Hijacking a Brand Name

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Not long ago all you had to do to protect your brand online was to acquire the domain name. Just getting the .com domain was good. If you wanted to be on the safe side, you acquired also .net and .org etc.

A bit longer ago some people paid millions of dollars to purchase the domain name they wanted. Incomprehensible. But supposedly Nokia had to stack up quite a bit of dollars to get Ovi.com.

But that’s history, what’s up now?

Brand names in social media.

Acquiring the relevant domain names isn’t enough any more. You may want to secure the relevant social media channels, groups and fan pages as well. Here’s an interesting article by Michael Werch about how he hijacked Heinz’s brand on Twitter.

And so, on Dec. 1, 2009, I took it upon myself to create and brand a Twitter page under the username @HJ_Heinz. I posted Heinz ketchup bottles in the profile background, a link to the company’s corporate website, and a brief bio: “News, recipe ideas & fun facts for all things Heinz.”

The comments are also worth reading. I found it especially thought-provoking that the commenters consider hiring a person for tweeting a “nominal investment”. Or that you’re a dinosaur if you don’t see how a Twitter account with a few hundreds of followers will help Heinz in engaging their customers in a way that will show on the bottom line.

I hope this doesn’t lead into situation that we’ve seen with domain names. For example: some “entrepreneurial” characters in China had acquired our domain with a .cn suffix and wanted to discuss selling it with a good price. Will the next mail be about selling me a Twitter or Google Buzz account for our brand?

Intuition and Social Media Design

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How about getting 10% more clicks to your Order Now page by changing button colors? Or 135% higher clickthrough on your landing page by using giant buttons? Test your design intuition at Anne Holland’s Which Test Won. They host real world A/B tests for a number of landing pages, homepages, lead generation pages, etc. It’s fun to test how your intuition correlates with the measured results. I ended up quite far from 100% intuition success rate…

Jeremy Liew of the Lightspeed Venture Partners wrote a good post about WhichTestWon.com (this is how I found out about the site). He has also a bunch of other great A/B testing related articles worth reading.

Google’s Website Optimizer is good tool to get started with A/B testing.

A/B Testing (WhichTestWon.com)

Best Job in the World – a Success?

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Earlier this year the Tourism Queensland, Australia posted a job announcement for the Best Job in the World. The idea was to promote Queensland as travel destination through multiple media channels, heavily including social media. Applying for the job became a competition, and boy did that competition get coverage on press!

Kevin May wrote an insightful “ten months later” analysis at tnooz.com.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the whole saga is that it seems unlikely that the buzz would have reached the extent it did if it had run in just a handful of media channels, such as TV, newspapers and online.

Using established online platforms such as YouTube (for the entry process) and Twitter (for instant communication) alongside the broadcast and mainstream media literally put the competition in the faces of the target audience.

Queensland got a lot of PR. It seems that they also got a lot of added sales because of the campaign.

I take this as an example of a successful online marketing campaign. We were trying to figure out success cases with Sirkku and this was one of the candidates (thanks for the tnooz  link btw). Later we discussed with Juha in our office about whether Twitter’s role was critical or not. And especially: how to use Twitter successfully for marketing. Juha pointed me to another interesting post. It seems that the best way to succeed on Twitter is to spam repeat your message. Hmm..

Here’s my take for the next success story in social media marketing: http://www.tackfilm.se/?id=1258484014513RA63. :) (in swedish only)

Swedish television licence campaign

The Correct Definition: Green Travel

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Noun: green travel [green tra-vul] 1. Having fun while making the world a better place. 2. Adventures that money can’t buy. – also ecotravel, ecological travel

Green travel helps protect the nature. You travel to the Great Barrier Reef to experience the clean waters, colorful corals, and a myriad of different fishes. The locals make their living out of the reef and it is in their best interest to maintain the reef vivid and lively to keep travelers coming back and telling their friends about the amazing underwater sceneries.

The above example applies to a variety of places. An ecotraveler goes to places, where nature is not a resource but a value as such. In doing so, she enables the locals to make their living out of the environment in sustainable way. Another example: instead of killing whales for food and products, Iceland is now famous for its unique whale-watching trips. Protecting the endangered species is now encouraged by money: if the whales disappear, many people working in the tourism industry would lose their living. This is market economy working for the environment!

My advice: Have fun and go see the world! Your travel budget will help making the world a better place. It’s all about the attitude. Honestly, who still thinks it’s better to buy experiences with money while nature can provide adventures that money can’t buy?

Happy Earth Day everybody! :)

Green travel: adventures that money can't buy

Greenwashing Aeroplanes?

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I travel somewhat often and mostly by plane. And I’ve been worried about the ecological impact of flying. Thus I was happy to find out about a list by Finnair (the biggest finnish airline). Finnair claim that carbon emissions can be cut by up to 30% by following these three simple rules:

  1. Choose modern airplanes. Travel with an airline, whose fleet consists of modern fuel-conservative aircraft.
  2. Choose direct routes. Avoid stopovers. Less time on air means less consumed fuel.
  3. Avoid big and busy airports that get crowded during the rush hours.

Sounds so good that we posted the list on TripSay as well.

Or is this just greenwashing? I find it very difficult to believe that the impact could be as much as 30%. At least it would be better to talk about the average impact instead of the peak…

According to PhoCusWright I’m not alone if I’m sceptical. A bit over a half of travelers suspect green washing when travel companies try to communicate their green strategy and ecologicality.

PhoCusWright’s survey of U.S. travelers finds that 56% are skeptical of what companies are telling them about green practices and only 8% think it is easy to find green travel options. Travel companies must clearly communicate the precise value and impact of their green strategies.

Reducing towel laundry and linen use is not enough anymore. Cutting one third of flight emissions could be. I think Finnair is on the right track in taking “green” into account in their marketing. That is, if they can prove the numbers…

Direct Route Is a Straight Line by Finnair

Battle of the Online Travel Giants

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I thought these things happen only in books. What we have here is a battle between two very interesting travel businesses! I’ve read many business strategy books about how companies innovate to beat their competition and update their strategy according to market changes and apply game theory to best utilize their competencies and so on. But how does it look like in reality?

The Players:

  • TripAdvisor, a hotel review site with the most User Generated Content. TA is owned by Expedia Inc., an OTA that has the biggest market share in the States.
  • TravelPost, a hotel review site that has been idle for a couple of years. Kayak.com got their hands on TP when they accuired Sidestep in early 2008. Kayak.com is a relatively new flight meta search engine that has gained a lot of traffic and has become one of the most popular travel websites.

Ric Garrido writes about the amounts of UGC that TA and TP have, see his blog post.

Playfield: the online travel market. Travel is huge online market with internet sales in Europe and USA adding up to $160bn. The online travel is growing quickly in both USA and Europe. Expect a double digit growth rate for year 2009 in Europe [Marcussen 2009]! Thus we have a lucrative market but the margins are falling. Commissions from airlines are very small and the common “truth” is that hotel bookings are the only way to make money in online travel…

Battle between TripAdvisor and Kayak

Round 1: TripAdvisor launched a flight meta search on Feb 27th. In the past TA has focused on hotel bookings but now they are going after Kayak’s domain. TripAdvisor announced that their new service “Brings Needed Clarity to Airline Pricing and Provides Most Flight Options and Best Deals Available Online“. They go further:

(TA’s) Dynamic Fees Estimator, the first and only online product to help travelers understand the true cost of a flight in a single display.

TripAdvisor now provides more flight choices than any other online flight search engine for the world’s top airlines.

Round 2: On March 11, TripAdvisor’s parent company Expedia announces that they’ll “waive booking fees on all flights”. Expedia is attacking Kayak’s position as the best place to look for flights. Is this linked with TripAdvisor’s announcement? Kevin May offers some insight, see here…

Round 3: Kayak strikes back. On March 24 they announce a launch of “World’s Largest Hotel Information Site“, i.e. TravelPost.com. TravelPost supposedly aggregates reviews and ratings from a huge number of sources and provides all these without pop-ups or clutter. And further:

For the first time, consumers can visit one website for all the information needed to make an informed decision on their hotel booking.

“Consumers and hoteliers are woefully underserved by websites like TripAdvisor.com, who appear to care more about their bottom lines than providing relevant content and a seamless experience,” said Steve Hafner, CEO and co-founder, Kayak.com.

What’s up next? Can’t wait to see Round 4!

Sam Shank (TravelPost founder and ex-CEO) posted an interesting analysis on the strengths and vulnerabilities of TA and Kayak.

Travel Trend: City Breaks Down, Southern Hemisphere Up

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OpodoOpodo(*) made a study of their bookings of January 2009. Comparing with the same period last year, it’s apparent that short city breaks in the eurozone are not this year’s things. The trend is that people are traveling to the southern hemisphere and that people are taking one longer holiday instead of a few short breaks.

Sounds like people want to make the most use of their tight budget by visiting destinations that provide good exchange rates for Euro and English pound. While the European hotspots, such as Paris and Florence, experience a fall in interest, long haul destinations have seen higher bookings.

The top-3 destinations with the biggest growth (source Opodo):

  1. Melbourne, Australia (up 400%)
  2. Singapore (up 219%)
  3. Delhi, India (up 165%)

(*) Opodo is an European online travel agency founded in 2001. The company is owned by a consortium of European airlines and Amadeus. Opodo operates sites in e.g. Germany, UK, France, Spain, etc. They plan to continue double digit growth in 2009.

Flight Canceled? A Curious Conversation Regarding Compensation

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Lufthansa Boeing 727-200Do you think that an airline would have a customer service staff reachable over phone? I did. But now I know better. :-)

I had the most curious conversation with a Lufthansa representative at their ticket desk at the Frankfurt Airport about a canceled flight:

Me: My flight from Seattle was canceled. I’d like to request refund of my accommodation and ground transport.
Lufthansa: Ah, hmm, ok. They should have offered you refunding and compensation at Seattle airport then.
Me: Well, they didn’t do that in Seattle but instead told me to come here.
Lufthansa: There’s nothing I can do for you. You must contact our customer service. Here’s their mailing address and fax number.
Me: Ok, thanks. Is there a number I could call and ask about the details and required attachments?
Lufthansa: No, they only have the fax number.
Me: There’s no customer service number?
Lufthansa: No. Only fax.
Me: The Lufthansa airline have no customer service number?
Lufthansa: That’s right. No number.
Me: Ah, ok. Thank you very much for your help.

What the heck? I thought only lean and mean startups operate without a customer service phone number and even they have very responsive email channel. Even the cheap flight search engines have a phone service during business hours. And Lufthansa is not even one of the low-cost carriers that have $1 fee for using the inflight toilet…

Based on the EU regulation 216/2004, I am entitled to a compensation and refund. The regulation is somewhat similar to Rule 240 in the U.S. I filed a claim to the provided fax number (+49-180-583-8005). Let’s see if and when I’ll get a reply. And which communication channel they will be using for the reply. On my part I included my phone number and email address in the claim… :-)

Update: Christopher Elliott writes about a similar case with Virgin Atlantic. I’m counting on Lufthansa to take a different stance.

Hotels.com Is Broken

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Hotels.com is having some serious hiccups in its booking confirmation mailer. I booked a hotel using Hotels.com and they billed me alright but failed to send the confimation mail. I had to call to their service desk where they told me that “We’ve been having a lot of problems with getting these confirmations mailed.”

The confirmation was emailed to me manually, so all is well. However, the next hotel booking I made using Booking.com…

An interesting sidenote: I actually considered booking my next accommodation through Hotels.com as well, despite the extra trouble, because their site is so well localized. They have lots of information in finnish and offer a local service number. Such is the power of localization…

Hotels.com is owned by Expedia. Booking.com is owned by Priceline. Hotelclub.com is owned by Orbitz. Is the only “independent” hotel booking site the german HRS?

The Paradox of Choice

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Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry SchwartzHow much time did you spend in choosing your flights last time? Going through various options and different flight plans takes a lot of time nowadays. There are so many websites to check and so many different routes for getting from A to B that choosing the best one takes ages. And how to define “the best” in this context? Is it measured by $ or by time or by aircraft’s comfortability or …

Following a friend’s recommendation I read a book by Barry Schwartz called “The Paradox of Choise: Why More Is Less“. In the book Schwartz argues that abundance of choice is actually a bad thing:

We assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of choice overload: it can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures.

Barry Schwartz divides people in maximizers and satisficers. Maximizer seek and accept only the best. Satisficers settle for good enough and do not worry about the possibility that there might be something better. If you’re a maximizer, choosing a flight is both time consuming and stressful.

I think some travel services actually target maximizers. Yapta tracks flight prices and alerts you when prices drop. Farecast predicts flight and hotel prices so that you know when to buy. And of course there are a huge number of aggregators who search multiple airline and travel sites for the absolutely lowest price.

Technology can help maximizers but, according to Schwarz, the only real solution is to train yourself to be a satisficer. You’ll have choose when to choose: “Where to travel for holiday?” is much more important than finding the cheapest flight. Thus focus on finding a great destinaion! And you’ll have to think about the opportunity cost of spending time hunting for the best when good enough is already found.

The book is a nice read. Barry Schwartz presents a few thought provoking examples but I’d say the tale could have been told using half the pages he does.