Case Studies | Media Culpa

How to lose friends and alienate people, the Ryanair way

Kyla Ebbert, a woman from Californa, was thrown off a Southwest Airline plane last year because the airline staff found her clothing too revealing. The story was discussed in both mainstream media and on blogs, and Southwest Airlines eventually apologized to Ebbert in a press release.

“Kyla, we could have handled this better, and on behalf of Southwest Airlines, I am truly sorry. We hope you continue to fly Southwest Airlines. Our Company is based on freedom even if our actions may have not appeared that way. It was never our intention to treat you unfairly and again, we apologize.”

Apart from issuing an apology, the airline also took the opportunity to create a somewhat positive spin on the story by poking fun at itself. In a news release, Southwest Airlines lowered its already low prices to “miniskirt” fares, a stunt that was widely covered in media and blogs.

Irish low fares airline Ryanair is another airline that has taken a blow in media recently. Readers of this blog may remember the “beds and blowjobs” debacle some time ago. And now they are at it again. Last week the Swedish Council against Sexual Discrimination in Advertising (ERK) found one of Ryanair’s ads to be sexist. The ad, which was published during the start of the school year, featured a scantily clad woman posing as a schoolgirl, announcing the “hottest back to school prices”.

sexist ad by ryanair

But instead of admitting any wrongdoing, the airline went on a counter attack with statements like these.

“We are sure that the anti-funsters at the ERK do not speak for the majority of the famously liberal and easy going Swedes.”

“The ad simply reflects the way a lot of young girls like to dress. We hope the old farts at the ERK loosen up a little.”

“Ryanair defends the right of Swedish girls to take their clothes off.”

The company was then criticized by the Swedish MP, Birgitta Ohlsson urging customers to choose other airlines. Ohlsson said that “Ryanair is relying on old fashioned, outdated values and they’re proud of it.” But instead of responding to journalist questions, the company issued a new “fun” press release.

“Ryanair, Sweden’s only low fares airline, today laughed off the stupid comments by Swedish MP, “Boring” Birgitta Ohlsson, when she called on Swedish passengers to boycott Ryanair and fly on high fare, fuel surcharging, SAS in protest at Ryanair’s use of a sexy model to advertise its “hottest ever” back to school fare.”

“This really is a storm in a D cup! We’re sure that Boring Birgitta will be overrun by the flood of right minded, liberal, people who support Ryanair’s determination to defend the rights of girls and boys to get their kit off – if they want to.”

“We will also be sending free tickets to Boring Birgitta so that she can take a nice relaxing break, loosen up a little and stop calling for silly boycotts, avslutar Ryanair.”

The airline also announced it would “celebrate Ryanair’s sexy Swedish ad” by launching one million €10 mid week seats.

But it appears that the support from the easy going Swedes is minimal. Christian paper Dagen hopes that Ryanair chokes on their laughter. Ryanair is called “horny guys airline” in a column in Dagens Media. Bloggers are writing things like “Bye bye Ryanair”, “Yet another reason to dislike Ryanair” and “Ryanair: Swedens only no-brains airline”.

There is a huge difference in the way Southwest Airlines and Ryanair have handled these incidents. First of all, SA was not accused of being sexist, but to be too prude. Big difference. Then SA apologized and used humour to laugh at themselves. Ryanair does the opposite by not apologizing, talking trash to anyone who opposes, and then giving us more of the same thing they were criticized of from the start. Like this blogger says, to counter sexism with more sexism is hardly the smartest way to go.

Secondly, SA already had a presence in social media with its blog Nuts About Southwest which allowed the airline to have a closer dialogue with customers. Ryanair on the other hand, don’t respond to journalist questions, send statements in English in which there are no local spokespersons. If you on top of that try to gain support by referencing to the Swedish psyche, or rather your view of what Swedes are like, it is very easy that local customers feel that you are just an ignorant foreigner who paints a malicious portrait of how we are supposed to be.

Ryanair has a history of sexist related crisis and a CEO who leads by example. But maybe this is very clever branding. No other airline has positioned themselves as the airline for horny guys. The top position is available and Ryanair seems determined to take it.

Tags: ryanair, advertising, ryanair, reklam. Ping.

Social media case study by Cisco

If you think that social media tools only can be used effectively for consumer products, think again. This is a great case study by LaSandra Brill, manager of Web and social media marketing at Cisco. It shows how Cisco used social media for the launch of the ASR 1000 launch router series.

Building a Community with Social Media and Web 2.0 – A Cisco Product Launch Case Studyhttp://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=leveraging-social-media-and-web-20-in-a-product-launch-1206554285971971-4&stripped_title=leveraging-social-media-and-web-20-in-a-product-launch

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: forums discussion)

ReadWriteWeb lists the major steps of the campaign.

ASR 100 Launch Campaign Steps
1. Created a fun micro site directed at uber users (the tech and early adopter audience) to help create and spread buzz.
2. Cross posted videos from the micro site to YouTube to extend reach.
3. Established Second Life presence that included a countdown calculator and pre event live concert to increase visibility; research showed much of their audience is on Second Life.
4. Created a FaceBook group to cater to users not part of Second Life.
5. Created an interactive 3D game – Edge Quest – to attract the large gaming audience.
6. Created a widget that holds a collection of key videos, documents and images that allows sharing for their content, while remaining on their server.
7. Blogged about it on the Cisco blog to try and intrigue bloggers and customers.
8. Heightened buzz with press with a vague two paragraph teaser press release to extend press coverage and fuel buzz.
9. Created a social media release to reach out to bloggers.
10. Introduced product via live online event; video on Second Life that was cross posted on FaceBook and YouTube.
11. Created ‘Ask the Expert’ – a forum where customers could talk to the engineers that created the product.

Tags: social media, cisco, b2b, cisco, social media. Ping.

Banks turn to mass customization

Consumers today are more individualistic than previous generations and that’s one reason why you see teenagers (and we who think we still are) pimp their mobile phones and iPods to get that unique look. Who wants to look like everyone else? While some may argue that people are individualistic in pretty much the same way, facts remain, consumers are spending more and more money on customizing everything from Xbox 360 consoles to sneakers.

With such a demand among consumers, many companies could differentiate themselves against competitors by offering so-called mass customization solutions that enable each customer to tailor a product with a unique design. A recent example are Swedish banks that have started to promote personalized payment cards. Their customers can upload a picture of their choice on the bank’s website (or choose one from an online gallery) to design a unique personal credit card.

Swedbank was the first Swedish bank to offer personalized payment cards when they launched Kort på Kort (Photo on Card) a year ago. A little odd though that it initially was limited to grown ups! One would have guessed it to be the other way around, considering the motivations of the different age groups. The cost is 100 kronor for a new card.

Handelsbanken and SEB seem to be using Gemalto’s CardLikeMe, an external web service which offers some flexibility when it comes to adjusting the photo. Handelsbanken charges 123 kronor (and 85 kronor for renewal card) while SEB charges 95 kronor.

SHB SEB

From what I can see, the fourth large Swedish bank Nordea doesn’t offer personalized payment cards in Sweden, but they do in Finland, also via CardLikeMe. This of course makes Nordea look dull and uncool in comparison to the other big three.

Banks are not known for giving you something for nothing and since most of them buy the service from an outside supplier one shouldn’t expect this service to be free. We also know that consumers often are willing to pay a price premium for customization, so the strategy may be right. But in a more competetive market there might be room for a smaller player to include personalization without cost in order to present a more attractive offer to new customers.

Advantages of mass customization are many. In the case of personalized payment cards, you will increase customer loyalty because the customer is more likely to stay with the bank to be able to use the same card (renewal is often free). You get a higher degree of involvement with the product because the card user will be proud to display the unique card and therefore inclined to use it more often (vs. cash). It is also a source of additional revenue for the bank since the cost for a unique card is higher than for the ‘plain vanilla’ version.

Expect to see more companies offer customization solutions as printing technology and other means of production evolve. What really boring products would you like to pimp?

Tags: banks, customization, banker, swedbank, pengar, seb. Ping.

Interview with Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo, on RSS advertising

RSS is one of the cornerstones in the social media revolution. Through RSS, content of all kinds is distributed across the web and we are still only using a fraction of the possibilities RSS brings us. So when Media Culpa got the chance to interview Bill Flitter, CEO of Pheedo on advertising in RSS feeds, I naturally seized the opportunity. And in the spirit of distributed journalism, I crowdsourced the questions to my Jaiku friends who added their thoughts in this thread. Here are some great insights that came out of the email interview.

Media Culpa asks: Ads in general are more and more considered a form of interruption marketing. How are readers responding to ads in RSS feeds?

Bill Flitter: Most ads are considered an interruption because they go against the grain of the media that they are in. What is supposed to happen is the ads are supposed to grab our attention because they blink, flash, animate. They sit over on the fringes of website and we become blind to them. 60% of ads go unnoticed because they are badly positioned on a web page.

Ad is considered an ad when it something you are not interested in. An ad magically transforms into something useful when it is relevant to me and instead of being an ad it becomes content.

Pheedo is working on a concept specific to distributed media called Brandstreaming. Creating a dialogue is the way to monetize social media, getting your branded content into the conversation with permission – this is the concept of Brandstreaming. Marketers cannot expect users to come to them any longer. In Web 1.0 we built micro-sites and expect everyone to come to us. The distributed Web is the new micro-site where the sum of all of the (distributed) parts is greater than the micro-site. We need to go to our customers with a consistent brand message on their terms and they need to Invite you in and join their conversation.

MC: Being in a social media environment, how should advertisers create RSS ads that encourage conversation, not just “sell a product”?

BF: I always tell our advertiser customer in social media you must tell not sell. An marketer must create compelling content to encourage engagement with their customers and prospects. Their ads must form to the media that they are in. Marketers need a content plan to be successful in social media. Ads need to take on characteristics of the medium. For example, add sharing or even commenting functionality to the ad.

MC: For most bloggers, publishing RSS ads never results in a payment. What’s in it for bloggers further down the long tail?

BF: Today, CPM and CPC is the most widely used and accepted pricing model by advertisers and their ad agencies. Without scale, these pricing models do not net a blogger much revenue. If you are writing a blog on a specific niche, your chances increase to secure a sponsor IF you know exactly who your blog audience is. Firms like Federated Media and BlogAds understand this and are getting closer to cracking the nut. What is a blogger to do? Find out exactly who your readers are and find an angle that you can sell. You have to sell who reads your blog because you are not going to impress many advertisers with how many read your blog – generally speaking.

MC: In Sweden we see that younger women dominate the blogosphere, but they don’t use RSS readers (58.7% of male bloggers do, compared to 17.8% of female bloggers according to the BlogSweden 3 survey). Do you see this trend in the US and if so, how can blog advertising reach women if they don’t use RSS, apart from banner ads?

BF: RSS readers in the US are mainly males (70%/30%). This will change over time. We have done very successful campaigns reaching women RSS readers. The same principle apply. Find out where they are congregating. For example, Dooce and The Food Section of a high concentration of women.

Others ask (my translation of questions):

Deeped asks: Your five best tips for RSS advertising (for advertisers and/or publishers).

BF: Advertisers:
1. Tell not sell
2. Content is the supreme king. Create content ads
3. Consistency of content
creation is key. RSS users are active!
4. Be in it for the long haul. Need to stop thinking about “campaigns” that have a shelf life. Digital dialogue never dies unlike a print piece that fossilizes.
5. It’s about the people not the pages. Cannot expect consumers to come to you. Need to go to them with a consistent brand message on their terms.

MattiasSwenson asks: What is your opinion on RSS readers such as the Swedish Bloggkoll.se which does not show full feeds and no ads.

BF: Question is, what type of RSS readers do users prefer? Do users want full-content? In a distributed media world, we need to be aware of all reader display types and how to monetize content for publishers. Unlike websites where we have standard sizes, out of distributed media will grow new standard sizes.

Agaton asks: On innovation in RSS advertising – where is it? What happens in that area? Where are the new ad formats that actually work?

BF: Right now, most RSS feeds have no social components. I see a feature where RSS feeds become more social and a social network onto themselves. This means the advertisements will need to be more social. Secondly, ROI measurement is evolving for both publishers and advertisers. Once there are an accepting/standard metrics, publishers and advertisers will see the value – which by the way is very soon.

Agaton asks: Why should you advertise in RSS feeds? Any concrete arguments like higher conversion rate, lower cpm or such? Or is the only real argument that it is an advertising channel on the rise that has been untapped so far.

BF: Content has left the site. Some of our advertisers tell us they know 30%+ of their customers are NOT going to websites. For many of the large media sites, their RSS traffic is exceeding or will exceed their website traffic by the end of the year. For some this is a reality they are not prepared for. Where the users are the advertising will follow. In 2009 we will see the attention on distributed media explode. We will put our focus on optimizing our content in distributed media as we did for search.

Agaton asks: Is blog advertising still an immature market?

BF: There was a lot of attention on blog advertising in 2006/07. What most dvertisers were doing is putting ads on blogs. How is that different than putting on ad on a traditional website? It was not. It lost some sizzle. ROI is ROI no matter where the ad is placed. However, a few smart marketers are figuring out how to leverage the true power of blogs – again, I point to Federated Media or BlogAds. There accomplishments will advance blog advertising and make it a necessity of every media buy. It is one spoke in a campaign.

Depeed asks: What is your opinion on the possibility to create automated contextual ads for individual blog posts? Do they already exist?

BF: A few companies are experimenting with this – Kontera and BuzzLogic. Results are to be determined. It comes down to relevancy. For a blogger to make money at this, they need a decent amount of traffic which is relative to each blogger.

Newsdesk asks: Are contextual ads based on content in one blog post, in several posts or are there other factors at play?

BF: Could be at the individual post level or the entire blog. If you are have a niche blog that only talks about iPhones for example, you most likely will see more revenue vs. a blog where the content is all over the place.

Bison asks: What do we have to do to missionize the possibilities with RSS? Why has RSS not reached high penetration in broader audiences?

BF: Today, we are in the third phase of RSS. Phase One 2005/06 Publishers asked, “Should I put RSS on my site?” Clearly the answer is yes. Phase Two 2006/07 Publishers asked, “How much traffic do I have and how are subscribers interacting with it?” Feedburner did a great job of addressing this market. Phase Three 2007/08, Publishers are now saying, “Wow, I have a lot of traffic, how do I monetize it.” Pheedo is addressing this today. Give feed monetizing time evolve. It has to happen for no other reason than the sheer amount of traffic feeds are generating.

oahnve asks: If we assume that RSS will reach an audience outside the early adopters, what will be the killer app for RSS and when will we see it?

BF: According to Forrester, 43% of internet users are ACTIVELY using RSS if they know it or not. This is up from 6% in 2005. That is tremendous growth. Why the growth? We live in a World where the consumer rules. They want their content where, when and how they want. The tools are getting easier to use, from Google Reader to Widgets to Facebook, the idea of consuming “news feeds” is becoming ubiquitous. Facebook has helped mature the idea with their news feed concept.

Tags: rss advertising, pheedo, rss, rss, reklam, annonser. Ping.

Consumers produce commercials for Apollo

The Swedish travel operator Apollo invited consumers to produce commercials for Apollo. The best video clip has now been chosen and awarded a gift voucher worth 35,000 kronor (3,700 euro). More than 100 videos were uploaded to the campaign site during the competition.

One film got as many as 5,959 views and a total of 736 blogs and 132 people on Facebook referred (“hänvisade”) to the site, according to the press release. However, these figures are very hard to verify. Searches on Knuff.se and Technorati only show two or three links to the site.

Tags: video, commercials, apollo, video, tävling. Ping.