Perhaps the quickest way to get attention these days is to win the backing of the Twitterati – but even Lufthansa probably wasn’t expecting this.
The British actor/writer/comedian Stephen Fry is one of a handful of so-called celebrity tweeters whose followers hang on every one of his finely-crafted words – in fact, he has 1.7 million fans on Twitter.
So, when he tweeted yesterday about playing (perhaps with less than impressive results) the Lufthansa Virtual Pilot game, airline bosses were probably beside themselves with excitement.
In fact, it is often this kind of endorsement that sends a web-based promotional campaign into the world of a legitimate “viral” success.
The game is actually very simple, borrowing in part from the idea behind the Traveler IQ Challenge from Travelpod, created a few years ago and which eventually became a Facebook hit within weeks.
Once again, users are asked to guess the location of cities (Lufthansa destinations, of course) on a map, with each round getting increasingly difficult.
Scores are calculated by how close the user clicks their mouse to the correct destination. A second version is also now available, giving users the chance to pinpoint where various famous cultural and tourist attractions are located around the world.
This is not the first time Lufthansa has tried slightly unconventional web-based projects to either entertain existing customers or draw in customers from other carriers.
The MySkyStatus system launched last year and allows users to send a message on Twitter or Facebook mid-flight. By February 2010 around 32,000 messages had been sent using the service, a number which has risen dramatically in the last six months to 400,000.
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SO if this is as “successful” as LH’s pre-flight Twitter tool then we can expect to see 0.7% of LH passengers using this?
(MySkyStatus use to date – 400878 messages, LH pax in 2009 55.6million and assumes all passengers were LH pax, which they clearly are not from looking at the site.
And the point is??
It’s good fortune that the amusing and popular Stephen Fry has noticed this and so brought it to wider attention, but I would lay a bet that this was NOT part of a plan by LH Marketing!
@corporate traveller in 52K:
[why won't you tell the rest of us which company you work for, ohhh please]
anyway, i agree, i don’t suspect for a second that getting Stephen Fry to tweet about it was part of any marketing strategy.
not sure what your point is about only 0.7% of LH PAX numbers using the MySkyStatus.
it’s an easy service, probably required minimum development time (all through Twitter APIs) and is automatic. No harm done, except distressing you a bit
if every travel company didn’t *try* something because they couldn’t guarantee that 30% of customers would use it, for example, would anything new ever be implemented?
…. and precisely how would this cause me to book with LH??? Am I missing something or is this part of the wasted 50% of all marketing expenditure?
I believe that lucky or not, we can only judge something by its results. And – on this occasion – Lufthansa had results.
I also don’t think that we should discount the value of having a brand name seen, “used” and/or talked about.
There is also value of repeat use over time – following a one off investment; all of which is in a space where you can’t not “play” and experiment – because someone else will.
Lufthansa is the best I love this airline