Service Innovation in Airlines - AirAsia

Tony Fernandes believes that the key to his Air Asia airlines breakthrough success is people (committed to the customer), leadership and ability to brand and market - perhaps the pillars of service innovation.  See interview below.

Google's Holiday Gift to the US Air Travelers

Airline consumer will be heads down on their smartphones and laptops at airports this holiday season, thanks to Google, which is offering free WiFi at 47 participating airports around the USA, details here.  Though you will not find Atlanta, New York or Chicago on the list!

America's consumer goes from "Be Like" to "I Am"

"There is no such thing as "the American consumer"".

States an article in AdAge - "No more Joe consumer in America", here.  One key to this shift has been the American consumer's ability to voice a choice, ability to create and join communities of choice, and the choice being the brand that fulfills a need.  Did the Internet help enable this?

This democratization of the American demographic is discussed in a white paper (for you to purchase) here by Mr. Francese, demographic trends analyst at WPP's Ogilvy & Mather and founder of American Demographic magazine.  He states that:

"The iconic American family - married couple with children - will account for a mere 22% of households."

The changes represent the continued growth of digital communication mediums, while emphasizing the need to engage directly and pervasively with the consumer.

Brand Manager vs. Brand Advocate?

Forrester has finally caught up with the leading marketing companies of today!  Forrester published a report recommending the shift from the designation "Brand Manager" to "Brand Advocate" in their report - "Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach To Brands In The Digital Age", here.

I was activitly engaged in creating this new pathway seven years ago at PG-Tremor, details here.  The Advertising Age magazine states as much in their article, "Why its time to do away with the brand manager", here:

"Executives of big marketers Procter & Gamble and Unilever note that they're already doing much of what Forrester recommends.  The global brand strategist/local brand advocate breakdown, for instance, resembles how they and other big household and personal-care marketers already organize."

I remember one of the big moments was when the brand managers discovered they had minimal to no insights on the digital social networks driven communities of choice forming around the "choice" i.e. the brand that fulfilled a need.  The AdAge articles states this to be a necessity today:

"[Rex Briggs] believes marketers in the digital age need to be more "numerate", with more training in research and analytics..."

Interestingly, I remember listening to Paul Poleman current CEO of Unilever when he was at P&G about the importance of information technology in reaching the consumer.  He is quoted in the article stating:

"Web-enabled consumer intelligence may be one of the biggest benefits of social media for marketers."

The astute will note that Mr. Poleman used the words "intelligence" not analytics!

The Economist For Subscribers Now

Recently, the Economist has begun restricting content on their site.  Some of the great information freely available to the Internet user is now for the paid subscribers only.

The magazine recently wrote an article on America's ailing newspapers "Big is Best", read here.  It will be interesting to see how the Internet news and information market place shapes up.

Old and Famous Chinese Brands

Via Tony Tsai:

"China forbids foreign investment in "old and famous Chinese brands"
Vice Minister of Commerce Jiang Zengwei says that old and famous Chinese brands are not allowed to introduce foreign investment. If they do so, they will be deprived of the fame of being an "old and famous Chinese brand". He says there are only about 1,000 old and famous Chinese brands in China compared with more than 10,000 in 1949. He says the China should protect those old and famous brands. He points out it is an important duty of the government to protect China's national brands. According to the current regulations, an old and famous brand must have been established before 1956."