Colm Carey on a Marketing Society talk about branding in a connected world
Back in the day when Ireland had only one airline it would have been hard to imagine an Aer Lingus executive talk about a battle in which the carrier was David to the other side’s Goliath. But so it came to pass when Michelle Lee, Aer Lingus director of marketing and guest experience, spoke to the Marketing Society on ‘Brand Building in a Connected World’.
Noting Ryanair’s success, Lee commended her rival’s conversion to a new paradigm of customer service. Echoing the philosophy regularly propounded on this page, Lee declared that knowing the customer is paramount to growing a successful business adding that we should strive to make the customer experience easy and seamless from ‘take off’ to ‘landing’.
There are six steps to success. Firstly, stand for something. Decide what you want to be known for and articulate it in an idea which permeates through the company. Get the basics right through your process infrastructure, systems and partners. Remember that success lies in the detail. Make everything count. Work with courage, tenacity, consistency and agility.
Act fast, stay focused, be determined and persevere. Encourage ingenuity, innovation, creativity and excellence. Make your own space, your own noise, be confident, be seen and be heard. Finally, enjoy the ride, have fun and be passionate. All of which makes me want to work with Aer Lingus – so long as the reality matches the ideology.
Too often you see corporate mission statements and philosophies hanging in reception and around the building only to find that the brand experience, from either a customer or supplier point of view, is clearly coming from a separate handbook titled “but here’s how we actually do it.” Having said that, my experiences flying with Aer Lingus have largely been positive.
Thinking big: Communicorp CEO Gervaise Slowey believes that there has been a bias against traditional media which is now declining. The primary concern must be to meet brand and business objectives with big ideas. Brand building can be fun but it’s more than a game. Pictured is a screen grab from the Aer Lingus TV ad created by KesselKramer.
Airline guests
One thing that jarred a little in Lee’s presentation was the fact that the word ‘guest’ has replaced ‘passenger’ in the airline’s vocabulary. While I’m not an expert in semiotics, the word guest for me symbolises something other than what I expect and get from a short plane journey. Maybe it comes from the long haul ethos of Qantas, Singapore or Etihad where some form of hotel style service applies. But on a hop from Dublin to Heathrow, I’m just a passenger. The same applies to government departments calling the citizens they serve customers or clients, and medical and social services referring to citizens as service users.
Booze ban
Jet2 has banned the sale of alcohol on early morning flights. While the days of getting free snipes of Moet on early morning Aer Lingus flights to Britain are well gone, it might be wise to imposed some form of prohibition on well oiled ‘guests’ boarding flights. The experience of being locked in a metal tube at 30,000 ft with even a few drunks is fraught.
On a train you can move carriage, on a bus the driver can call the Garda. On a plane we are at the mercy of the drunken ones. Maybe it’s time for a guest survey on the issue to see if there might be a mandate for Aer Lingus and the DAA to get the ball rolling?
Gift of failure
Gervaise Slowey, CEO at Communicorp, also spoke to Marketing Society members. Former Ogilvy boss Slowey sang from the same sheet in terms of staying focused and getting the basics right. She also emphasised the need to listen to the consumer and to learn from failure, quoting former Procter & Gamble boss AG Lafley’s claim to take his failures as a gift.
All very well when you’re CEO of P&G. In most cases, failure is a parting gift to be enjoyed as you pack up your desk and collect your P45. Slowey also quoted Amazon boss Jeff Bezos whose credo is “your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”. There has to be some learning here from a research point of view.
The increasing tendency for companies to do their own satisfaction surveys means they never get to hear what people say when they’re not in the room. All those thanks for travelling, shopping, staying with us surveys miss what people say when you’re not in the room.
Same thing applies when people come to focus groups or take part in ‘ethnographic’ studies where the level of client presence is overwhelming due to pre-tasks involving uploaded collages, running commentary on boards and apps and a general sense of rehearsal that loses the naïve integrity of the “…when you’re not in the room” expression.
Brand panic
You’ve heard of blind panic, now comes brand panic as referred to by Heineken marketing director Sharon Walsh. Walsh says brands are panicking and agencies are scrambling to be relevant. Brands must be agile and planning should be driven by business objectives. Walsh and Slowey were at one in cautioning our tendency to be mesmerised by small ideas.
Comments on this article are welcome at colm@theresearchcentre.ie
