight Tracker, which includes real-time aircraft positions— also a first for any airline.
Keep Your Eye on the Ball
VAA would not claim mastery of social media in brand building— no firm yet can. But here’ s our advice, based on the dozens of early successes and failures we’ ve studied:
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