Fox Kalomaski

By Branwell Johnson

The proposed merger of Continental Airlines and United Airlines will only benefit passengers if the new airline can deliver a “great brand experience”.

The airlines are to join forces, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, and fly under the name of United Airlines.

The marketing brand will be a combination of both companies’ brands. Aircraft will have the Continental livery, logo and colours alongside the United name, and the planned launch campaign slogan will be “Let’s Fly Together”.

However, Gary Jacobs, chief executive of specialist travel and airline advertising agency Fox Kalomaski, says that for most airline passengers, brand loyalty is secondary to knowing if they will arrive on time, at the right destination and at the right price.

Jacobs says first class passengers are still brand loyal, depending on the benefits and individual membership schemes that airlines offer, but that air travel is mainly a commoditised market.

“Loyalty is generally engendered from getting the right level of service. These two airlines have a long history and well-established identities but success depends on what they mean to the customer and the individual experience they may have had with the airlines.”

Ash Gupta, of The Gupta Partnership, says: “Scale is vital in today’s market, but a step back towards the customer-centric attitude of Singapore Airlines or BA in its heyday is equally important.

“Customers have been treated like disposable pawns despite marketing promises, and if this new scale can be used to promote customer happiness and loyalty this could set a benchmark for the industry.”

Peter Knapp, executive creative director, Europe and Middle East for branding agency Landor, says that the challenge of this merger will be that the bigger the airline becomes the blander the brand will become.

He adds: “The priority should be focused on adding customer value…not focusing on making the fleet look consistent. There are already numerous versions of the United livery in the sky and the brand remains poorly considered by many. Another one isn’t going to suddenly change peoples opinion, however if the merged brand could start deliver on some basics it might help the new airline be reconsidered in a far more favourable way.

Consolidation has long been expected in the airline industry, which has been hit by the global economic downturn, rising fuel costs and the fall-out from the Icelandic volcano crisis.

Gary Jacobs, chief executive of travel marketing company Fox Kalomaski, helps you get consumers to spend longer on your website

Although travel businesses can survive without a website, we live in a digitally-led world - and any channel that can deliver new business opportunities and represent your business 24/7/365 must not be ignored.

Research into why some travel agencies don’t have a website reveals answers like these:

“We don’t need one, maybe it’s our location but we’ve been here for 20 years and we’ve got enough business without one.”
"We’re just a small local retail agent and sell every tour operator’s product”
“We used to have one but it’s not working and is in development”.

Reading between the lines, would I suggest that some folk deem websites to be more trouble than they are worth.

Keep it simple
Websites that are rich in content, clear to navigate and deliver a great customer experience are more likely to keep the visitor engaged long enough to convert to a sale, either online or over the phone.

Ultimately, the secret to creating a sticky website – a site that keeps a visitor for as long as possible – is to keep it simple. Simple to find the information they are looking for and simple to contact you or book online.

There are plenty of websites that will give you guidance on how to make the most of your website and plenty of marketing companies who can do it for you.

Case study: 14 islands film challenge
Challenged with making bahamas.co.uk a much content-richer site, Fox Kalomaski developed the 14 Islands Film Challenge to find 14 up-and-coming filmmakers to create engaging short films on and about the Islands of the Bahamas.

The 14 five-minute feature films can be seen at bahamas.co.uk or 14islandsfilmchallenge.co.uk.

The marketing initiative encouraged consumers to follow the exploits of the 14 filmmakers by signing up to become ‘armchair critics’ and be in with the chance of winning a holiday in the Bahamas as well as many other prizes. The results show a huge uplift in website visits since the films went live.

15 minute web review
Take 15 minutes to find out if you are following  these suggestions. Where there are gaps, form a plan of action.

Site performance: Are you using tools such as Google Analytics to measure how your visitors interact with your site, how long they spend on particular pages and what they are looking for? Importantly, look at the bounce rate - the percentage of visitors who leave your site from the home page without further browsing.

Test and learn: Are you trying different approaches with your content – such as holiday reviews by customers and staff or competitions? Online research reveals that eight out of 10 people who spend time online engage with video content through business and or social media sites. Measure what works most effectively using your analytics tools.

Research: Ask your customers what they want when they visit your site and ensure you give them what they’re looking for. Simple questionnaires can be hosted on your website or ask them over the phone or in person how your site could be improved.

Data collection: Building a relationship with your visitors and potential customers provides a valuable database. If you have a holding page that says your site is under construction, turn it into a data-gathering opportunity by offering to send information on the latest offers and special deals based on what the customer wants, in return for their email or address details.

Keep your site fresh, clean and simple: A refresh of your existing site is simple and cost effective and remember that your web visitors are generally impatient to find the information they’re looking for, so make it very easy for them to find.

Content, content, content: Use the above suggestions to analyse whether you are creating engaging content that will give you a greater return on  your investment.

Britain is now the world leader in Internet ads, though retail is absent from the party and is missing out on a solution to boost sales, says Danny Brooks, Head of brik digital, Fox Kalomaski's digital arm.

Q:  Which recession growth industry is UK retail missing out on?  A:  The digital communications business. 

The remarkable growth of online (or digital) advertising in Britain is underlined by the latest figures just released by their Internet Advertising Bureau.  They show that this medium has overtaken TV advertising to become the leading above-the-line communicator.  The UK is now the world leader in market share for online.  Amazingly, however, retail online ad expenditure has actually dipped in the last year (as it did in 2007/8) while budgets for other sectors selling to consumers rose sharply.

The soaring figures for digital are all the more remarkable for the tough economic background within which they multiply.  In the first half of 2009 alone, UK Internet advertising grew by 4.6 per cent to £1.752M, despite the entire advertising sector contracting by nearly 17 per cent over the same period.

So canny consumer goods advertisers there are taking advantage of a huge shift in public use of the Internet in order to reach buying audiences.  But not, apparently, retail. 

So why does retail continue to back away from the modern method of persuading consumers to return to their stores?  Well according to Stephen Fox, Managing Director of retail and shopping centre marketing specialists Fox Kalomaski:  "Retail marketing budgets are down overall, dragging digital with them.  And let's face it, a lot of marketers also find the new online methodology difficult to understand and evaluate.  It's a bit of a culture shock and therefore a barrier to development. 

"But it seems to me that a more professional approach would be to examine seriously those parts of the marketing budget that deliver the best value and concentrate financial resources accordingly.  With its recently improved direct response tools, an increase in retail online spend would then be inevitable," Fox concludes.

In fact, home internet use is three times that of the work place, so who are all these millions of UK online visitors?  Well, the Internet users population is spread roughly equally across all social-economic and age groups, including a significant and rising number of over-55s.  But it's worth advertisers exploiting specific phenomena such as the fact that women aged 24-35 spend more time online than men, for example. 

And attitudes towards advertising encountered on the Internet are pretty positive, resulting in £46bn spent by consumers via the medium in 2007.  Also, in practical terms, they reveal that what prompts the purchases that produced this enormous figure are promotional emails and online advertising.

And online users also say that the biggest motivator for all this activity and expenditure is to research information, with the greatest use of the Internet being visits to sites where consumers can buy.

So you could actually say that for retailers to advertise online at the same time is to push at an open door. 

Rising star: Robin Schmidt has won the 14 islands film challenge for young British directors. The 32-year-old was given £14,000 to help launch his career.

By Alex Brownsell

The Bahamas Tourist Office is rolling out a viral campaign following a competition to find the UK's best amateur film-maker.

One of 14 up-and-coming film makers was sent to one of the 14 main islands of The Bahamas to create a five-minute promotional video.

The top prize in The Bahamas 14 Islands Film Challenge, created by destination marketing specialist agency Fox Kalomaski, went to 32-year-old Robin Schmidt.

Schmidt received a £14,000 bursary with which to launch his career, and became an ambassador for photography brand Canon.

His video promotes Long Island, towards the south of The Bahamas. It features a sleeping schoolboy being thrown out of his classroom, before being led on a frenetic tour of Long Island's sights and culture.

Second prize went to 28-year-old Londoner Nimer Rashed, who received £2,500-worth of photography equipment.

The prizes were announced at a ceremony held yesterday (15 March) at The Princess Anne Theatre, Bafta in London. Judges included Oscar-nominated producer Finola Dwyer and Bharat Nalluri, the director of BBC shows 'Spooks', 'Hustle' and 'Life on Mars'.

Senator Vincent Vanderpool Wallace, The Bahamas minister for tourism, said the film challenge would create a distinct identity for the Bahamas.

He said: "There are such substantial differences with each of the islands. Many people just see The Bahamas as [capital city] Nassau or Paradise Island, and we believe we have an opportunity to capture a larger share of the market."

The minister also said he and politicians from other Caribbean nations would continue to lobby against a further hike in the UK's Air Passenger Duty (APD).
 
Due to APD banding being measured by distance between the UK and capital cities rather than the destination airport“ from November, a family of four flying to the Caribbean will have to pay £600 in APD, significantly more than anywhere in the US.

Gary Jacobs, chief executive at Fox Kalomaski, said that as footfall to The Bahamas is suffering it is important to improve digital communications and make the BTO's website "do the heavy lifting".

Watch Robin Schmidt Winning Film and the other entries at www.bahamas.co.uk