©istockphoto.com/marcio eugenio

“Flying sucks. Could they make my seat any smaller? I can’t believe they’re charging to check a friggin’ bag!” Sound familiar? Of course it does. After baseball and apple pie, the next great American pastime is complaining about flying. And it’s not just an American pastime; it’s a global one that brings us together like the Olympics or… um, an alien invasion?

Many people seem to think they should pay 2010 prices for 1960s service and complain if they don’t get just that. Yet despite this willingness to complain at the drop of a hat, for people travelling in coach, an airplane ticket has effectively become a commodity.

Whose fault is it that we’ve gotten to this point? There are a lot of places to lay blame, but even if airline marketing efforts were stellar, distribution methods make it very hard to actually sell the product. That’s where the biggest improvements can, and should, be made.

Think about how someone goes about buying a ticket. Do they go to a travel agent? Usually only managed business travellers do that for a simple flight booking, and then they’re bound by their corporate policies about which carrier to choose. For the regular everyday traveller, most would  have trouble finding a travel agent who’d want to book just a flight and nothing else.

So, many people venture onto the Internet, and what do they find? Not much worthwhile. Nearly every place you go to look for a flight shows you your options by time and by price. We all know that price and schedule are the most important things when it comes to making an air travel purchase, but that doesn’t mean they have to be the only things customers see.

If you’re travelling in a premium cabin, you’ve already demonstrated that price is less important to you than comfort and amenities. You’ll need to do some digging to find the information you need, but you’re probably willing to do that. It’s coach passengers who are left in the dark since they may not even realize product differences exist at similar price ranges.

In a previous life, I built a travel metasearch site for PriceGrabber.com that incorporated on-time performance, seat pitch, and inflight entertainment in the flight display, among other things. The site was eventually shut down thanks to one of those dreaded “changes in direction” at the company, but not before we discovered that people really liked having this information.

We saw plenty of people paying $20 more for a ticket when they saw that the legroom was a couple inches better. Oh, and for families travelling with children, that seatback video screen was a lifesaver worth paying for. (It’s also a lifesaver for those sitting within a couple rows of those kids.)

These days, in my air travel assistance business, I’ve seen clients shun AirTran’s 717s because of the tight legroom. Others have wanted to fly Alaska because of the much lower change fee. These things aren’t obvious to the customer who simply books online, so most of the time, they remain outside the decision-making process. Airlines that have product differentiators are missing out on drawing additional customers because of this dearth of information during the booking process.

But this is only part of the story. It’s not just important for choosing between airlines but also for choosing the right fare within a single airline. Let me explain.

Some airlines, notably Air Canada and Frontier Airlines, have done a great job of building the product into their own fare displays. When you go to their websites to search, you’ll see a few different fares listed in different fare-type categories. It’s easy to hover over to see the benefits of paying more.

But unfortunately for them, that’s not where they sell all their tickets. They still do a ton of business via online travel agencies like Expedia and Kayak who aren’t communicating the product differences effectively.

If I want to buy a ticket from Long Beach to Denver on Frontier, the online travel agents will show me a $200 fare. (That’s just a nice round number and nothing more.) I can buy the ticket or I can fly someone else. That’s it.

But if I go to the Frontier website, I find that for $30 more, I can snag an advance seat assignment, get LiveTV included without additional charge, increase flexibility by reducing change fees, have two checked bags included, and more.

For a lot of people, that’s well worth paying the $30. But if I book anywhere outside of FrontierAirlines.com, I’ll never know these options existed.

The bottom line is that until the distribution method changes, air travel will continue to be a commodity for those in the back of the bus. You’ll often hear airline managers complaining about people only caring about price and schedule, but much of the blame lies on the system and not on the customer.

The Kevin Smith affair generated tons of media coverage, much of which wasn’t very kind to Southwest. What was the biggest lesson of that experience?

I think there were several lessons learned here. We have over a million Twitter followers, a strong presence on Facebook and our blog, filled with great advocates that love what we do. We have all these channels in place and they’re very robust. But these channels didn’t get to Kevin Smith the way they would to a typical customer.

If this situation happened to someone who didn’t have the volume of tweets coming back at him, we might have been able to defuse the situation a little bit more efficiently. But with the sheer volume of content online, I’m not even sure he saw that we were reaching out to him via Twitter. That was one of the issues.

But honestly, trying to engage a person online who doesn’t necessarily want to engage online back was a challenge. With most people, if you say, “please DM [direct message] me,” they see that and they do, and you’re able to solve their customer service issue right then and there. That wasn’t the case on that Saturday night.

I think another lesson was learning to know when the conversation was over. I think we did the right thing there. We came out, we apologized, we stood by our policy and we acknowledged that it was implemented incorrectly (in our second blog post). We refunded all of his travel. And then it was over for us.

But when we ended the conversation, it wasn’t necessarily over for him. And that’s fine – to let him have his time to vent, to talk to his audience, and have a voice, that’s perfectly acceptable.

You guys have cultivated a very distinct personality through your blog, tweets and YouTube videos. And the title of your initial blog post, “Not So Silent Bob,” had that cheeky voice your customers recognize. It was very on-brand. But some people perceived it as “snotty,” because they weren’t as familiar with that voice. Do you think you misread your audience here?

I think that’s exactly right. We used our typical voice in that first blog post and now we’ve gone back and realized maybe that wasn’t the appropriate voice. Maybe we need to look at that a little more thoroughly – the title, all that stuff with more of an outside perspective. We’ve gone back and done “lessons learned” and case studies already, and that was one of the things we looked at, making sure that voice is appropriate for a Southwest audience that gets us and loves us, but also an audience that isn’t as familiar with who we are as a company.

Was this an instance where a more old-fashioned, corporate press release-style voice would have been more appropriate?

Yeah. And we’ve had that feedback. That was the other really interesting thing about this. I saw everything that was posted online about us – the good, the bad, and the ugly. And it was a huge learning opportunity for all of us. But I think not just us, but a lesson for every company who has an online presence, and every person who’s sitting on the other end of some really hateful tweets about how to handle this. And to expect it.

What’s your take on how the media treated the situation? Do you think they were fair and balanced about the whole thing?

It’s tricky. I think a lot of them didn’t get all the facts. People are pretty speedy to report these days on blogs, on social media, on all channels. I even saw some blog posts where people were saying that if they were me they would have had that first blog post approved before they posted it and I’m like, “Really? You think I didn’t get that approved!?” But when you get down to the meat of the story, I think most of the reporting was right.

Have you personally spoken to Kevin Smith? Where did the relationship leave off?

For us it ended Monday. This all happened Saturday night. Sunday I posted my first blog post. And then Monday we were actually able to get the right phone number for him. Because a lot of – I hate to use the word – celebrities don’t have the right phone numbers in their reservation. It’s their assistant or talent company or whatever.

So we finally got the right phone number for him and were able to reach him and our VP of communications had a great conversation with him about the policy, how we implemented it wrong. And then we came out with that final blog post. And for us that was the end factor. He wasn’t quite satisfied with that final blog post but we were.

Southwest has set the bar high for airlines using social media to communicate with customers. But have you set impossible expectations now that people expect you to be accessible 24/7?

Part of our job is managing those expectations. But to be really truthful, I personally don’t feel we can offer our best customer service via Twitter. I think we can be alerted to customer service issues via Twitter but more often than not, if we see an issue on Twitter, we take it via email or some other medium where we can really dig in.

We’re also blessed with being a domestic carrier so we don’t have red-eye flights. Our timeframe is a little bit different than some of our competitors just because we don’t fly internationally. Our Twitter operating hours are about 5 a.m. to about 11 p.m. and we’ve gotten to a place where we encourage all our employees who use Twitter to be monitoring. A lot of them even have my phone number. So we’re a big group of Southwest eyes looking out.

How has Southwest’s massive social media presence generated some ROI for the airline? How do you measure success?

More than anything it’s allowed us to communicate with customers in spaces that they’re communicating in already. We’ve had these kinds of excited fans since the ‘70s, it’s just the ways they’re sharing their excitement that’s changed. Having tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and our blog allows us to see and share all that content with everyone else.

In terms of metrics, we’ve done some source coding, which gives us a picture of who is clicking through our tweets or Facebook status updates to Southwest.com, and then maybe making a purchase. That’s something that we look at but it’s not necessarily driving our strategy of being online.

In an age where almost every traveller has an iPod or smartphone, podcasts are a relatively cheap way for brands to communicate with customers and make their trip smoother. Travel guides, language lessons and other relevant content can be downloaded at home and consumed on the go.

But while a few airlines are experimenting with podcasts, most brands have turned a deaf ear to them. Here are a few examples of what airline podcasts are, and what they could be.

British Airways created the Dr. Sleep podcast series in late 2007, which offers passengers advice on issues such as jetlag, fatigue, and “the business side of sleep.” Combine this with their audio/video travel destinations podcasts and they get the Grammy for best audio offering.

American Airlines sponsors Travel with Rick Steves, a weekly hour-long podcast that features in-depth city guides and special episodes like “International New Year’s Eve,” in which Steves discusses how different cultures celebrate the New Year. American also produced a motivational series called Power Lunch targeted at the business traveller, but it hasn’t been updated since 2007.

Delta Air Lines puts out weekly updates on its flight operations, in podcast form. These are very technical reports aimed at hardcore airline geeks.

Lufthansa, working with custom podcast producer BCD Travel, produces the Travelling with Experts series. Aimed at business travellers, it offers advice on cultural norms and safety in destinations like China, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates. Unfortunately, the series is available only in German.

While most airlines have yet to see the podcasting light, a quick search of the Apple store reveals dozens, if not hundreds, of successful airline-related podcasts.

Ice Pilots NWT, based on a History channel TV series, follows a fictitious Yellowknife-based airline, providing behind-the-scenes interviews with the (fake) cabin crew. Why can’t a real airline do something like this? Cathay Pacific, for example, already has a “meet the crew” feature on its iPhone app.

Then there’s Betty in the Sky With a Suitcase, which chronicles the misadventures of a real-life air hostess for an unnamed “major American airline.” Her first podcast, “Monkeys and Tigers and Ghosts… Oh My!!!,” released in August 2005, involved troublesome monkeys in Bali, bugs and bats in Belize and tigers and ghosts in India! Today “Betty” has almost half a million podcast fans around the world and her own eBook.

So why haven’t more airlines joined the podcasting fray? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes…

Imagine when you book your flight to Paris, Air France sends you an email with links to downloadable content – “French for Beginners,” “An Introduction to Paris,” or “Doing Business in France.”

Once on the plane, you can hook up your iPhone to inflight Wi-Fi or a USB port, download a video tour of the best Parisian restaurants or listen to a conversation with your flight captain.

After the flight, you can keep up with your basic French lessons, and listen to the city guide as you cruise down the Champs-Élysées.

Carriers can integrate podcasts into mobile apps or social media platforms and have customers engaging with their brand long after their plane touches down.

Airlines encourage passengers to take the inflight magazine home with them; maybe it’s time they gave them something to take onto the plane, and listen to throughout their journey.

After take-off we slip on a pair of headphones and zone out in front of Die Hard, or reach for the inflight magazine and start visualizing our next winter getaway. Then, once we’ve reached content overload, we might pull out our journal and start scribbling about the trip ahead or the memories behind us.

Yet, as we’ve reported on this blog, many of the latest airline tools and developments seem to be geared toward making air travel more social.

Last month we told you about Lufthansa’s new MemberScout app, which encourages frequent flyers to share travel tips, between-flight cocktails and even a taxi ride from the airport.

In a similar vein, Air France/KLM has launched a trip-planning portal called Bluenity, where prospective passengers can gather real-time travel advice from local residents and meet with people with matching itineraries.

Meanwhile, non-airline actors such as Satisfly, Eezeer, Dopplr and FourSquare are coming out with apps and services that promise to make flying a friendlier affair.

Factor in the slow rise of inflight WiFi and it’s clear that air travel is being transformed from an introverted media-consuming experience into a social event.

Although we’re all about engagement and relationship-building here at Sparksheet, we have to ask: Is this really a good thing?

What sorts of privacy and liability issues will brands face if folks are using airlines as matchmakers? What does this all mean for the future of inflight entertainment and Transumer-oriented advertisers?

Is this a question of cultural differences (i.e. Americans love talking on planes, Brits hate it)?

Tell us: Is air travel a social or solitary experience?

image by Ellen Von Unwerth

In my day-to-day work performing user-experience research and design, I put a lot of effort into understanding the psychological needs of those who use technology.

Last month, I spent a sum total of about 50 hours in flight during a pilgrimage through India. In addition to the many eye-opening revelations that came from walking the burgeoning land of my ancestors, my designer’s mind noted a major disconnect between the user experience of Air India’s inflight entertainment systems and the diversity of its passengers.

Sure, there were standard usability flaws like disorganized information architecture, slow response times, and ergonomic problems with the remote control. But a more fundamental problem lay in the system’s content strategy.

It all started with Air India’s movie selection, which consisted of about eight Hollywood new releases, a few “classics” (which, strangely, included Die Hard), and an array of Bollywood movies. It quickly became clear to me that I wasn’t very interested in any of the new releases: 500 Days of Summer (a theatric exploration of dating), The Proposal (an American tale of a green-card wedding), and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (about a womanizer confronted with the error of his ways during his brother’s wedding), to name a few.

Notice a pattern? All the English-language selections were romantic comedies selected to attract members of the Indian culture, in which love and marriage are a very different affair.

As Die Hard was ending, I tried to figure out why I clearly hadn’t figured into the target audience of Air India’s inflight content. I looked around at my fellow passengers and realized many of them were likely worse off. Sure, it was a flight from Canada to India via England, but the passengers appeared to come from a much wider range of countries and backgrounds. The content selection simply wasn’t appropriate for such a multicultural audience, and this was contributing to a poor user experience.

Designing for multiple cultures is not a new problem. I was recently involved in an exhaustive analysis of how well adapted international airline websites are to local cultures, based on factors such as the proper use of language and culturally sensitive imagery (Emirates came out on top). These sorts of studies always produce some surprising findings; did you know the Chinese have a very specific interpretation of the colour yellow?

The fact is that an airline’s clientele is inherently diverse and multicultural, and no carrier’s inflight entertainment can satisfy every passenger. But it can be internally consistent, positive and universal.

Consider the restaurant model, in which customers happily perform the host culture’s customs as part of the dining experience. We use chopsticks for Chinese food, eat with our hands at an Ethiopian restaurant, and sit on the floor at a sushi joint.

In the same vein, Air India could benefit from a user-experience strategy that emphasizes the brand’s role as an ambassador of a culturally rich society. The cabin crew already sports traditional dress and the inflight meal is unmistakably Indian, so why not also embrace this cultural expression in passenger entertainment?

Air India’s infight system could emphasize documentaries and programs that showcase the uniqueness of Indian media, introduce international passengers to the peculiarities of Indian culture, and complement the content with a distinctly Indian aesthetic (stylistic touches, decoration, music).

This strategy would exploit the natural curiosities of international travellers while creating an unforgettable brand experience. And on my next flight to India, instead of watching Die Hard – twice – I might learn a bit more about where I come from, and where I’m headed.

But did you catch our fascinating chat with Web design icon Jeffrey Zeldman? Or our refreshingly candid interviews with brand execs like Emirates’ Patrick Brannelly and best-selling business author Chris Brogan? We’ve put together our favourite Sparksheet Q&As for your reading pleasure.

Of course, we’re also known for our original “think pieces”—micro-essays, roundups and sparks of inspiration. Ogilvy’s Kunal Sinha takes us inside China’s hippest new hotels; Al St. Germain offers clients and agencies pointers for the big pitch; and jet-setting travel writer Charlene Rooke documents her 24-hour journey through Lufthansa’s brand space, on land and in flight—plus so much more in The Best of Sparksheet.

Download The Best of Sparksheet for free now!

For the full feed, follow us on Twitter. Here is our iPhone “tweetphoto” shot from within the 900-plus audience:

The very first airline apps were so basic you’d expect them to be a no-brainer for any brand. They provided booking, flight information, flight tracking and mobile boarding passes, eliminating the need to dig through your luggage.

Then last summer Air Canada became the first carrier to provide complimentary travel information through their app,  including weather updates and the ability to rent a car.

In the last few months, things have gotten even more interesting. Southwest Airlines’ brand new app does everything mentioned above, but includes a built-in DING! function, which notifies frequent flyers of exclusive airfare deals.

Cathay Pacific’s app includes 68 destination guides. It also allows passengers to “Meet the Team” by browsing photos of Cathay Staff, making the journey experience that much more personal.

But leading the way is Lufthansa, with three different mobile tools. The Lufthansa Launcher provides customers with the now-standard booking, tracking and boarding services. Not a true native app, it directs customers to the German airline’s iPhone-optimized site.

The recently released Lufthansa Navigator acts as a GPS, providing travellers with an interactive map and Google Street View-like functionality. It will store your flight information and tell you exactly how to get to your gate, check-in counter, baggage carousel or favourite airport lounge. A native/web app hybrid, some features are embedded into the app itself, while others direct you to the optimized site. For now the Navigator is only being tested in Frankfurt Airport, but it’s a sign of things to come.

The third app encourages Lufthansa’s Miles & More frequent flyers to engage with one another. MemberScout allows passengers to share their geo-location, arrange meet-ups, give and receive travel advice, and even share taxies—a social feature suggested in this Sparksheet think piece last summer. How long until Lufthansa combines its three apps into one mobile monster?

A handful of other airlines launched basic apps in the last few months, including GOL, Luxair and Swiss International Airlines. And Singapore Airlines is already integrating iPhone connectivity into its seatback system.

But it’s surprising how many of the world’s largest airlines have yet to leave their mark on the iPhone or any other mobile device. In the meantime, we’ll keep checking up on them.

By colodio via flickr

With thriving Asian economies barely skipping a beat during the latest financial crisis, the region has emerged as the single biggest opportunity for travel marketers. And much of that opportunity lies in the digital space.

In the past we’ve faced the challenge of tailoring our marketing efforts to the nuances of different Asian markets. When it comes to digital, we need to be even more careful to not treat Asia as a homogenous lump.

Rules of Engagement

Overall, Asian netizens are highly active:

• 85% are members of social networking sites; users spend an average of seven hours networking per week
• 87% read blogs and three in five have started their own
• 95% research products and services online

Digital’s secret weapon is engagement. The Internet allows marketers to deliver content that engages consumers in the experiential elements of a brand and sparks conversations—all in a cost effective manner. For a prime example, look no further than Tourism Queensland’s Best Job In The World campaign.

But consumers will only engage with content that speaks to them and their world. So recognising the differences in how Asian cultures interact in the digital sphere is vital.

Digital Relativism

Three broad factors influence the needs of a digital population:

1. Culture. Collectivist versus individualist cultures (e.g. Japan versus Australia) use digital media differently. Different cultures have different priorities. For example, in China personal life is stronger, while in India political engagement is.

2. Maturity of Internet penetration. A low penetration group is distinct in attitudes and demographics in a way that a larger population is not. For example, in India, Internet use skews heavily toward young men in urban areas who are early adopters of technology.

3. Digital infrastructure. Internet speed and availability of broadband connections define what we can do online.

By plotting the type of digital activity (blogging, online shopping, mobile use, etc.) against these factors, we can determine which media work better for each culture.

Typically, younger demographics in less mature markets will have a stronger need for recognition, so (as the chart below shows) individual blogs are more prevalent in China and India. Mobile Internet is also strong in these markets because this technology became available before traditional PC-based interactions were widely established.

On the other hand, in countries with high Internet penetration but a strong collectivist culture, digital habits tend to centre around acceptance. So in Korea, collaborative blogging is more common.

Here in Australia, the Internet is highly prevalent but a more individualistic culture (plus a higher degree of trust in public spaces) means that we look to digital technology for enrichment and entertainment. Australians enjoy researching and buying products online as well as watching movies, downloading music and playing games.

Airlines and Local Differences

To see these cultural differences in action, compare Jetstar’s digital branding strategy in Australia to Air Asia’s Malaysian campaign. Australians are mature travellers who value convenience. With this in mind, Jetstar is among the leaders in Asia in piloting tools like mobile phone boarding passes, alongside its traditional focus on the Internet as a sales distribution tool.

At Air Asia, digital marketing plays more of a supporting role. The company’s brand philosophy is built around the theme “Now anyone can fly.” So while you can buy an Air Asia ticket online, you can also buy one in your local convenience store.

In their own ways, both carriers serve the disparate needs of their target customers.

The Golden Rule

It’s an older story, but 10 years ago the fast take-off of SMS technology happened in stark contrast to the slow uptake of 3G. The technology gods thought we couldn’t wait to make video calls, but we didn’t know how, what it would cost or feel the need to. A great technology, it was not driven by consumer need like SMS and other successful innovations we see today—like iPhone apps.

Localising digital strategy is a lesson in the same philosophy: Don’t do unto your neighbour what you would have them do unto you. Their needs may differ.

Here are some examples of how to build a great website for the consumer in transit:

Speak Transumer

Does your website communicate who you are, what you offer, and what next step they need to take, all within 8-10 seconds? It should. Like most airline sites, the Qatar Airways homepage allows me to bypass all the fluff and make a “Quick Booking.” After selecting my country, menu options include “The Experience” (at the airport and on-board travel information) and “Privilege Club” (frequently flyer program).

These are appropriate terms to describe a carrier that’s won several “Best in the World” awards and calls itself the “World’s 5-star airline.” The average user understands what they’ll get when they click, while the language and the overall experience is perfectly in line with the brand.

Less Is More. Kind Of.

Travellers need straightforward, easy-to-digest information at all points of the journey cycle. If they’re just researching, they need to be able to navigate quickly and easily. But if they’re in transit, they might want a mobile-friendly version of the site. Consider each stage your customer will go through and  provide them with useful, relevant information.

Just remember: doubling the amount of detail doesn’t make it twice as good. For instance, have a look at the Chauffeur Driven Car Hire website. With all those flashy links, images, and repetitive bits of copy, it’s hard to know where to start.

Don’t Hide Your Sales Channels

Marriott’s new homepage is clean and simple, consisting of six categories—deals, packages, meetings & events, etc.—displayed like a hand of playing cards, with the booking widget in the centre.

Contrast this with Starwood Hotels’ website, which presents the same information in the form of tiny icons on an overly cluttered homepage. I would have built these into the navigation menu (where is the menu, by the way?) and used a colour scheme that’s much easier on the eyes.

Give Them an Express Lane

Give users who aren’t sure, or are too busy to find, what they’re looking for what they need: an express lane. On a website, that’s a search box, visible on every page.  And test it to make sure it actually works.

Fodor’s has a nice search function. When I type in “France,” my search results are broken down into “destinations,” “reviews”, and “guidebooks,” so it’s easy for me to zero in on what I’m looking for. Just make sure the search box is in the same place on every page.

Even if you pride yourself on an easy-to-navigate website, you’re alienating some of your potential customers without that little box.

Take Action

You might be saying to yourself that these aren’t necessarily novel concepts. You’d be right; I never said they were. Novel concepts usually end up confusing people.  Some principles of design will never change, nor should they.

So, what would a web-savvy but busy Transumer say about your website? If you don’t know, ask. Get some honest feedback. Survey some of your customers for their thoughts (and entice them with some freebies or a nice bottle of champagne for their trouble).

If you can’t get your customer to give you some realistic input, then pay an expert to do it. This is one of those situations where people won’t just come out and say that you have a problem; they’ll just keep clicking away until they find a brand that takes care of their needs, and never look back.

Some hope to make an international impact by launching splashy high-tech or eco-friendly initiatives; others have invested in local projects that will generate goodwill with Vancouverites long after the athletes leave town.

Many other brands are just looking to expose their products and services to the millions of viewers, visitors and spectators who will be transported into the Transumer headspace by the global excitement around the Games. Here are a few innovative examples.

Open House

Most Vancouver hotels have been booked for months, if not years; some are taken over entirely by TV crews and heads of state. So during the recent real-estate blip, one developer got creative. The new downtown residential tower Level turned from proposed rental apartments into an extended-stay residential hotel, suddenly the only one in town with Olympic vacancies. It will also temporarily host USA House during the games. That high-visibility gig could be a big-time launching pad; Level Furnished Living hotel has already housed some visiting Hollywood film crews.

Style and Substance

Compare the plans of official sponsor Omega, which opened a classy pop-up watch boutique for the duration of the Games in the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver; and of renegade eyewear brand Oakley, which will have its Rolling O product and technology lab-on-wheels in the more populist locale of nearby ski hill Grouse Mountain. Each approach smartly targets the brand’s core audience.

Official clothing sponsor Hudson’s Bay Company and its red mittens has a shining presence at the Games, but there are plenty of other sportswear brands ready to grab some limelight. Victorinox, makers of Swiss Army travel gear, have a pop-up temporary store in Whistler for the Games. Red Canoe Heritage Brands also recently opened a permanent Whistler store. How many tourists will happily purchase these Canadiana-hip clothes in place of “official” gear?

Meanwhile, hometown Yoga-pant guru Lululemon got wrist-slapped for its cheeky “Cool Sporting Event That Takes Place in British Columbia Between 2009 & 2011 Edition” clothing line. The IOC called it ambush marketing; we call it clever positioning.

The Bay's Olympic superstore in downtown Vancouver (by susan gittins via flickr)

Easy Being Green

Eco-friendly products are becoming an easier sell with consumers, but a marketing boost during the Games could be a green launching pad. Official sponsor Coke is using the Olympics to unroll new clean, green cooling technology for 1,400 vending machines around Olympic sites—a first in Canada. Greenpeace (founded in Vancouver in 1978) has been working with Coke over the last several years to popularize the new technology; Vancouver 2010 could be the global “tipping point.”

Good Will Hunting

While some brands are going straight for their customers’ dollars, others are winning over their hearts and minds. Official sponsor GE partnered with the province of BC to revitalize a beloved local playground, the delightful Arthur Erickson-designed skating rink at downtown’s Robson Square.

The rink showcases GE lighting and cooling technology—and a great deal of corporate goodwill. The $2-million project will have a lasting legacy for locals after the Games.

Likewise, official sponsor Bell is hosting the Bell Ice Cube, a 3,000-square-foot downtown celebration zone that will showcase Bell technology, sure—but will also have talk shows with athletes and live music for the crowds.

Night skating at GE Plaza in Vancouver's Robson Square (by susan gittins via flickr)

Screening Room

This is being called the first Twitter Games, with dedicated social media newsrooms popping up around the city. No other Olympic Games has been such a platform for new technology of every kind.

Official sponsor Panasonic will debut its home 3D HD plasma TV, and is sponsoring athletes to blog using Panasonic video and online technology.

Samsung scored a coup by making its Omnia the official Olympics cellphone, though the local media has been reporting that disgruntled VANOC employees are using their personal iPhones and Blackberries on the sly.

There’s even an official Olympic video game, by Sega, to win over the eyeballs of the young male and extreme-sport demographic.

Medal Ceremony

But our favourite branded promotion of the Games is by Urban Barn, which has uniquely combined a bricks-and-mortar appeal to locals and visitors with an online gimmick bound to attract even broader attention.

The furniture retailer is moving one of its employees into its Howe Street location 24/7 during the games, making it a public living room—and a high-profile showcase for their products. Store manager Robbie will Tweet, update a Facebook page and generate a live Big Brother-style feed that will be broadcast in 10 Urban Barn locations across Canada.

Step up on the Sparksheet podium: we give you the Transumer engagement gold medal.

by markhillary via flickr

What inspired HSBC to target the consumer in transit?

We’re very much focussed on the sort of person who has an international outlook. That’s not necessarily someone jumping on and off planes, but someone who is interested in the world. Maybe they work for a global company and need to travel for work.

We’re an international bank with a presence in 86 markets and a lot of our products – specifically our Premier banking and a new product we’re launching this year – are designed for people who have financial needs in more than one country.

So it would be crazy for us not to target this demographic.

These days it’s rare to cross an airport terminal or air bridge and not see an HSBC ad. How did you become the “airport brand”?

We started off buying U.K. airports, then our office in the U.S. bought up the New York airports. We’re now in 48 airports in 24 countries.

The U.S. has been interesting for us. We just did a huge research project on effectiveness and the New York results were very skewed. The passengers going through LaGuardia are very domestic. But outside New York and California, where we have a few branches, no one in the U.S. knows who we are. So our ad recall results were low there.

Generally, we’ve bought in places where we have a very large footprint in the market. There’s no point in advertising in all these jet bridges if the take-away message is, “Oh, HSBC is here,” and then we’re nowhere to be seen. So we need to think about changing our message. We can’t presume people walking through LaGuardia will know who we are.

We also look at the international traffic going through an airport. For example, we bought jet bridges in Bangkok. We only have one branch in Thailand but given the international passengers passing through Bangkok, and bearing in mind our footprint throughout Asia, it was obvious for us to buy ads in such a hub. Same with Los Angeles. We only have five branches in L.A., but that city is the gateway to the United States from Asia so it was an obvious choice for us.

by Tamas Tamasov via flickr

Your ads appear in print, ong TV, and online, as well as in airports, airplanes and other public spaces. What are the strengths and weaknesses of each medium in getting your brand message across?

Print has become so targeted that we use it to advertise certain products and services, and not much for brand awareness any more.

TV ads are the most versatile because you can use them for inflight systems, online streaming television, movie theatres, etc. These days a TV ad isn’t necessarily just going to reach you in your sitting room.

We do lots of online advertising at the local level and we’re appearing on British Airways’ website, on their Executive Club pages, which makes sense for us.

How do you integrate the HSBC brand into physical spaces like airport lounges and terminals in a way that also serves the immediate needs of people in transit?

It’s something we’ve looked at, but haven’t cracked yet. What can you offer as a bank within an airplane environment that people can take away and do something with? It’s not like we’re selling phone chargers or cashmere blankets.

We did do an initiative in 2008, where we commissioned food writers, supermodels, directors, and economists to write articles and then set up airport kiosks where people could create their own bespoke magazines as an alternative to the inflight reading.

As an international company, how do you tweak your brand messaging to appeal to local customs, norms, sense of humour and taste?

When we launched our brand globally, the creative was all about understanding local customs and culture and sensibilities. But it’s very difficult developing campaigns that will mean the same thing in 86 markets. We provide the framework at the global level and they do what they need to do locally to make it work. But it’s tough because you can’t please everybody, and you do need to retain some sort of control and discipline at the centre.

Any examples of ads you thought would work globally but were construed differently than you intended?

We’ve been quite guilty of developing brand TV commercials that work very well in sophisticated markets like the U.K. or Hong Kong, where we have very high brand awareness, but fall flat in places like Poland. Because no one knows who we are in Poland.

So this year we’ve developed TV ads that don’t use a one-size-fits-all approach.

We’ve literally made one ad that explains HSBC is a bank. Two years ago we wouldn’t have thought that was necessary. But in a lot of places where we’re just opening up, people have no idea what HSBC is.

Ny Ewan McIntosh via flickr

It’s interesting how you’re such a household name in some areas, while in other places people don’t even know what HSBC stands for.

They haven’t got a clue, and we haven’t always done a very good job explaining it to them.

In Tokyo, for example, we bought every jet bridge in the airport, but had only one branch on the ground. At that time our creative featured pictures of food, and a lot of people walking through thought we were a catering company.

Hearing things like that made us realize that we had to understand our brand awareness in each market and work from there. We can’t assume anything.

© Dan Lamont

Brent Friedman is Co-Founder and President of Electric Farm Entertainment.

How did you get major brands like Kodak and Verizon to sign on to something as new and untested as transmedia storytelling?

Our first transmedia project, Afterworld, was a great litmus test for the model. It became something that we could use to showcase what we were capable of from a production quality and creative standpoint, as well as a business standpoint. I mean, the reach that we got with Afterworld was globally over 20 million views and it made money!

So, although we didn’t have any sponsorship on that project, when we did Gemini Division as our next project, everybody could see we had credibility. We got Rosario Dawson interested and once we had her, and we had NBC, and we had Sony, we had the confidence to go after some big sponsors.

We got Cisco and Intel and Acura and UPS and Microsoft all as sponsorship integration deals on Gemini Division. It was an embarrassment of riches, but it was also too many balls to juggle. So by the time we got to Valemont and Woke Up Dead, we decided it’s better to have one sponsor take on a bigger role in our project. It just becomes too difficult to manage all of those relationships while you’re also trying to produce content.

Transmedia projects produced by Brent Friedman for Electric Farm Entertainment (chart by Sparksheet)

What have been the most effective ways to work these brands into your stories?

You really have to sit down and explore what it is that the brand wants to communicate; what aspect of their brand do they want to represent in this story, or in this experience? Taking the Verizon example, before we even knew that brand was on board, we had embraced this idea that the central narrative device of Valemont was going to be a cell phone.

When you’re working in two- to three-minute episodes you need shortcuts. Something I learned in video games was to cut out the first act of set up – jump right into the action – and the way we thought we could do that in Valemont was to give our main character all the clues she needed in the very first two-minute episode. Give her a cell phone with all the digital fragments of her brother’s life – his voicemails, his text messages, pictures, videos – so she could solve the mystery of his murder one clue, one episode at a time… using a Verizon branded phone, of course.

How do you integrate your sponsors into the narrative without insulting your audience’s intelligence?

That’s another thing I learned as a story consultant at EA [Electronic Arts], the video game company. When I was there they were really embracing the verisimilitude of advertising. It used to be that you had a major league baseball game, for example, and all of the signage inside the parks were jokes, they were parodies of real ads.

But then they started getting feedback that the game would seem more real if there were real ads that simulated the experience of being in a ballpark. And I think a light went on in everybody’s head – “Oh, wait a minute, they’re not going to feel that’s advertising, they’re going to feel that that’s reality” – because we live in a branded world. So from our standpoint, we could make a fake phone, and we could make a fake wireless carrier, but that would take you out of reality.

What are some of the ways in which you enabled your audience to interact with the story, as well as the brand?

As a kind of nexus of the entire ARG [alternate reality game] and interactive experience, we built a faux Valemont University website that we modeled after real 21st century college websites. Students could apply to Valemont University and when they were accepted, they got their own virtual phone through the website.

That became their communication device, where they got text messages and pictures and videos sent to them from characters in the show. And that was also a Verizon-branded phone, so it became a replicate experience to the show’s main character.

Both Woke Up Dead and Valemont have more or less completed the run of their episodes. How have your sponsors been able to realize some ROI on these projects?

We were able to offer click-throughs to the Kodak website. They featured Woke Up Dead on their main site and got a lot of attention for that. I think they really got a lot of return on their investment in terms of what it did for their brand., because it connected a new demographic to their digital cameras and made using them fun and cool. Plus, it allowed Kodak to loosen up their brand identity. In terms of actual numbers – selling cameras – I don’t know. But I do know that they couldn’t be happier with the whole experience.

Verizon was excited about a lot of things that happened on the show; the number of people who enrolled in Valemont U completely exceeded everyone’s expectations. The amount of engagement, the time that people were spending on Valemont U, the number of fans we garnered on Facebook, as well as the amount of streams they were getting to their V CAST users of Valemont was through the roof.

The retention rate of the Valemont episodes when they aired on TV was also off the charts. But most importantly, it wasn’t that people were watching the show, it was that they were engaging with the content.

And because Verizon was integrated into that whole experience, from the episodes to the websites, they felt like they were getting a lot of great exposure.

As a transmedia storyteller, how important is it to create a community around your content?

I think at this stage of the game it’s one of the most vital things. I think what’s happened is that there used to be this kind of wall between creators and audience. It used to be a one-way experience where creators created and they distributed to an audience at whatever time they chose to give it to them, for however long and for whatever price. Those days are gone and that wall has come down, and now you don’t have creators and audience, you have co-collaborators.

You have people who initiate the content and you have fans who invest in the content and even help market it virally. And I think that that relationship is going to be key going forward because the audience has become so empowered and so enabled because of the technology.

Something else I picked up at EA is the notion of “a universe worthy of devotion.” When you look at a project or a franchise like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, it’s not just that the movies themselves were successful. It’s that those worlds have been so fleshed out, so well conceived in their 3-D qualities, that fans want to go live there, they want to explore that world. The key is to create content experiences that satisfy that compulsion.

Taking Valemont as an example, what was the most surprising way in which your audience became part of the story?

We initially decided we didn’t want to have a fan forum on the Valemont University site. We were trying to create what feels like a real university site, so we couldn’t have fans talking about the TV show on it.

We thought we’d have a Facebook page where fans can gather and talk. But that’s not really a forum, that’s more of a bulletin board.

And so, without any prompting, a group of hardcore fans rose up and created the Valemont Commons, which is a very good replica of our Valemont U site. They emulated the design of the VU site, and created an adjunct, essentially, where fans could gather, and they did a really smart thing: they created an “on campus” portion of the forum where people could be in character and talk about Valemont as if it were a real institution, and then they had “off campus”, where you could kind of step back and talk about the show.

That happened instantaneously. It happened within the first week of the show being released.

Is transmedia a niche, or is it the future of entertainment?

It’s definitely the future. I think that what’s happening is that storytelling is taking on a different life because people are looking for a different level of experience. I think that transmedia producers are actually rising up to meet a need. I think that it’s an emotional, psychological need to not just watch passively anymore.

I think there is both an opportunity and a challenge for content creators. To trust the audience, to invite them in and let them make it their own. That’s exciting for creators and fans. And you don’t really have enough of that right now.

Honestly, I always look to video games when I want to peek into the future. Everything you’re seeing from Project Natal, which is creating interactivity in terms of not just movement recognition, but voice recognition, eye recognition, emotion recognition – it’s putting the viewer, the audience, into the game, into the movie, into the web series, and once they’re in there, they don’t want to just watch. They want to be part of that world.

I don’t know how far off that is as a mainstream technology, but that’s what kind of keeps me going – the idea that I’ll be around to not just see something like this, but to actually create a next-gen experience like that.

©istockphoto.com/Stepan Popov

In this ho-hum holiday season, turns out that the only retailers who experienced a surge in sales, according to the New York Times, were those who let customers do the handiwork themselves.

Design-it-yourself websites such as Zazzle, CafePress and Scrapblog reported a whopping 80% increase in sales compared to last year’s gift season. At Spreadshirt, where customers create t-shirts, bags, umbrellas and even underwear, orders have doubled. Sales are also up 43 percent at Blurb, which lets customer craft their own photo or art books.

Mass customization, a niche that’s growing 10 times as fast as online retail, isn’t limited to Web 2.0. start-ups. Major international brands are enabling customers to personalize products through slick online portals and promotional offers. Adidas encourages amateur athletes to design their own one-of-a-kind running shoes. Prescriptives lets ladies create their signature lip gloss by choosing a shade, finish and flavour. Meanwhile, sweet tooths can visit the My M&Ms website, upload a photo or company logo, select a colour and even write a message to create their own custom candy.

But when you think about it, no industry is as ripe for customization as travel. After all, everyone’s travel experience is completely unique and deeply personal. Here are some examples of how travel brands are giving their customers the tools to customize their own adventures.

Disney and Personalized Video

Mass customization works for services as well as products. At Disney’s Epcot Theme park, customers can design their own personalized roller coaster ride— The Sum of All Thrills—on a touch table using rulers and speed tools to create twists and turns. The design is saved on a special card, which is then swiped at a launch station—a giant carriage controlled by a robotic arm. Kids watch a video version of the ride they just designed while the arm jerks them around and a giant fan blows air in their face, simulating the feel of a rollercoaster.

Last year I went to Disney’s website and created my own personal faux news video, which announced that for the first time ever the entire Magic Kingdom park would be dedicated to one person for the whole year – Me! I counted 13 instances in which my name appeared in the video, superimposed on signs, rides, menus, and other places in the park. The video was even hosted on a personalized microsite.

Considering how much this delighted me as an adult, I can only imagine how special a child would feel seeing her name plastered all over the Magic Kingdom. Talk about emotional branding.

Maine Event: Personalized Travel Guides

Seeking a competitive edge in the battle for tourist dollars, the Maine Office of Tourism decided to mail a free personalized travel planner to anyone who visited its website and volunteered information about his or her travel plans. The variable elements included photos of attractions the traveller said they intended to visit, a calendar listing events taking place during the time of their stay, a custom letter, and a document featuring the regions and activities in which they expressed interest. The package was printed on demand and included a feedback card that offered respondents the chance to win a shopping spree at L.L.Bean, one of the state’s most famous retailers.

Mailing the personalized package cost approximately 15 percent more than mailing the standard info package, but the results clearly outweighed the costs. According to Xerox 1:1 Lab, which piloted the project, 24.1 percent more people responded to the personalized package, with over 50 percent of those responding providing feedback, and 73 percent indicating that the guide was helpful.

That’s what marketing is all about—figuring out what customers want, and how they want it. So why not go ahead and ask them to spell it out for you?

By Chris Brogan via flickr

Brogan is President of New Marketing Labs, a new media marketing agency, and co-founder of the Inbound Marketing Summit.

You’re an extremely prolific blogger but you recently launched a newsletter with separate content. Why did you feel it necessary to have a presence in people’s inboxes?

Blogs reach one kind of person. The newsletter reaches another. I’ve also launched an iPhone app, a better mobile UI, and I’m available in the Kindle Store, as well. To be a new media outlet is to be every bit as interested in finding the people you need to build relationships with, regardless of technology. If I thought it was sustainable, I’d buy a printing press, too.

When’s the last time you came across some really, truly useful branded content?

I find useful branded content lots lately, because many companies are learning how to be smarter with using content marketing in their efforts. Often times, it’ll be content created by a company who plays in that space. One example I like is when Sysomos uses their listening tools to generate interesting reports about the social media space. It’s a report I can use, and it’s done by a tool that sells to people like me in the space where they’re using it.

As someone who seems to spend a lot of time on the road, what do you look for in a travel brand?

I need brands on the move to be topical, bite sized, localized, and relevant to my travel experience.

What magazines, blogs, mobile apps, etc. do you consult when looking for travel-related resources or content?

I ask Twitter more than any other resource when it comes to travelling. I usually get up-to-the-minute information, including interesting deals, just by throwing the question out there to Twitter. Mind you, I have a decent-sized following. It might not work that way for everyone.

How can airlines use social media to engage customers beyond the trip planning and selling stage?

Airlines are already doing this. Morgan Johnston at JetBlue and (until recently) Paula Berg at Southwest are great examples of airlines reaching out and bridging customer service and PR/marketing efforts. There are a lot of people in the airline world looking at the social space for engagement points, and every time they participate, I take notice.

Why do you think the airline industry – on the whole – gets such a bad rap in terms of customer service? Is it that they insist on seeing it as a burden instead of an opportunity?

The airline industry isn’t alone in considering customer service a necessary cost centre instead of a great point of communications and relationship building. Southwest probably gets the best marks in the US, and I’d say Virgin America does well, too. But none of them get an “A” from me in how they handle service. I’d say that if I had marketing dollars for an airline, I’d throw 1-3 percent of them into call centre improvements, and by that, I mean human training.

You speak at lots of conferences and events around the world that are frequented by online marketers and social media types. Do you think the Internet has increased the power and importance of face-to-face connections or diminished them?

I think the Internet serves as “hamburger helper” for those moments in between face-to-face experiences. You can’t fully replace face-to-face, and even if you could, I think we humans like seeing each other in the flesh from time to time. The Internet, however, has improved the opportunities to do interesting things in between those moments.

In your book you talk about Robert Scoble’s experience with Microsoft and the importance of being “a person first” when it comes to corporate blogging. But is there a danger in a large brand becoming associated too closely with one individual or personality?

I think brands have to build a deep bench when it comes to mixing humans and brands. I think Scott Monty at Ford is doing a great job. If he leaves, who is their next person up at bat? We don’t know. Frank Eliason at Comcast is working to fix this with his brand and so is Richard Binhammer at Dell.

How do digital natives get the technophobes and social media skeptics within their company on board?

Show them the benefits. Don’t make it a prescription. Show people what they can do when they use the tools. Show success stories. Show case studies that prove the value. That’s how Tony Hsieh at Zappos did it, and they sold the company for over a billion dollars. You think they all knew that Twitter was a powerhouse tool? No. But Tony showed them, and the organization benefited greatly.

What will become of the agency model in a world where brands can reach millions with one measly tweet?

I think that marketers were given tools from another generation and that those tools are no longer as powerful. In my mind, what comes next is a rediscovery of the importance of relationships in business. Banging an email list for 1.5 percent conversion won’t cut it any more. We’ve got much better success rates in social media, only it takes more time and hand holding. The new formulas aren’t fully baked, so people shy away from the new tools. Well, the decline of the old tools is well documented. Sit around on that sinking ship much longer and…

I kept a diary of my outbound flight and kept my brand sensors receptive to all likely Transumer touchpoints. Ultimately, what surprised me is how innovative the brand engagement was online, and how little of that experience was reflected in flight.

Ground Trip

My journey starts long before I board the plane in Vancouver for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (via Frankfurt). About a week before takeoff I scan Lufthansa.com and am intrigued by the array of programs. I offset my carbon footprint via the Climate Care program (to the tune of U.S. $79 for the 15,582-mile return flight), satisfied by the thorough explanation of projects funded via partner myclimate.org.

I select my Special Meal from among 21 options (including something unappetizingly called Bland Soft). I download and view the A340 seat map, which is not as detailed or user-friendly as Seat Guru’s, but helps me avoid a seat near the busy washroom. I find out there will be laptop power at my seat, but no FlyNet WiFi until at least 2010. Not only can I review the inflight audio and video entertainment, I can request a song—and could even make a dedication, if it were far enough in advance of my flight.

Virtual Flight

As someone who practically lives on my laptop and iPhone, I am impressed to see that Lufthansa goes a few steps beyond the industry standard electronic boarding pass and online check-in. I sign up for SMS notification of changes to my flight, departure time and gate. I install an iGoogle widget that offers the same function at a glance on my laptop’s home search page. But the killer app is MySkyStatus, which promises to liaise with social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to send travel updates to my contacts.

Lufthansa’s mobile site proves disappointing, though—single-click access to online check-in, timetables and other airline basics are augmented with lame extras like branded wallpaper and the corporate song. The enticing invitation to “set a special mood with moving images” turns out only to be a corporate screensaver.

My favourite feature: I have a blast navigating Lufthansa’s online map, which has great interactive features for locating direct and connecting flight paths at a glance and instantly calculating mileage—a mileage-hoarder’s dream tool.

Inflight, Not So Entertained

Lufthansa doesn’t operate lounges in Canada and has a low-key presence at Vancouver airport, where I take off, so my pre-boarding experience consists of a stop at the Travel + Leisure store to pick up an adapter and a quick peek at the Olympic Store—smart Transumer targeting.

I fire up the seatback entertainment system and though a handful of recent Hollywood movie releases had looked promising from landside, 20 minutes each of the leaden Coco Avant Chanel, Cheri and The Time Traveler’s Wife convince me I should have packed a fat book.

Fortunately, nearly hidden among a selection of three-year-old episodes of Entourage and How I Met Your Mother is some great TV: the documentary Signé Chanel: La Collection and Stevie Wonder’s Live at Last concert at London’s 02 arena. The same is true of the audio, where a jazz program by Branford Marsalis and Dave Matthews Band albums mask much more interesting music by Malian lute player Bassekou Kouyate and a smart club mix by Cologne DJ Piet Blanc.

Pre-film commercials on the seatback screens are limited to one (mercifully, since German glass and solar-energy company Schueco is of minimal interest to international travelers). I find the absence of other paid advertisers odd—BMW and Mercedes, I’m thinking of you—but also wonder why some of the more fertile inflight offerings—Berlitz language courses, great aviation and fleet information and even Soduko—aren’t promoted onscreen instead. Lufthansa does a good job of hiding its rich content.

The pages of Magazin inflight magazine yield an unintentionally ironic piece on Buddy Holly’s widow—he died in a plane crash, after all—and a fun words-and-pictures feature on some unlikely denizens of Tokyo. But the needlessly detailed and complex route maps in the magazine pale to those online and the German-English bilingual layout is occasionally confusing.

Magazin lacks the essential ingredient that still keeps print inflight magazines relevant: a juicy, engaging, literate read

Miss(ed) Connections

Paradise for the long-haul flyer is a clean, well-stocked lounge with showers. Such is the Senator lounge in the B concourse of FRA’s Terminal 1. It‘s extremely busy, but I find a seat and wait about 45 minutes for a hot shower, amusing myself with wonderfully strong coffee, continental breakfast and the International Herald Tribune (the only English-language reading material on site).

I log in via TMobile’s paid-WiFi hotspot and discover that MySkyStatus alerts (“…is now flying over Iceland on Lufthansa. Powered by myskystatus.com”) did indeed post to my Twitter stream. Several friends direct-message me to comment on the coolness of this feature.

I’m surprised how few brands are available to the frequent-flyers and premium-class travellers in this lounge. There are even generic amenities in the showers, where I’d expect to find a Dr. Haushka or Nivea onslaught. There’s a fee-for-service T-Mobile charging station, Hugo Boss and Bogner leather promos and a handful of rather dated Dell-equipped workstations. Non-stop onscreen promos for Miles & More play on lounge screens and I count five different WorldShop catalogues. Isn’t that preaching to the choir?

The last nine-hour leg of my flight is uneventful and mostly spent sleeping. (Note to self: really, pack that fat book next time.) Though I have to give Lufthansa props for all 34 large boxes of our group’s equipment, supplies and luggage arriving without difficulty at ADD.

In total I was able to amuse myself for fewer than half of my 24 hours in transit: proof that brands are seriously under-utilizing this space and time to connect with their very best customers.

Disclosure: Sparksheet is published by Spafax, a WPP company. That said, we went through the same channels as any other media outlet in order to interview Sir Martin.

At Sparksheet we’re very interested in how brands are serving the Transumer, or the consumer in transit. As someone who spends a lot of time on the road, what do you look for in a travel brand?

If you’re talking about airlines, research shows that the most critical thing is how you’re received at the check-in desk and upon boarding the plane. There’s nothing more irritating than when you see the flight crew chatting amongst themselves instead of talking to you. In my opinion, the devil’s in the detail. It’s not the big stuff. What turns me on is when people are attentive and welcoming.

The key thing for travel brands is that they can get you where you’re going on time. Beyond that I think technology is important – entertainment, music. Maybe I shouldn’t say this but a lot of the Eastern airlines – Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Emirates – these airlines are thriving because they’ve invested a lot in equipment and service.

I always travel by scheduled aircraft and very rarely charter a private plane, which is extremely luxurious but not very green. I flew Jet Airways and Kingfisher when I was travelling in India. A lot of people say they’re not profitable and won’t be profitable, but their service is absolutely outstanding. The Western airlines face a lot of challenges in competing with them. As a Transumer, as you call it, those are the things that I look for.

I get the impression that the major airlines see investment in the soft touches – video, food, etc. – as relatively unimportant, but I think it makes a hell of a difference.

These days brands like JetBlue can sell off millions of dollars of inventory with one measly tweet. What does this mean for the future of advertising?

The answer to the JetBlue tweet example is that the price point – or the offer – is probably a big determinant to the success of the campaign. So the outcome isn’t a surprise, but it tells you something about the power of the social media. Population-wise, Facebook is the third- or fourth-largest country on the planet. But these things are going to be fluctuating. I’m not saying they’re going to be here today, gone tomorrow, but they’ll fluctuate – it’s early days.

Things have become much more fragmented and very, very different. I heard a figure from a client today that, in America, 34 percent of their consumers’ time is spent online. The figure we usually fasten in on is 20 percent, I’ve seen 28 percent from Morgan Stanley. But clients are only spending about 12 or 13 percent of their budgets online.

Media habits are changing, becoming much more one to one. That’s good news, but it’s also bad news because it’s highly fragmented, and therefore you don’t have large globs of ad revenue sticking to properties anymore. So it makes life for newspapers, magazines, and free-to-air TV much more difficult.

It also means that smaller fragmented audiences are much more important. For example, the Transumer audience becomes much more important because it becomes more defined and more easily addressable and targetable.

The JetBlue example shows you how violently media consumption – particularly amongst younger people – is changing, how it is likely to keep changing, and how specific it can all be. And actually it can be very effective and cheap for everyone.

What’s the missing link in getting brands to seriously spend on the Web? Is it that advertisers flock to quality content, and that just doesn’t exist to scale online?

Time. A lot of it’s to do with time. I’ve described it in the past as “age” but that’s gotten me in trouble. Agencies are run by old people like me, and older people like me are media owners and clients as well.

People take time to change. They might not get it yet. You become the CEO of a company and it’s taken you 25 years and the last thing you want in your last four or five years is violent change. You want things to go on just as they have before. So it’s a natural human emotion if you like – a human feeling – to resist this change. But it’s only a question of time. Because if consumers are spending 20, or 25 percent of their time online and clients are spending 12 or 13 percent of their budgets online, there’s a natural gravitational pull to that 25 percent.

By the time the spend gets to 25 percent, say over the next five years, we’ll probably be spending a third of our time online. And so, as one of our clients said, maybe by then there’ll be less of a gap as we’ll all be used to it. It’s purely a function of time and people’s unwillingness and resistance to change.

You’ve said that you agree with Rupert Murdoch’s decision to charge for content. Why – and what do you think his real motivation is?

Because the current models – the new media models and certainly the old media models – are under a lot of pressure. Craigslist has destroyed classified advertising for “old media” and there are very few new media companies that make any money. Google is an exception. Their new CFO is doing a lot of good and Google is a much more intimidating company than it was even six months ago, if that’s possible, with a market cap well in excess of Berkshire Hathaway’s.

So I think that life has changed. I think that if someone like Rupert Murdoch, who follows his business intensely, sees circulation coming down, and ad revenues coming down, there are only a few ways to deal with it: one, by getting people to pay for content; two, by more consolidation amongst media owners, which is why he’s asking for relaxation in media concentration rules; and three, as media concentrates, and a lot of newspapers and magazines close, governments are going to have to see whether they will protect the private industry – protect you or me from the diminution of editorial content.

Do you think that part of his motivation is that if consumers pay, advertisers will follow? After all, a paid site implies quality content.

No, his central point is that giving it away for free doesn’t make sense. Kindle doesn’t give it away for free, so why should Rupert Murdoch? In my view, if the consumer can pay for content, they’ll pay for it.

And Google does seem to have modified its initial position. This is all about trying to generate revenue from all sources – traditional and new – in a world where platforms have been disintermediated, in a world where fragmentation makes it very difficult.

It’s got to change – after all, how many new media companies are actually making money? They say they are, but Mark Zuckerberg says I need to earn one cent more than my cost!

Can branded content connect with consumers the same way traditional media can?

Yes, branded content is a way forward and even the UK authorities have reversed their position against it. But fundamentally, consumers are not stupid. I’ve seen some very crude product placement in various markets, like in a soap opera where a woman opens a fridge and there’s only a can of Coke in there! It can be much more subtle than that and it will be more subtle than that. But people have to understand that it’s happening and brands have to recognize that the consumer can’t be hoodwinked.

What role will the emerging Chinese consumer class play in shaping the global travel industry?

The world has to change the way they look at the Chinese. There’s a lot of them. They’re the biggest group of visitors to France now. They’re already out there – there’s 1.3 billion of them. You’re talking about a lot of people with the disposable income to travel. People say Chinese aren’t rich but 150 million to 200 million are consumers already – with middle class habits – and there’s a lot more coming.

And don’t forget about the Indians. There’s more than a billion of them, too. Between them it’s one third of the world’s population and shortly 40 percent of the world’s GNP. So, ignore at your peril.

Happy Holidays!
-The Sparksheet Team:

Raymond Girard, Publisher
Dan Levy, Editor
Charles Lim, Web Director
Arjun Basu, Spafax Editorial Director
Niall McBain, CEO, Spafax

©istockphoto.com/Yulia Akatyeva

I’m a big proponent of outsourcing content.  So much so that I’ve built my entire career around it.

There are a number of reasons why brands should seriously consider outsourcing their content. Most brands are set up to sell products and services, not to consistently deliver compelling content. It’s tough to take off your sales hat as a brand.  Having someone who understands your message, but also knows how to tell a great story, is critical. Many brands have trouble weeding out the sales pitch to tell an honest, engaging story.

Content is everywhere. Good storytelling is hard to find.  The difference is the Grand Canyon. Look at your resources.  Could your staff’s time be better spent?  Are you really saving money?  Probably not.

I could go on.  There are dozens of reasons for outsourcing your content. But my favourite is this: Multitasking makes you stupid.

I’ll explain.  When a brand begins a content marketing initiative, they rarely hire for a new position.  The job is usually given to one or many people in the marketing, communications, or public relations departments. “Hey, you’re good at this content thing, you can do it!”

So now there’s a group of people who have to do their current jobs, and also have this content thing to do as well.

In almost all cases this is a bad idea. Why? According to a recent Stanford study, high multitaskers perform much worse than low multitaskers.  In the study, students who juggled several things at once (TV, Internet, cell phone, etc.) fared significantly worse than students who focused on core activities. The point: multitasking makes you stupid.

When brand managers throw content marketing in the mix as just another individual or group task, the result is bad content. Corners are cut.  Research is forgotten. Sloppy copy is the norm. Bad storytelling looks like Mark Twain to internal folks.

Is your brand story important enough to foster in its own right, or is it just another item in the marketing pile?

Is your content stupid?

Sound like the tagline of a choose-your-own-adventure story? Well, that’s exactly what travel is. Adventure. Experience. Personal history. If you want people to invite you into their stories, you have to let them in on yours. That’s why content is more than a buzzword. The most compelling content builds familiarity and trust—and establishes your brand as a leader in your industry. Or a hero in your story.

Diving in to content marketing

Sometimes it takes a smaller tourism company to show travel brands how ripe this industry is for storytelling. Take Dive Rite, for example. Established in 1984 by two underwater cave explores and diving instructors, the Florida-based company calls itself “the first technical dive gear company in existence.” Today it’s also the world’s leading  online community for serious divers.

In early 2006, the Dive Rite website was essentially an online catalogue. The company had long standing relationships with print media partners, and relied on them for most of its advertising. Dive Rite’s organizational structure and budgeting—like most retail brands—was set up to sell products, not to produce content. But the company knew it had a lot more to offer divers.

So Dive Rite contacted content marketer Russell Sparkman who suggested the company establish itself as the “definitive resource” in the technical SCUBA gear market. The company launched a blog, an instructional video channel and a dynamic FAQ tool called the “Solution Finder.”

Dive Rite also reinforced its role as a SCUBA gear pioneer by writing itself into the story. The website features a historical timeline, which takes readers through the early days of underwater cave exploration up to today’s technical advances.  The timeline places the launch of Dive Rite into this history, highlighting the fact that the brand was around before virtually all of its competitors. They’re the heroes.

Return on engagement

Dive Rite’s leadership-based content strategy paid off. With relatively little ad spending, their website’s traffic has increased by 33%. The site ranks organically in the top 10 for their most important key words and phrases, and numbers 1, 2 or 3 for primary key words. The average time spent at Diverite.com is an impressive 30 minutes, with an 80% sale conversion rate when referred to one of their online dealers. Now, that’s return on engagement.

Up in the Air

Don’t want to tell your own story? You can be the hero of somebody else’s…through clever brand integration. Co-starring with George Clooney, American Airlines shines in the new movie, “Up in the Air,” which showcases the airline’s friendly employees, posh Admiral Club lounges, and Clooney’s character—the ultimate Transumer?— pining for 10 million frequent flyer miles. Think about product placement, cross-promotion, and sponsorships as a way of attaching your brand to like-minded content.

Travel sells itself

Dive Rite’s online brand took off because the content they created is compelling and useful. The company also has an important advantage; wreck diving is exciting. But so is air travel. Or visiting a new, faraway place. Travel is an adventure that sells itself. Convincing customers to engage with your brand is a whole other story.

China is perpetually on a construction spree, and hotels are a big part of that boom. For a year, Hyatt on the Bund in Shanghai was the property everyone was talking about, and now it’s the Peninsula on the Bund. Just before that, it was the Grand Hyatt in the towering Shanghai World Financial Center. Looking out of my window, I can see the Shangri-La being erected at breathtaking speed. So what’s there to differentiate between one and the other?

As I said in my last post, the days of one-size-fits-all hotels are over. Chinese travellers expect hotel brands to integrate their unique story into every aspect of the experience. Let’s look at two properties – one in the shadow of the Great Wall near Beijing, the other in the heart of the French Concession in Shanghai – that have mastered the art of brand storytelling.

The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu Great Wall is a village retreat created by Jim Spear, who runs China Countryside Hotels. The houses are located right in Mutianyu village and are original peasant dwellings that have been transformed into luxurious getaway homes with spectacular views of the Great Wall. Every house comes with a modern kitchen, barbecue pits and Wi-Fi.

Grandma’s Place, where we stayed, was designed by Jim for his mother who comes to visit from the US once a year – and was perfect for my 73-year-old mum. (Jim’s staff also bought a wheelchair when I made the booking, and he thanked me for suggesting it.) The houses have private gardens but once guests step out of their gate they are immersed in a living village community and can hike through orchards and pine forests to the Wild Wall. On our family trip we bought all the ingredients for our barbecue from a villager.

The Schoolhouse strives for ecological and social sustainability. They provide employment and training to people in the community, support other local businesses, promote handicrafts, and buy food locally or grow it themselves. They prefer hiring residents from Mutianyu and nearby villages. They procure all of their outdoor cleaning, gardening, and farming services from their neighbour’s company, which they helped establish. That’s their story – emerging from and staying part of the community, and passing on the benefits.

On weekends, local craftsmen drop by to teach guests. My daughter learned how to make a kite. A glassmaking factory on the premises invites master glassblowers like Jiang Jiamei to create colourful designs, which are for sale and are as pretty as the ones I saw in Murano.

As we sat outside admiring the Great Wall winding over the mountains, Jim’s executive chef, an Indian, and other staff dropped by our table to chat. It was all very warm and friendly, and we plan to go back.

The Mansion Hotel has a dramatically different story. Originally designed by French architect Lafayette in 1932, the 70-year-old villa was once the headquarters of one of Shanghai’s most notorious sons, gangster Du Yuesheng. The villa was a gift to Du from his chief financial controller and is now part museum, part luxury boutique hotel with 32 rooms.

Until the liberation of Shangai in 1949, the villa was used to operate Du’s legitimate and illegitimate business operations. At night it hosted the city’s most exclusive and extravagant parties. The hotel’s CEO, Dr Dean Yin, is a historian who recreated how the building appeared in the 1920s and 1930s when “Big-Eared” Du presided over one of the world’s most powerful organized crime syndicates.

The rooms today can best be described as “gangster –chic.” The lobby is full of authentic historical artifacts ranging from an opium pipe to a gramophone to sepia-tinted photographs from the 1930s, and first-edition books such as Dante’s Divine Comedy. Across from the reception area was once a stage where private shows were held; Du’s love of the Peking Opera was legendary.

These are two very different stories: one about community and the warmth of family, one about history and living in a gangster’s paradise. Tell me, what’s your brand’s story?

Grandma's Place

Inside Grandma's Place

The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu

Rustic building at the Schoolhouse

Making a kite at the Schoolhouse

The Mansion Hotel

Room at the Mansion Hotel

The Mansion Hotel lobby

©istockphoto.com/Simon Oxley

Airports are more than cities. They are, to use a word that I’m starting to dislike more and more, communities. I dislike the word because of its egregious overuse, but I have to agree that it still means something in its original sense(s): a group of people living in one space under one government, or as a group of people sharing a common interest. Well, airports offer “community” for both and support both definitions. And at a place like Heathrow, which is not the world’s greatest airport, not by a long shot (in fact, it continues to be ranked as one of the world’s worst airports), this sense is heightened by the immensity of the place, by the fact that it creates its own ecosystem, with various communities under one roof.

The pre-security agents and businesses, for example. The cleaning staff. Security. And then post-Customs, the duty free area (one thing that is done properly at Heathrow, though Terminal 3 is still rather cramped) and its employees, the customs agents themselves, the gate personnel, baggage handlers. (Writer Alain de Boton talks about this almost exclusively in his new book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, a title that renders the contents of the book self-explanatory).

You walk through a large airport and you very quickly realize you are in more than a simple transit point. And even if you are running through an airport, that feeling of being in something larger, of being a part of a community, becomes apparent. Your fellow passengers, regardless of where they are going, are obvious partners, everyone a citizen of Airworld. I find affinities with almost everyone in an airport. So in Heathrow, with the agent at the Air Canada counter, sure, but also with the salesman in the Paul Smith store, with the cashier ringing up my purchase of Pimm’s and Fortnum and Mason lemon cookies (try it) and the lady restocking the salad bar in the lounge — all were denizens of the larger community of Heathrow, itself part of Airworld. Contrast this sense of community with one in, say, a hotel — where your common experience is the property and the city you are in — and you begin to see how different and unique Airworld really is.

Some airports are so dreadful that the feeling of community is almost defensive (I’m looking at you LGA), the commonality being shared negative feelings toward the space (which, in the real world, might lead to something like revolution). But not every place in the world is going to be to everyone’s liking. And there is a kinship in that feeling, too. Of course, the opposite is also true. I have found that the experience in well designed airports, like YVR (Vancouver) or DTW (Detroit), to be different but for opposite reasons. Especially in an airport like DTW, where almost everyone is in transit, the fact that it’s almost impossible to get lost adds something positive to the conversation (“Can you believe this place?”) and also, ironically, takes something away from the conversation (this is my take, so please comment if you disagree, but isn’t the rapport with a stranger heightened by a shared grievance?).

Despite its many flaws, Airworld is still a sexy place. A place like Heathrow, with people literally flying all over the world from one spot, is a remarkable place to realize the vastness and diversity of Airworld, of ideas travelling and coming together in unexpected ways. The modernity of Airworld, and the speed with which one can now transmit ideas both seen and heard (like this) is not just thrilling, it’s something one has to absolutely accept in order to not just get ahead in the world, but to keep up with it. And in the communities that are airports, ideas don’t just move, they move at supersonic speed. Transmitted instantly.

Brian Simpson and Adam Wallace at the 140 Conference in LA by CC Chapman via Flickr

I met Adam Wallace and Brian Simpson at the BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas, and the story of our introduction also tells the story of Roger Smith’s success.

It all started with Krista Parry. We were sitting at the back of a panel on travel blogging, crouched over our laptops next to the room’s only power outlet. Krista started telling me about Snow Mamas, the content marketing blog she curates for Park City Resorts in Utah. I showed her Sparksheet, and she told me there was someone at the conference who I really had to meet: Brian Simpson from Roger Smith Hotel.

Brian has served in the food and hospitality industry for over 20 years. A year ago he was diagnosed with a severe case of cancer and spent six months in chemo wards. While recovering, he found comfort and community on Twitter. After he left the hospital he quit his job at the Plaza Hotel and hooked up with Adam Wallace who was starting to do some innovative stuff with video and blogging for Roger Smith Hotel.

I had the chance to hang out with both Adam and Brian in Vegas. They came off as genuinely nice guys who understand that business, marketing and hospitality are all fundamentally about relationships. I don’t think we ever even exchanged business cards. It wasn’t until I got home and on Google that I realized just how engaged and influential Roger Smith really is.

The hotel has over 4,000 followers on Twitter, 1,200 fans on Facebook, 13,000 channel views on YouTube and 3,000 items in its Flickr stream. It’s been patronized and praised by celebrities and influencers like Chris Brogan, Mitch Joel and Gary Vaynerchuck and has established itself as the go-to hotel for wired Transumers. They even have a special rate for bloggers.

Why target this demographic? Adam explains it this way: “If we have 50 teachers from Maine stay at our hotel, they go back up north and that’s it. Social media people spread the word.”

Roger Smith has leveraged its midtown Manhattan locale to build a virtual community of brand evangelists. They hold a monthly social media breakfast and regularly host events and meet-ups with companies like Sprouter and 1938 Media.  “We’re a hotel, we’ve got something a lot of brands and marketers would love to have,” Adam says. “A real life connection center.”

The hotel uses social media to lure people into its space, and then broadcasts the hotel’s “stories” back out into the world. Their blog, Roger Smith Life, is filled with videos, photos, event recaps and art from the hotel gallery. “Content has been the backbone of what we do for a long time,” Adam says. “It’s about telling people’s stories.”

And that’s the lesson of Roger Smith Hotel. As we friend, follow, and connect with more people online than ever knew before, our thirst for real world relationships and encounters is only fueled. Once travel brands become trusted facilitators and matchmakers, the marketing takes care of itself.

“Krista was so excited to introduce us, ‘Oh you two just have to meet,’” Brian tells me, as we reminisce about Vegas. “Social media itself is not a business plan. It’s about connecting people.”

Ultimately. this is a story about a brand that grasped the power of new media very early on. They’ve filled a key niche, fostered real relationships with influential people, and reaped tons of free publicity—and customers—as a result. Notice how no one ever talks about Roger Smith’s rooms or amenities? It’s all about people, and the incredible power of good will in brand perception and success.

@RSHotel Twitter Feed

Photo © Carrie Bickner

Zeldman runs the web design studio Happy Cog and publishes A List Apart, an online magazine for web designers.

How would you describe the connection between content and design?

Content informs design; design without content is decoration. Content has the same relationship to design that product has to advertising. Good ads are based on the product; good designs come from and facilitate the content. This is one reason we bring content strategy to every design assignment, and one reason we insist on working with real content, not lorem ipsum (placeholder) content. Nothing is sadder than a beautiful design that works great with lorem ipsum but doesn’t actually support the real content.

How do you take into account a brand’s image or identity when designing (or redesigning) a corporate website?

Brand is how people feel about your product; the design of the site and its usability are essential components of that feeling and thus essential components of brand. The Web is more and more the way in which people interact most with your brand; thus the design of the site cannot be an afterthought. A wonderfully designed, highly usable and accessible site with compelling and appropriate content is a key touchpoint for your brand; if you go to one set of designers for “brand” and another set of designers for “Web,” you’re doing it wrong.

How would you describe the client-designer relationship on a given project? Who leads whom when it comes to ideas and decision-making?

Our client relationships are deeply collaborative. We “hire” smart clients and work closely with them to create optimal experiences for the people to whom their product or service appeals. This doesn’t mean our clients design the experience. Quite the contrary: design, architecture, and content strategy are entirely our responsibility. But we interact with clients on a deep level to probe their learning and knowledge and to co-evolve solutions, so that the client not only feels but actually has true co-ownership of the final idea.

What are some common design mistakes or misconceptions?

Some clients think design is decoration. We don’t work with those clients. Design is strategic.

Some clients think design and content are separate. Design and content are inseparable.

Some designers think, if one client doesn’t buy a design, you can sell that design to another client. Design is an expression of brand; as such, a design for Company A cannot be used for Company B.

How often should companies redesign their websites? How do you design a site that can evolve over time?

Every six months. Kidding!

Redesign is an opportunity to rethink and improve. There is no requirement to redesign, ever. Some successful sites, such as Amazon and Google, don’t so much redesign as slowly evolve their existing design. This can work just fine.

Redesigns are a risk but they are also an opportunity, particularly when your site is quite old and has evolved haphazardly over the years.

Redesigns require strategy, otherwise they are merely reskinning. We don’t do reskinning. We do strategic redesigns that help the people who use your website achieve their goals. Strategic redesign starts with research. The notion that a design is “dull” and needs to be “freshened up” by a “burst of creative inspiration” reveals a lack of understanding of, and disrespect for, design.

You worked as an art director, journalist and musician before the Internet days. What did your past lives teach you about design?

Failure in my prior careers taught me to patience and gratitude for what I have now, as well as patience with colleagues and clients.

Advertising taught me to work with clients and respect them. They are not the enemy, they are partners.

Writing is an expression of my love of content; design is another. I cannot design without understanding and loving the client’s content and the people to whom it appeals.

Any final words of wisdom, jokes, stock advice?

The best way to engage honestly with the marketplace via Twitter is to never use the words “engage,” “honestly,” or “marketplace.”

You didn’t ask, but boxers.

Those who don’t believe in eternity have never eaten with old people.

I’m thinking about going to Dubai or Capetown…for my next pedicure. I’m only half kidding. Earlier this year at the One&Only Palmilla in Los Cabos, I got hooked on the Reverence de Bastien pedicure, available only at One&Only resorts and a handful of Paris spas. As a travel writer, I can conceivably plan my next several trips around natural, baby-soft feet.

It sounds a bit ridiculous, but many frequent travellers I know tell similar stories about the powerful loyalties they’ve developed to goods and services while travelling. Take the emotional rush I get drinking a French 75 cocktail; it’s not just the champagne bubbles or the memory of the silver fox who once ordered one for me at a Lower East Side speakeasy, but an alchemic memory of both. These strong loyalties and emotions help set the Transumer apart from the jet-setting shopper.

Their wants and tastes fueled by global lifestyle magazines like Monocle and Wallpaper, Transumers aren’t satisfied with garden variety items from the shop around the corner. Though Montreal-based magazine editor Claude Laframboise must nose dozens of new fragrances a month, he relies on trips to New York to buy the Krizia cologne he’s worn since the 1980s from its flagship store on Madison Avenue. Exclusivity has always meant cachet, but a product that a discerning consumer not only deems valuable but self-defining? That’s priceless.

Toronto power-publicist Ann Layton flies frequently to London for clients and cashmere, which she buys only at Ocabini. The hand-knit, hand-died garments are imported directly through the owner’s sister in Kathmandu. In an era of cheap Chinese cashmere, Layton could buy a poncho anywhere, but she seeks out the most authentic, ethically-produced goods. Sure, she could order online, but I’d say her carbon footprint is lighter walking over to the boutique while in the city on business. And eBay wouldn’t provide her with Nepalese anecdotes to share over drinks at the Dorchester.

Spafax editorial director Arjun Basu often gets asked on Twitter and Flyertalk about his distinctive eyewear, which he gets from Ottico in Vancouver. Basu lives in Montreal—roughly 3700 kilometers (2300 miles) away. Here’s a personal, recurring Transumer relationship created by one chance visit to fix broken eyeglasses on a business trip. “Our optician Anita has a photographic memory for faces,” says Dr. Brad McDougall, the store’s co-owner. “Now, when he needs glasses, we just send him a selection.” The clinic also draws repeat visits from actors and their families filming in Hollywood North, which McDougall attributes to hotel-concierge referrals (a strategy the practice has focused on) and highly personal service.

Sometimes there is not only a qualitative preference but a quantitative difference in these relationships. The Transumer seeks out the best and most efficient services and “trip chains” them on to existing travels, the way a soccer mom lines up dry-cleaning and kiddie drop-offs. Vancouver writer Neal McLennan packs brogues that need a good working over when he returns to his former lawyering base in Calgary, a corporate town with a “disproportionate amount of good shoe shine stands,” he says. Spafax’s Raymond Girard swears by the world-class toothsmithing he gets from a Harvard-trained dentist while he’s on business trips in Santiago, Chile—at a fraction of the going rate in Toronto, his home base.

So how do brands get in touch with this border-blurring demographic? Client databases and e-mail lists are a first step in establishing where your far-flung customers might be located, how to keep in touch with them, and what will bring them back. Tools like Backtype can help track in real-time who’s buzzing about your brand across a vast swath of the online world, what social media monitoring company Radian6 calls “finding your brand evangelists.” The next step might be partnering with travel applications like Dopplr or TripIt, customizing promotions, or even syncing CalTweet-ed events with peak travel periods.

Online travel and lifestyle information is a powerful tool in cultivating a nomadic following, but think, too, of these high-flying consumers as you drop your URL or IATA code onto your packaging or ads. A shopping bag on a plane might just be better than a business card in hand to reach this transitory tribe.

Asia is too huge and diverse to lump into one category, so let me focus on Japan, since that’s where I live. The Japanese have been drinking Transumer coolaid cocktails for quite a while. Many consumers here embrace the travel mindset, even if they never leave the country (and most do not). There are, for example, several hundred thousand Japanese studying hula. There are hula-related schools, magazines, seminars, clothing, and performances throughout the country. These Transumers embrace a lifestyle of unique experiences that transport them, but not necessarily physically.

The Japanese domestic travel experience has also been tailored to the Transumer mindset for quite a while. Each train station (and there are thousands), from big cities to small, sells a unique “obento” boxed meal, plus literally counter after counter of food products labeled with that city or region’s name. The inventive packaging sometimes makes the content irrelevant, but consumers buy these souvenirs because they define their journey. Along the way, travellers can connect with local brands via their mobile phones in the form of special sites and bar code activated discount coupons.

Can you explain the term “budget luxury” and what it means to the Asian traveller?

Historically, when many Asian economies had a comparatively small middle class, consumer choices were neatly divided into two categories: luxury for the very rich and super low-end for the rest. The rise of the middle class throughout Southeast Asia plus China and India has resulted in the birth of new categories. An example is long-haul budget airlines based in Asia that provide AVOD (audio/video on demand) and a la carte pricing for onboard products.

The Japanese market, being predominantly middle class for a long time, is rather different but still offers some interesting examples of ”budget luxury.” For years there have been overnight bus services between Tokyo and Osaka, which were cheap and basic. Now consumers have new entrants offering plush, wide, fully reclining seats at a price point that is still much cheaper than the bullet train or airplane. Upon arrival in Osaka, you might stay at First Cabin, a budget property positioned between capsule hotel and traditional hotel. The semi-private guest spaces feature a small but chic environment inspired by first class suites on long-haul
aircraft.

Modern interpretations of Chinese masterpieces in the China Airlines lounges at Taoyuan International Airport in Tapei.

How does the inflight entertainment on Asian airlines reflect peoples’ media consumption habits?

IFE is often a balancing act that may be initially driven by consumption habits but is ultimately shaped by economic realities. The Asian airlines were some of the first adopters of AVOD and the content is both vast and diverse. Expectations are high and many airlines here do a superb job. At the same time, sudden economic shocks force a massive, urgent rethinking of the product offering. The need to reduce weight has seen carriers temporarily or permanently remove all paper except for the inflight magazine. Also keep in mind that many Asian airlines with large hub operations cater to an incredibly diverse audience in terms of language. This also influences the program mix.

In many areas of Asia, mobile phones are ringing throughout the cabin the second the plane’s tires hit the runway. In other words, consumers are hungering for communication as well as entertainment. So the future will be a mix of connectivity (WiFi, mobile access) plus traditional offerings (movies, magazines) and it will be interesting to see how airlines bring them together. For example, an airline’s AVOD system could offer an exclusive “this flight only” travel coupon activated via bar code on your iPhone.

As an aircraft cabin designer, how do you balance brand aesthetics with utility and cost?

Cabin interior design is the art of creating the perception of space where there isn’t much, while also reflecting the essence of the brand, whether it’s high-end luxury, cutting-edge chic or fun-n-friendly. But regardless of the brand’s positioning, the spaces are small and costs are high. With long-haul business class seats there are big trade-offs when deciding creature comforts such as stowage spaces, privacy dividers or control panels. One of my jobs is to help the client prioritize the gizmos without losing sight of the big picture.

Oasis Hong Kong Airlines' "dynamic streaks of light" identity was inspired by the constant movement of goods and people in Hong Kong.

What do you expect airplane cabins look like 10, 20 years from now?

New materials and manufacturing methods will help create lighter seats and structures, which in turn will help airlines keep fares at an affordable level. There will also be more pronounced differentiation between classes, and perhaps classes differentiated by aircraft (as opposed to three or four classes packed into a single aircraft).

Is there anything you’ve learned from airplane cabin design that can be applied to non-travel environments like living rooms or offices?

Aircraft cabins really push one to find creative uses of space. An aircraft galley must house literally thousands of items. In urban environments, where living spaces are small, the airplane cabin can provide lots of hints on how to adeptly hide everything at a moment’s notice.

©istockphoto.com / Dave Long

I recently attended a lunch with the founder of a leading experiential travel group. After his talk I was struck by how passionate and positive people were about the experiences the company offered.

It reminded me once again that our industry offers one of the most exciting, memorable and rewarding experiences imaginable. Even the most mundane trip has its moments. On business trips, it might be the deal you close or the glimpse of a city that you might never otherwise visit. On a ‘fly and flop holiday’ it might be that moment when you finally pause and get some perspective.

But if an alien tried to guess what humans cared about by looking at communications for different products or services, I don’t think travel would figure on his list. That’s because most travel communications focus on price instead of experience.

I’m not saying that no one in travel does emotional advertising – think Morgan Hotels’ FTR campaign, Emirates’ “Keep Discovering,” or Qantas’ “I still call Australia home.” But compared to other industries – many with weaker emotional pulls – travel tends to emphasize fares and function over fun.

Take iPhones or iPods, for instance. I haven’t seen a single ad from Apple about price. They’re all about the freedom of music, or the magic of intuitive design. Despite a global recession and a consumer mindset favouring caution over consumption, Apple hasn’t been able to fill orders fast enough.

The travel industry, on the other hand, has been awash in discounts and offers – each lower than the next. Yeah, we put a few bums on seats and heads on pillows, primarily in areas that the customer already wanted (cruises), but the constant discounting may have done long-term damage. It’s caused consumers to devaluate travel.

Our Domesticate research, which explores why Australians are travelling less within the country, found that many Aussies forsake travel for other luxury products – pools, home entertainment systems, landscaped gardening – which more effectively leverage emotion in advertising. The impact of this on the future is an extended period of low yields. And on the way, we shortened the booking cycle to historic lows – making our lives harder than ever.

One reason might be budget. Our industry is fragmented, operates on a global basis and has narrow margins. Money is tight and every message has to deliver immediate gain. Price-centred messages seem to drive conversion.

Well, of course they do. If you always talk about price and features, that’s all the customer will consider. Increasingly, the industry is like a hamster on a wheel. However hard we run, we stay in the same place, because there is always someone who can pitch the price lower and every step down makes it harder to drive price back up.

Here’s the good news: Creating compelling promotional content isn’t as hard or expensive as it used to be. In the digital age, small budgets can go a lot further. After the 2002 Bali bombings, a group of Bali hoteliers put together an ad costing US$18,000. Adapting Tourism Australia’s high-profile “Where the bloody hell are you?” campaign, it asked “So where the Bali hell are you?” The visuals were poor, but it was cheeky and it reminded Australians why they loved Bali.

Tourism Queensland’s much-heralded “Best Job in the World” campaign, while not exactly low cost, generated return on investment well above its weight. The campaign also demonstrated that social media like Facebook and Twitter, properly managed, offer a world of opportunities for low-cost, high-return engagement.

Perhaps us travel types spend so much time travelling that we’ve started to take the experience itself for granted. But if we want to build a sustainable industry, we’ve got to get off the hamster wheel. We need to start investing in great content and stop being so afraid of emotion.

flickr.com/photos/abennett96

Relationships rule

One of the most rewarding aspects of the conference was how many interesting and engaging people I met. We make so many connections online that it’s refreshing to make some actual friends. It’s not only good for the soul, it’s good for your brand—personal or otherwise. After all, these are the people who will retweet your updates, comment on your posts and add you to their blog roll.

New and old media are not in a zero sum game

Despite some stinging comments hurled at CNN anchor Don Lemon during one panel, I was surprised by how much love “legacy media” were getting in BlogWorld. NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen advocated using search data to determine what readers care about. Blogcritics publisher Eric Olsen waxed nostalgic about the tactile experience of print magazines. Rather than eye each other suspiciously, old and new media types shared best practices and ideas for preserving quality journalism.

Don’t forsake video

Since most of us bloggers came out of the print world, we sometimes tend to overlook the power of multimedia content. But panelists ranging from Facebook evangelist Shama Kabani, to consultant Jay Berkowitz warned that anyone who forgoes video is leaving money on the table. According to Berkowitz, only four percent of marketers use YouTube, even though the video-streaming site is also the world’s second most popular search engine. So whether you’re filming it or embedding someone else’s, video ought to be part of your content strategy.

It’s all about search

Speaking of search engines, almost every BlogWorld speaker mentioned the symbiotic relationship between content and search. Chris Baggott, an expert on corporate blogging, said that many content creators foolishly buy into what he called “the myth of the audience.” Most websites get roughly 66% of their traffic from search engines, Baggott said, and so all content should be written for the first-time reader. This means defining—and relentlessly repeating—a strategic set of keywords that people are likely to search for. “Think about what [prospective customers] are going to type,” Baggott said, “And talk about it.”

At first this rubbed me the wrong way; I’m a big believer in fostering community and building relationships with readers over time. But I now realize that these things aren’t mutually exclusive. Defining a set of keywords and writing clear, pithy content around them is simply good communication. One thing that Twitter has demonstrated is that brevity can go a long way. People don’t have time to decode your cutesy headlines when their RSS feeds and Twitter Lists are packed with goodies. So don’t just think of search engine optimization as a crude marketing strategy. Think of it as good writing.

Nice guys finish first

In the heady days of ink-stained newsmen and billionaire publishers, loutishness was a virtue. Think of newspaper tycoons William Randolph Hearst (the inspiration for Citizen Kane), Conrad Black or Rupert Murdoch. But now that media is no longer a product but a conversation, to paraphrase Dan Gillmor, the meek have inherited the (Word)press.

The “rock stars” of BlogWorld were celebrated not for their egos but their generosity. This was evidenced by the drastically different receptions given to Guy Kawasaki—billionaire venture capitalist—and Chris Brogan, the so-called “nice guy” of social media.

Brogan is known for superhumanly responding to every @reply on Twitter and playing “matchmaker” between vendors and clients, as he put it. Kawasaki is notorious for his automated “robo-Tweets.” During his keynote, Brogan preached mantas like, “Selling is never about getting more than you give” and “I like making relationships before I make money; I’m not a hooker.”

During his moment in the spotlight, Kawasaki reminisced about cruising down the streets of L.A. in a Ferrari and stubbornly refused to play along with comedian Kevin Pollack’s hilarious “Larry King game.”

I met lots of people at BlogWorld. There was the group I joined for dinner after they put out an open invitation on Twitter, and the successful podcaster who told me about his family on the way back to the hotel. And then there was the guy who ping-ponged from table to table pitching his product and boasting about the 500 business cards he had “collected.”

I’m not sure how many cards I collected. But I’m certain I got more out of BlogWorld than he did.

©istockphoto.com / ayzek

When you work for an agency, nothing is more time-consuming and stress-inducing than the big pitch. When you’re on the client side, nothing is more time-consuming and stress-inducing than the big pitch. You may think the onus is on the agency to win the account, but just as much pressure is on the client to not make a million-dollar mistake on the wrong firm.

In all the anxious moments, it’s amazing how both sides can forget some of the small things that make a big difference when you’re trying to be—or find—the One.

Before the Pitch

Clients Your instinct will be to cast a very wide net, but there’s likely only a handful of firms qualified to handle your project at a price you can afford. Through a little research, some digging around your department’s network of contacts and consulting with other companies, you can get a pretty good idea of who is capable of stepping up to the plate. This will be a lengthy process, and every additional agency in the mix will add to that.

Speaking of time, resist the urge to make ridiculous schedules that you can’t keep. Little is more frustrating for an agency team than pulling a week of late nights to answer a 50-item RFP in a week—and then waiting a month for an answer. That’s not sending a great signal to your potential partner. While it is your right as a client to set the deadlines, it’s also their right not to work with you.

Agencies Before you build that slide that shows all your office locations, perhaps you should go out and purchase the product you’re going to advertise or rent a car from the company you’re going to do direct marketing for. Not only will it make for a more informed conversation, it will demonstrate a level of commitment to your potential client. It’s worth the money.

And remember what they taught you in school: Read the instructions. Many clients will have very specific requests about response format, page length, or number of copies to print out. Follow them. As idiosyncratic as they may seem, they’re a client request, and if you can’t handle details now, will you be able to later?

During the Pitch

Clients Don’t try to run the presentation gauntlet. It’s tempting to line up a full day’s worth of pitches, but you’d be doing the presenters and yourselves a disservice. Unless you moonlight as a casting director, you won’t have the attention span for a litany of two-hour pitches. You’ll be giving that last presenter yawns and vapid questions, but you won’t be giving them much of a shot.

And it sounds obvious, but be a good host. Make sure the pitch team has driving directions, security clearance at the front entrance, a projector. Less time spent searching the cubicles for an adapter cord means more time for the important stuff.

Agencies Bring everything you need, even if they say they have it. Making 12 people huddle around a laptop for a Powerpoint presentation may bring you closer to the client, but it probably won’t bring you closer to the account.

Also, make sure to show up with the people who will be working on the account. It’s tempting to bring in your firm’s senior level closer. I once watched the charismatic CEO of a noted ad firm work the room like a pro. But did I ever see her again? Of course not. Smart companies will want to meet the people they’ll be dealing with every day.

After the Pitch

Clients Please don’t play hurry up and wait….again. Chances are you’ll know off the bat which groups are in the running. Be nice and let candidates who have no shot know it. Budgets are being set and staffs are being hired (or let go) based on your decision. If Agency X is not an option, don’t let them twist in the wind while you negotiate with Company Y.

Agencies Never debrief until you’re far from the client facility. You just got out of the pitch presentation. You think it went well, but couldn’t believe the stupid questions you were getting from that one director. You’re so annoyed that you just have to tell your colleague on the way to the bathroom. Don’t do it! The people walking those halls and using those toilets work for your prospective client. They may even work for that director. Hold it until you’re on the plane. (Unless they’re an airline, in which case, wait until you get home.)

Finally, don’t just go back to your office and wait for the phone to ring.  Chances are the client had some questions during your presentation that could use a more thorough answer.  Let them know you care enough to follow up.

That first meeting is more than a pitch; it’s the start of something bigger. Agencies need to seal the deal, but clients ought to make sure that what may be a long, productive relationship starts off on the right foot.

But successful marketing in this sphere requires more than just interaction and conversation; it requires value. Over the past few years we have seen the construction of a variety of “buzz”- or online conversation-tracking software. While it is vital for a brand to monitor relevant conversations, the value of this practice (and related social media practices) will only be realized when in service of some sort of strategic application. It’s time to add another ring to the circus.

The Three-Ring Framework

This visual representation is to be read with the centre circle (application) as the target, where marketers can achieve the most effective consumer engagements. The target is generally reached through the employment of the two outer rings; interaction and conversation. As the diagram reflects, application is the hardest part for brands but it’s also the most rewarding in terms of attention and return on engagement.

Driving Community: Zipcar and Zimride

In order to shed light on the above framework, let’s take a look at a cutting-edge Transumer brand. Zipcar is the world’s largest car-sharing and car club service, which serves as an alternative to traditional car rental or ownership. The brand stands for utility and simplicity while remaining incredibly innovative. In many ways the product itself is its best marketing vehicle. Its inherent elements of surprise and delight – Zipcars are associated with road trips and new experiences – are such that people talk about Zipcar without encouragement. But no brand’s story can spread to larger audiences without some assistance.

While some brands have managed to create their own successful online communities, many more have failed. So last spring Zipcar partnered with Zimride, a popular online ride-share and carpool service.

The result of the partnership is both social and utilitarian – the ultimate goal of the three-ring framework. Zipcar drivers get to meet new people and save on gas money while Zimride’s existing community gains access to a new pool of like-minded travellers. In the end, both brands benefit, along with their customers.

Apply as Needed

The partnership between Zipcar and Zimride is a form of branded utility – the notion that, through relevant and valuable services, brands can create favourable experiences for consumers.

New devices such as the iPhone have opened up an entirely new set of possibilities to create branded utility. Zipcar recently decided to throw its hat into the ring and create an application of its own. Through understanding the needs of its loyal community, Zipcar has managed to build a platform with the potential to serve as both branded utility and mobile CRM, adding both competitive advantage against current competitors and barriers to entry for any potential new ones. Zipcar demonstrates that conversation compounded with utility can create a virtuous cycle for Transumers, adding points of value throughout their journey.

Tell us: What do you think about the three-ring framework? Which brands bring their customers utility instead of just noise?

©istockphoto.com/Katrina Brown

Social media has blurred the lines between marketing and friend-making.

Consider the wording that social networking sites use.  When you hook up with someone on LinkedIn it’s called a “connection.” The term elicits a feeling of old-school business success based on the size of your Rolodex. Now consider Facebook, where every connection made is a “friend.”  That word brings up emotions of shared experience, understanding and camaraderie. Finally, leap into the world of Twitter and you will find yourself with “followers,” a term that carries the weight of authority and relevance and brings us into the world of social media stardom.

In marketing getting a star to endorse your product is big business.  Think of William Shatner and Priceline, U2 and the iPod, or even Bill Cosby and Jell-O. Companies look to celebrities to link their product to someone the consumer will know and trust.

Here’s the good news: with social media you no longer need the big celebrity endorser as a middle man. Your company can be the star, with thousands of followers who respect your brand and love your product.

Take Southwest Airlines, for example. At the time of this writing the airline had almost 80,000 Facebook fans and 750,000 followers on Twitter. Southwest also has a presence on Flickr, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and its own innovative blog.  Recently Southwest’s social media gurus energized their Twitter followers with a contest, the prize being a two-night stay at the Napa Valley Marriott Hotel & Spa and used the hashtag #wineswa to promote it.  To top it off they used their “Red Belly Radio” podcast to announce the winners. That’s a huge amount of good publicity at relatively little cost. And no celebrity was harmed in the making of their success.

Of course, the simple fact that a brand has thousands of Twitter followers does not make it a star. Here’s where social media stardom diverges from celebrity— you need to follow your followers, friend your friends and connect with your connections. Customers won’t follow you blindly. They will be vocal and they expect a two-sided conversation.

Let me tell you a true story.  A weary traveller showed up at her hotel late at night and stood in line for over an hour waiting to check in. Disgruntled, she logged into her Twitter account on her phone and sent out a message into the virtual soapbox known as the Twittersphere: “Can you believe this–a four-star hotel, 12 at night, no manager, can’t check in . . . insane.”

Someone was listening. The staff at another hotel located a block away said it would gladly accommodate her, and even take care of any cancellation fees. Not only did the customer pick up her bags and leave, so did the three other people that were waiting in line. In this case there were two social media stars created, the hero and the villain.  Which one do you want to be?

So, if you’re an airline, you can develop a unique app that allows passengers to purchase tickets, access their boarding passes, track flights, and receive inflight messages without touching a printed slip or clicking a mouse.

Sounds like a no brainer, but so far only a few airlines have done it.

British Airways led the way in July 2008 with a free app aimed at frequent flyers. Australian-based Qantas soon followed suit. Then, this summer, Air Canada became the first North American carrier to launch an app that lets passengers store their flight info, check the weather and even rent a car through their iPhones. (Though unfortunately these apps are only available for download in their native countries, so that a Canadian flying to Sydney won’t be able to grab the Qantas app until he’s down under).

Since then, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, EasyJet and others have released web applications—and several carriers, including SAS Scandinavian Airlines, offer mobile boarding passes— but the list of airline-branded native apps remains startlingly sparse.

It’s surprising because awesome travel-related apps abound. Check out this list of iPhone apps for airline geeks, which highlights applications devoted to everything from airport codes and airplane seating charts, to flight tracking and aircraft specifications. Meanwhile, augmented reality applications like Layar and apps from travel brands like Kayak and Lonely Planet are cornering the Transumer market.

Airlines might consider forging virtual partnerships with other iPhone-friendly brands and independent developers. Virgin America has already sponsored the popular itinerary-planning app TripIt. Now imagine if Guinness’ Pub Finder tool lived within an Aer Lingus app—both of which were integrated with Layar.

If airlines won’t be developers, they can still be facilitators, connecting brands and Transumers throughout the journey cycle. Travellers crave useful content in their medium of choice and if airlines don’t provide them with it, someone else will.

©istockphoto.com/Simon Oxley

When I was a kid, my father used to take me to a grassy field at the end of one of the runways at YUL and we would watch the airplanes take off and land above our heads. Sometimes, we would even go to the terminal building itself and step out onto a viewing deck to watch the world’s aircraft taxiing right below us. We would spend hours there and we usually packed a lunch.

These days, we would not be able to step out anywhere for security reasons. And we wouldn’t need to pack a lunch. That airports have become shopping malls is well documented. Transumers spend money and smart airport planners are only too happy to design spaces that allow Transumers to do what they do best. But all those shopping spaces have always been designed for people on the move. Now, it seems, airports are also trying to attract those staying put.

Meaning the airport as mega mall is getting its own kind of semantic makeover. It wants to become a destination in its own right. Authorities in Zurich are doing this by bringing back the viewing platform and even helping organize children birthday parties and by reimbursing parking fees for shoppers. In Vancouver, airport authorities have seen an upsurge in calls from wedding planners ever since the Canada Line reduced commuting times to the airport to less than 20-minutes from downtown (which is perhaps not much of a stretch given that the Fairmont Vancouver Airport has hosted weddings for years).

That Airworld is a powerful economic engine to local economies has been understood since the birth of air travel. The term Airport Cities is a clunkier version of Airworld (I’ve also seen the term Aerotropolis), but there are annual conferences for those intimately connected to Airworld or, at least, plotting its future. And the amount of studies about “emerging” Air Cities will soon rival the amount of talk about “edge cities” and the “new urbanism” we endured in the 1990s.

Not all airports will succeed in the wider, broader Airworld. And only a handful will be successful at attracting locals to shop, play, eat or get married. The idea of getting married at Vancouver airport works because it isn’t too far from the urban core, it is amazingly accessible by public transit (meaning a direct train link), and its design and function have not excluded locals.

Airports have an advantage as destination that is unique: the romance of travel. Yes, most people still love the idea of travel. They still idealize it. And airports are cathedrals to that idea, incarnations of the interconnectedness of the world. My joy at seeing an aircraft take off when I was a child exists still. I remain enthralled by flight. Luckily, I fly enough that I don’t need to go to the airport just to watch the airplanes. But if you want to soak in the atmosphere of travel without having the means or desire to leave, the world’s airports are beginning to answer to your specific needs.

Virgin America’s demographic includes some of the world’s tech-savviest passengers, many of whom have already adopted cutting-edge gadgets.  How have you designed RED to serve these customers’ ever-evolving needs?

RED is always evolving. We just recently launched RED 2.0 which includes features that came directly from the system’s suggestion box. For example, passengers asked to be able to control what music they listen to while playing video games on the system. We have over 3,000 music mp3s on RED, so the system now asks players whether they want to override a game’s default music and listen to their own custom playlist.

How have passengers responded to your new inflight wireless service?

The response has been really good. Our social media team has been seeing a lot of positive buzz from bloggers and customers. A lot of times people will tweet us from the air and tell us how much they like the service. It’s a great way for us to respond to our passengers’ needs in real time.

A recent Wall Street Journal article suggested passengers were hesitant to pay for another service in flight. You currently charge for WiFi as well as traditional audio/video on-demand programming. Do you think these services will eventually be folded into the cost of the airline ticket?

It would be nice if one day it was all contained in the price of the ticket. But right now it’s kind of hard to make a passenger who’s not going to use the Internet or doesn’t want to watch a movie pay for it. Maybe they bought a magazine or bought a book to read instead. I think you need to give customers the option to pay or not.

What impact do you think inflight WiFi will have on the RED system? Won’t a lot of Red’s features—chat rooms, e-mail, even streaming video—become redundant when people have their own connected laptops on board?

I haven’t seen a hit to our movie or TV sales since we launched WiFi fleetwide. The bandwidth that you get on the aircraft is really fast, but streaming video is always going to be buffering. If you want to sit back and have an immersive entertainment experience, I think RED is still the way to go.

Are there any plans to integrate your fleet’s inflight connectivity into Virgin America’s business operations? For example, by providing passengers information on connecting flights or irregular operations in real time?

These are plans for that down the road. But right now our WiFi is not connected to RED. When it is, we’ll probably start off with something nice and easy like the ability to connect to your Twitter account through the system. Eventually, we’ll be able to feed passengers information on connecting flights and all that stuff. But that’s more like a RED 6.0 idea!

What opportunities are there for partnerships and branded content through RED?

There is a ton of opportunity. We’ve already had Banana Republic sponsor one of our TV channels where they aired a lot of original content from their fashion shows. We also have a partnership with Virgin Mobile coming up.

What else is on your wish list for RED?

I’m currently trying to improve our repertoire of games. I’d like to see a 3D-type game like what you would see at home on your Xbox or Wii. I’d also like to have multiplayer games where passengers can play against each other or as a team. I’d like to see people get together with their buddy across the aisle and blow stuff up! I’d also like to have a section on RED devoted to documentary films.

Speaking of films, how do you take into account the Transumer mind frame when selecting movies and TV shows for RED?

It’s really about finding out what the passenger wants to watch. I used to work at Frontier Airlines so when I came to Virgin I started to incorporate what I learned there. But I soon learned that the passenger experience is very different at Virgin America, which leads to very different viewing choices.

At Frontier everyone wanted to watch romantic comedies. At Virgin people are into darker stuff like action films and movies like The Hangover, which is doing tremendously well right now. If I put on an R-rated film at Frontier people would be complaining left and right. At Virgin people figure it’s par for the course. It’s what we do.

©istockphoto.com / blackred

A few years ago, a colleague told me about a small airport in an exclusive enclave in South America where it’s still the glamorous, golden, jet-set era of aviation. Everyone was bronzed, smoking, sipping generous cocktails and there was no security lineup in sight. Those times are long gone, but I still love airports for what they represent: a taking-off point with limitless potential, a limbo-zone between the known and unknown and a glamorous gateway to future adventures.

In reality, what they often truly are is a bad food court, a mediocre shopping mall and a land of lineups and rudimentary—if not downright rude—service. Here are a few features of my favourite airports that show a true understanding of the needs of the Transumer, plus some ideas I haven’t experienced, but would love to see.

Golden Green Gate

Challenge When I’m purchasing my airline ticket, I’m usually focused on value and, I’m ashamed to say, unlikely to tack on an extra cost for carbon offsets.

Spark The new carbon offset kiosks in the international terminal at SFO in San Francisco have the green-flyer equation right. Once we’re behind the security line, trip hassles behind us, the excitement of a trip at top of mind, the Transumer midset prevails and green is an easier sell.

Health and Happiness

Challenge I maintain that the reason most travelers are grumpy and discontent is…indigestion.

Spark Offer us clean, fresh, unprocessed food at airports and everyone will be happier. My mouth is watering at news that the San Jose-area farm C.J. Olson Cherries has opened a kiosk selling its wholesome cherries, dried fruit and nuts in Terminal B at SJC. Amsterdam’s AMS has long been one of my favourite airports because of the fully stocked Food Village Supermarket at Schiphol. Why aren’t there more boutique grocery stores within airports? Whole Foods, we’re looking at you.

Quiet Please

Challenge The clever “cell phone zone” waiting areas offered by many airports have eased up the queues of cars at arrivals level. Now can airports please ease up on my ears with cellular-free quiet zones that demonize public cell-yell the way most public buildings have done with smoking?

Spark Many of us would pay for quiet-zone access, as the nominal but successful $10 entry fee program for B.C. Ferries‘ quiet Seawest Lounges proves. Why don’t the folks at Bose open pay-per-use, noise-cancelling headset equipped quiet zones at airports?

Zip-a-dee-doo-dah

Challenge With the hassles of full-day car rental, insurance and gas top-up, I usually can’t be bothered to hop into a set of wheels and explore the local area on a layover.

Spark The rental companies won’t like it, but I’m a car-sharing devotee who would rejoice at airport Zipcar locations. Holding me hostage in the terminal doesn’t make me spend more; it just makes me hostile!

Shop and Fly

Challenge Where are stores like Monocle and Flight 001 when I really need them—that is, in the airport terminal?

Spark I’d love to see more co-branded retail stores in airports, run by the brands Transumers have already come to trust. The first outpost of a planned chain of Travel and Leisure stores (in Vancouver’s YVR) has a good mix of luggage, travel gadgets, maps and guides and other reading material. Roots, with its sturdy leather bags and comfy gear, is also a great fit at the airport.

Paperless Planes

Challenge People lose things at airports because we’re juggling too much stuff—boarding pass, mobile, identification, hand luggage…

Spark The new SKIP system at 24 Japanese airports lets you do paperless mobile check-in, payment and seat selection using bar-code technology. Cell-phone-pay vending machines, transit passes and other conveniences have been de rigeur in Asia’s top cities for years; it’s time for the rest of the world to catch up!

Paging all Airplane Geeks

Challenge Plane-spotters are a largely unrecognized group of aviation fans that could easily be converted into airport Transumers.

Spark Facilities like the observation decks at Sydney’s SYD and Tokyo’s HND put plane-spotters in the centre of the terminal action. Frankfurt’s FRA offers guided behind-the-scenes airport tours which often stop at the runway intersection that’s best for plane-spotting. Tours are a great way to get aircraft aficionados into the terminal instead of cowering outside runway fences, where they can pose a security risk—and don’t contribute anything to the Airworld economy.

For the first time in eight years airports stand to regain some of their onetime stardust, through cultural phenomena like Wired’s Terminal Man, pop-philosopher Alain de Botton’s Heathrow Diary and George Clooney’s upcoming adaption of Walter Kirn’s seminal AirWorld novel “Up in the Air.” Are they ready for their closeup?

So here’s the question: Have AVOD and other new technologies killed the collective entertainment experience?

Tell us about your favourite airplane movies, which airlines you saw them on, and how the medium affected your viewing experience. Anyone else nostalgic for the main screen days?

A recent Wall Street Journal article, in which you were quoted, suggested passengers have been ambivalent about paying for inflight Wi-Fi. Do you think this will change as the technology improves? Or will the service eventually be wrapped into the cost of the plane ticket?

Any time you introduce a transaction into the middle of a product stream, it makes people pause and think, “Am I getting value for my dollar here?” If someone is paying $29.95 a month for connectivity at home, why would they pay half that much for a few hours worth when they’re flying? There are other ways to attract revenue besides per-flight pricing. Individuals can buy long-term memberships or companies can pay a bulk rate fee for employees to use an airline’s system in flight. That takes the dollar transaction out of peoples’ immediate focus.

It’s not that inflight Wi-Fi is dead, it’s that per-flight pricing doesn’t match what happens on the ground, and it won’t last very long in the air.

Is inflight connectivity bound to become ubiquitous? Or will it lead to greater fragmentation of the industry, with different airlines carving out niches as the “business airline” – with free Wi-Fi – or the “entertainment and leisure airline” – with top-notch audio/video-on-demand programming and a great inflight magazine?

Airlines will not be able to remain the only carrier without connectivity as an option, because it will matter soon to the great majority, or at least a substantial minority of their passengers. On a per-passenger basis, the cost of offering Wi-Fi is lower than it is to provide a number of other services. At some point it’s just going to become part of the cost of doing business as an airline.

At the World Airline Entertainment Association connectivity conference in July, you said airlines should be skeptical of what passengers say they want and “observe instead of survey” how passengers act and what services they use.” What did you mean by that?

That came out of some observations I made years ago when I began my career at American Airlines. The inflight products group conducted a number of surveys asking premium business travellers what they were looking for in terms of food service. The answers came back pretty substantially in favour of healthy food, light meals, lots of fruit – stuff that’s good for us. After they made the changes flight attendants reported carrying bags of uneaten granola bars and fruit off the airplane – but there was never an ice cream sundae left over!

The only way to actually understand if you have a valid business model is to start by dipping your toe into the water with a trial. You need to have a realistic assumption of how many passengers use the service at what price point. Bidding to go in fleet-wide on a 50- or 100- or 300-aircraft basis without having sufficient usage data is a perilous thing when you’re talking about a multi-million dollar investment.

What impact will inflight connectivity have on traditional IFE, like custom magazines and audio/video-on-demand systems?

For the majority of airlines it will be complementary. There will be airlines that don’t have in-seat IFE today who will go with connectivity instead because it’s a relatively cheap solution in the long term. But the connectivity discussion has mostly centered around US-based carriers doing domestic flying. You don’t have time to watch a movie on a flight that’s 90 minutes or less but you may be able to get 30 minutes worth of email done if the price is right.

If you’re an international airline such as Singapore or Lufthansa with a substantial amount of 8- or 10-hour plus flights, traditional IFE is a very valuable service. It gives passengers the option of discovering something new, and it is a key part of the airline branding in and of itself.

Are there still opportunities for branded content in a connected airplane?

When you have a connected airplane you will have the ability to bring together all of the onboard media in ways you just couldn’t do with a printed magazine, catalogue or video on an imbedded IFE system. What you’d have is the ability to provide not just awareness of a product or brand, but to provide opportunities for your passengers to go ahead and take action on those messages  being provided.

So if you’re a tour operator with a number of unbooked seats or a hotel with empty rooms, you’d be able to know that a plane-full of customers is arriving in your city and you can offer them an exclusive last-minute deal. That’s a game changer for advertisers.

That works well for seatback systems with connectivity. But if people can roam the web freely on their laptops, how do airlines and marketers direct passengers toward their unique portal or partner?

If somebody is using your system for free, part of the terms of service may be to allow for a certain number of targeted ads to come across the system. Or people may opt in to receive targeted emails over the course of their trip. Nobody’s really talked about linking this in the largest sense to services like Google AdWords that work on the ground. Airlines can work with connectivity providers to provide a very similar keyword-based application. If you know what passengers are browsing for you can determine what those people want and deliver to them something that is unique versus what they can get by simply surfing the Internet on their own.

Will passengers accept a limited browsing experience, or will net neutrality advocates resent being confined to a walled garden?

That is what some connectivity carriers are presenting as an option. Browse for free in the little area that we give you or you can have access to the entire World Wide Web unfettered for a fee. That’s how some applications from Apple’s app store works – you can download a free version or pay to never see an ad again. The same model can work for the airlines.

What else should people know about the future of inflight connectivity?

I think that from the airline side, the real key to profitability is integrating the connectivity they are offering customers with the airline’s ground operations. You want to be able to use this bandwidth to update passengers on the status of their connecting flights, to accommodate passengers with delayed flights, or to provide information to your international partners. This would allow airlines to avoid the peaks and valleys associated with a number of arrivals or departures hitting an airport at the same time. There are all kinds of operational efficiencies on both the maintenance and day-to-day dispatch side that can benefit from connectivity.

That’s where connectivity becomes more than a service you provide to passengers, but a meaningful long-term business investment.

This story is about me and how I came to understand the concept and power of a Six Pixels of Separation world, but really this story is about you. It’s going to illustrate how the little things we do as entrepreneurs to get our messages “out there” are now creating big opportunities that are connecting us—and our businesses—to opportunities that were not available to us before the advent of the Internet.

In 2007, I was asked if I would be interested in interviewing Dan Ariely for my Forward Thinking podcast. Dan is a well-known behavioral economist. He was also about to publish his first book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, in about six months’ time. I had never heard of Ariely (his book was not out yet), but I liked the idea that he was going to bring some different thinking into what motivates people to do things.

We immediately hit it off. By the end of our conversation, I was recommending that he get in touch with my speakers bureau and he suggested that perhaps I would be interested in connecting with his literary agent. At the time I had met with a few literary agents but nothing had really clicked. So Dan made the digital introduction. At that point, his literary agent, James Levine from the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency, hopped over to my company blog and started snooping around. He checked out my speakers bureau’s Web page and dropped me an e-mail expressing an interest in meeting to see if something could be done.

We met at his Manhattan office. I showed him some of my presentations and top-line concepts for the book. But here’s something Jim doesn’t know: I could not concentrate. Sure, there’s a palpable energy in the air when you’re sitting with a Manhattan-based literary agent, and the thought of having him hunt down a serious publishing deal was equally exciting. But in truth, I could not keep my mind off of his socks.

Yes, his socks. They didn’t match—not even close. Now, let’s be clear, Jim is not a young guy (but he ain’t old, either) and all I could think was, Is this guy wearing Little MissMatched socks? I first heard about Little MissMatched socks on Seth Godin’s blog. The premise of Seth’s best-selling book, the Purple Cow, is that brands can’t afford to be ordinary. According to Seth, in this day and age you’re either remarkable or invisible.

To illustrate the story in live presentations, Seth talks about Arielle Eckstut. Arielle started a different type of clothing company—she sells socks to young girls. The big idea is that you can’t buy a single pair of socks. You can only buy them in sets of three. Oh, and one more thing: none of them match. It’s a remarkable idea that has grown Little MissMatched into a unique franchise of clothing, furniture, books, and beyond. While the philosophical spirit of the business is about empowering young girls to be different and creative, Little MissMatched works because little girls like to talk and show off their new and freaky socks.

I had to ask: “Jim, are those Little MissMatched socks you’re wearing?” He looked almost as surprised that I knew what they were as I was that he was wearing them. It turns out that Little MissMatched was not Arielle’s first venture. Her first gig was working alongside Jim at his literary agency. On top of that, the LittleMissMatched offices were only a couple of floors down in the same building. During our lunch break we went down to meet Arielle. In a strange twist of good timing, just that week I had blogged about Little MissMatched because someone decided to make a Seth Godin action figure and the toy is decked out with mismatched socks (no, I’m not making this up). Arielle had not heard of the action figure until I brought it to her attention.

There’s a point to this story.

What was nothing more than a step above a hobby for me (my Foreword Thinking podcast) had led me on this amazing adventure that includes a book deal with one of the biggest publishing houses in the world and personal encounters that have not only been interesting, but have led to new business opportunities and introductions. All of them were perfectly linked through my activities in online channels (blogging, podcasting, online social networking, etc.).

My point is, if I can do this, so can you. Every single pixel in that story was connected to me—either through someone I follow online or someone who follows me—and while those looser pixels had never directly connected, I was suddenly confronted with four connections that linked perfectly together. Ultimately, your business needs to sell more stuff and sell it fast.

You may be thinking that you simply don’t have time for all of this online stuff or you’re equally jaded because of the many “time suck” articles you have read about these channels in the traditional media. Let’s look at some reasons why you should care and take the time to understand this new medium. It will change your business forever. Here’s why.

This excerpt, adapted for Sparksheet, is from SIX PIXELS OF SEPARATION by Mitch Joel. Copyright © 2009 by Mitch Joel. Reprinted by permission of Business Plus, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group, NY. All rights reserved.

Tran-sum-er (noun) 1. A consumer in transit. A consumer on the go.  2. A citizen of the world. Or at least, of airports. Or hotels rooms. Or the travel “headspace.”

There are Transumers among us. Or, rather, there is a Transumer in all of us. We become different people when we travel. We read books you would never find on our night stands. We watch movies we would never go for at home. And we buy things that would only appeal to us in this unique  and elusive frame of mind. The Transumer values new experiences, top-notch service and the freedom to slide between borders and media with ease.

Tell us: Who, in your mind, best exemplifies the idea of the Transumer? Post your answers in the comments below. Give us a name and tell us why.

Next month we’ll unveil our list of the World’s Top Transumers, using your suggestions and quotes as sparks.  Feel free to spread the word to friends and colleagues, Twitter followers and LinkedIn contacts.

The search for the Ultimate Transumer is on!

A Flickr group consists of a page with a photo pool and a discussion board—both of which can only be contributed to by group members. Most major airlines have a page, but it’s impossible to tell if they are “official”  or fan-created—which may be the ultimate sign of effective engagement. The discussion boards tend to be sparsely populated, but the important thing is that customers have the opportunity to engage with each other and the brand in their medium of choice (that is, without having to hop over to Facebook or Twitter).

Sadly, the majority of airline-specific Flickr pools are lacking in depth; one can only look at so many cockpit photos or shots of planes flying into the sunset. It would be great to see more passenger-focused pics along the lines of flight attendant/blogger Heather Poole’s weird and awesome Laviator series.

But don’t delete your Flickr bookmarks just yet. As usual, the airplane geeks steal the show with pages devoted to everything from flight attendant uniforms and in-flight meals, to vintage ads and airport lounges.

Here’s our comprehensive list of airline Flickr pages:

Air Berlin

117 members 1,071 items

Aegean Airlines

11 members 60 items

Alaska Airlines

39 Members 137 Items

American Airlines

352 Members 3420 Items

Asiana Airlines

26 members 115 items

by Levi Escobar via Flickr

Atlantic Southeast Airlines

43 members 146 items

Austrian Airlines

63 members 465 items

Brussels Airlines

32 members 219 items

Budget Airlines

69 members 1,269 items

Cathay Pacific

22 members 240 items

by Daryl Chapman via Flickr

China (Dynasty) Airline

143 members 875 items

China Eastern

28 members 165 items

Cirrus Airlines

89 Members 150 photos

Continental Airlines

284 Members 2,184 Items

Continental

Copa Airlines

8 members 103 items

Czech Airlines (CSA)

57 members 317 items

easyJet

93 Members 1003 Items

El Al Israel Airlines

58 Members 251 Items

Emirates

106 members 217 items

by braniffelecra via Flickr

Frontier Airlines

140 members 987 items

Germanwings

45 members 341 items

Hawaiian Airlines

34 members 152 items

JAT Airways

10 members 45 items

Lufthansa Group

316 Members 4,399 Items

by Austin '81 via Flickr

Luxair

46 Members 233 Items

MALEV Hungarian Airlines

571 Items 110 Members

Midwest Airlines

25 members 241 items

Northwest Airlines

284 members 3,939 items

Philippine Airlines

94 Members 627 Items

by Superlufti via Flickr

Porter Airlines

41 members 234 items

Royal Brunei Airlines

22 members 27 items

S7 Airlines

76 Members 373 Items

Scandinavian Airlines

110 members 742 items

Singapore Airlines

231 members 1,756 items

by an android's memoirs via Flickr

Southwest Airlines

653 members 6507 items

Spirit Airlines

36 members 114 items

TACA / LACSA Airlines

42 members 622 items

Tunisair

34 Members 223 Items

Turkish Airlines

175 members 1463 items

by rejuvesite via Flickr

Transaero Airlines

59 members 425 items

TUI (Arkefly, Corsairfly, Jetairfly, Thomson, TUIfly)

100 members 914 items

Ukraine International Airlines

52 members 48 items

United Airlines

317 members 3,565 items

by AV8NLVR via Flickr

Vietnam Airlines

85 Members 423 Items

VLM Airlines

15 members 90 items

Vueling Airlines

18 members 86 items

Saudi Arabian Airlines

33 members 191 items

SATA Internacional

43 members 194 items

by Carlon Bettencourt via Flickr

SkyEurope Airlines

20 members 101 items

Virgin Blue Airlines

49 members 422 items

Thomas Cooke Airlines

34 members 171 items

Malaysia (MAS) Airline

144 members 661 items

by Brucek68 via Flickr

And here are some of out favourite general air travel pages:

Premium Cabin Airline Meals

37 members 613 items

by taigatrommelchen via Flickr

Airline Cabin Interiors

299 members 1,157 items

Saudi Arabian Airlines plane by Ichthys101 via Flickr

Airport Lounges

69 members 574 items

Air France lounge in Charles de Gaulle Airport by TravelingOtter via Flickr

Airline Uniforms

443 members 424 items

Singapore Airlines crew by FlyHigh_kc via Flickr

Airline Graphics

21 members 49 items

An old Iberia Airlines brochure by Septem Trionis via Flickr

Airlines Ads

53 members  108 items

by That Hartford guy via flickr

As long as there are human beings we are going to have print media. There’s no substitute for something audiences can feel and touch – something that they can call their own.

What is the “magazine experience” and does it translate online?

I don’t think there’s anything yet online that replicates that immersion experience you get with print. We’re talking more than just ink on paper here. We’re talking about an entire package in your hand – the photography, the colours, the design, the copy. We collect magazines, hoard them, put them on our coffee tables. They can be a conversation starter, a relationship starter. When you’re online you have to bend forward, look at a screen, touch, click, search. But with print you lean backward, hold it in your hand – the magazine experience comes from inside the pages toward you.

Let’s put it this way: you can never lose yourself on the Web. You do not like what you see or read you are only a click away from something else.  Magazines are the slow food that you can own, savor and digest. You may own your computer, but you do not own anything that comes through it. You own your copy of the magazine.  Marrying a virtual spouse will never result in children.

Addressing magazine publishers on your blog recently, you wrote that “There is a big difference between a ‘brand experience’ and a ‘magazine experience.’ Please do keep the ‘magazine experience’ well and alive and the ‘brand experience’ will follow.” What did you mean by that?

People don’t have experiences with brands. They don’t experience Nike, they experience the shoe that Nike makes. They experience the product. If it’s good for your feet, if it’s comfy, if you like the design, then you might feel warmly toward Nike. But no one says, “Oh, I just love that Nike brand.” It’s the same thing with magazines. You’re not going to get me to fall in love with the “Car and Driver” brand. I need to engage with a product and have a product experience before I have a brand experience. If the product is relevant to you, enjoyable to you, then you’ll start believing in the brand.

What role do you think branded content will play in the future of print media?

That will play a big role. Branding is still very, very important. But you want to make sure readers know that your content – whether online or in print – is both necessary and sufficient in each medium. People won’t hop around from medium to medium because they love your brand. So if I’m reading a magazine, don’t send me to the Web to get the rest of the story. You need to meet readers in their media of choice.

Why is it that inflight magazines, despite being the original custom publications, tend to get a bad rap?

Well, where do they get their bad rap from? From the passengers who read them or from our colleagues the magazine snobs who thumb their noses at Sky magazine because it’s not The New Yorker? I love Felix Dennis, the guy who started Maxim magazine in this country, who always used to tell his staff, “If you ever win a national magazine award, you’re fired.” Because that’s when you know you’re not designing a magazine for your audience, but for your colleagues in New York.

The important thing to remember about inflight magazines is that, yes, we have a captive audience, but passengers can bring with them as many magazines as they want. And so you have to include information about the plane and the airport in every single issue. In that sense, you’re always designing for the first-time user.

But your content has to reflect the majority of customers on that airplane – their lifestyle, their attitude, and also their fantasies. Sure, I may not be able to fly to Bangkok right now but I know the airline flies to Bangkok and here’s a great piece of writing from Bangkok. So one of these days I might go for it. It’s this combination of service and fantasy in inflight magazines that have given them that “must have” factor.

You like to say that publishers need to start “concentrating on customers who count, rather than just counting customers.” Doesn’t every customer count?

The magazine business model that we created in this country after World War II was based on delivering numbers to advertisers. In the beginning it was a great model, because the numbers were important. People had to buy a magazine from a newsstand or pay for a subscription. And then toward the ‘80s we got into the business of tricking people into looking at our magazine, of creating numbers to show advertisers. That’s what I call the business of counting customers.

For example, I just read that I can get 24 issues of Tennis magazine for free. Now, if someone pays $24 to receive Tennis magazine, I can guarantee that she is going to spend more time with the magazine’s content, and its advertisers, than someone who found it in the mail.

That’s what’s great about custom magazines – they’re not aimed at the lowest common denominator. You have a set lifestyle in mind. You have an audience that counts. If you don’t fly at least three or four times a year, an inflight magazine probably isn’t aimed at you. Customers who count are those whose lifestyles match the marketplace.

Do you think the Internet has the potential to enrich the magazine experience by bringing like-minded readers together?

I don’t think readers want to get together. I think they get satisfaction from being part of a community, yet acting on their own. The way we use magazines and interact with them is completely different from the way we use and interact with the Internet. And that’s why each medium has to be both necessary and sufficient. In this case, readers connect through the pages of the magazine.

So what’s your favourite magazine?

I never choose favourites amongst my children.

A 2007 TNS-KPMG study found that 70 percent of consumers buy luxury products as a form of self-reward. The wealthiest Chinese are becoming accustomed to the comforts of five-star hotels, spas and high-end restaurants and are craving new forms of gratification. They’re joining luxury-brand clubs not because of exclusivity but because they are regular consumers of deluxe experiences and accustomed to the service and perks.

These “cosmopolitan commuters” live, work and vacation in different regions across the country, taking advantage of falling travel costs and flexible work styles. Time-pressured consumers want to extract maximum value out of their travel time, therefore booking convenience, check-in speed and access to technology throughout the journey are high on their list of priorities. Eco-consciousness is becoming more important as well, as companies and individuals work to become carbon-neutral.

The URBN Hotel in Shanghai

The URBN Hotel is a hip, 26-room hotel in Shanghai. The hotel offers such localized amenities as tai chi and yoga classes and custom bike and walking tours. Its original-brick walls, floors of reclaimed indigenous hardwood, and the array of traditional Chinese services offered speak to the older Shanghai, while URBN’s contemporary design and services draw on the energy of a younger, more modern metropolis. Its  building materials were locally sourced; and the building incorporates passive solar shades and water-based AC systems.

As China’s first carbon-neutral hotel, URBN tracks the total amount of energy it consumes, including staff commutes, food and beverage delivery, and guest water usage. The company  purchases credits to neutralize its footprint by investing in local green-energy development and emission-reduction projects. Guests can also buy their own carbon credits to offset their flights.

Cong’s Hutong in Beijing

Cong’s Hutong in Beijing offers an entirely different experience – one that is committed to preservation. Drawing on ancient Chinese culture, the Cong family renovated their old courtyard home in Lishi Hutong near the Forbidden City. The hotel has only four rooms, named Zither (a string instrument), Go (a board game), Calligraphy and Painting, as an homage to the four arts prized in ancient Chinese scholarship. It offers guests the authentic courtyard lifestyle that is rapidly fading as China’s capital modernizes. As you’d expect, rooms are booked months in advance. And yes, they offer free broadband access.

The lesson for big hotel chains? The days of one-size-fits-all hotels are over. Transumers expect their hotels to draw upon the best of what local culture has to offer so long as they’re clean, comfortable and distinguish themselves with great service.

International chains are great at standardizing “clean” and “comfortable” across the globe, but they stand to learn a thing or two about Eastern-style hospitality. A concierge at the Portman Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai had this anecdote to relate in That’s Shanghai magazine:

A guest wanted to get hold of limited-edition cigars that were only available in Hong Kong. I asked if he would pay me to fly to Hong Kong to collect them, which he was happy to do. I picked them up at the airport and flew back that evening. He was so grateful. I later discovered it was a present for a close friend, an extremely famous NBA player.

Can you beat that?

istockphoto.com/AM29

The travel and flying media were chirping this week about news that the owners of London Heathrow Airport hired author Alain de Botton as writer-in-residence. De Botton’s task: to produce a short book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary.

The cascade of cynical responses across conventional and online pages is not surprising.  The received wisdom is that the entire flying experience stinks. From late-night comedians to some of the posts here on Sparksheet, you’d think it was just one awful experience after another.

A few years ago I heard a younger fellow muttering “what an ordeal” after passing through security at LAX. I looked at him and gently replied, “Sir, it might have taken a bit longer than you wanted, but no, it wasn’t an ordeal. An ordeal was my Dad slogging through islands in the Pacific from 1943 to 1945. You need some perspective.” He looked at me with contempt, and walked away.

Okay, full disclosure: I’ve worked in and close to airlines for 25 years, and just over four decades in the fun world broadly called “travel.”

I fly a lot, in all cabins, and I pay a lot of attention to what happens before, during, and after. I just don’t see the traumatized and angry souls that find their way into print or onto the airwaves. In the past month, I’ve seen people returning from a Rocky Mountain vacation, laughing and carrying their daypacks; I’ve seen a confident face on a businesswoman in the airport in Santiago, Chile, a look that suggested she had just done something successful; and best of all, I’ve seen grandparents hugging their grandchildren in every arrivals area through which I’ve passed. When I see those things, I feel happy and proud that I committed my working career to the airline business.

Could airlines do better? Absolutely. Is some of their seeming obsession with rules silly? For sure. But I remind you that rules and consistency in the world of flight operations have produced the safest mode of transport, by far. The former head of safety for the U.S. FAA, Nicolas Sabatini, gave a speech a few years ago to an audience of international air safety investigators, in which he brought safety statistics down to earth. Sabatini said that if you flew on a large (more than 100 seats) jet in the U.S. once a day, every day, 365 flights a year, it would take 43,000 years before you had a 50-50 chance of being in a fatal crash. That’s a long time. An incident with fatalities occurs only once every 15 to 16 million flights. That’s 40 times safer, he said, than driving down a freeway.

And what about all those cancellations? Again, let’s look at the facts. For the month of July, the big U.S. airlines completed almost 98% of their scheduled flights. Delays? Sure, they’re a pain. But keep in mind that in the U.S., airlines keep their promise (of arrival within 15 minutes of schedule) about 75% of the time. Every flight is not late.

That’s a big number when you consider that airlines are working with poor infrastructure. In most (but not all) parts of the world, that’s the responsibility of the public sector. Governments are happy to collect taxes, and there’s plenty of revenue: since deregulation in the U.S. in 1978, air travel has tripled. Do you think the number of gates and runways has tripled? And in an era of $100 GPS devices, we’re still using radar technology from the 1930s to control air traffic.

But let’s get back to the experience. More than three-quarters of the time it’s just fine. The plane is at the gate, we get on, we fly, we get thousands of kilometers from home in a few hours (or get home in time to attend an important event), we land on time, and safely. And sometimes it’s surprisingly fun – the flight attendants sing “Happy Birthday”, or we give a round of applause to men and women in uniform, or we delight in the kid flying for the first time.

It’s nicely coincidental that Mr. de Botton is scribbling at London Heathrow, for that was the same airport in the film “Love Actually.” You remember Hugh Grant, playing the Prime Minister, narrating the scene in the arrivals hall:

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends…”

As an optimist, I’m hopeful that people will apply some perspective. There are glimmers; take a look at comedian Louis C.K., opining on an October 2008 Conan O’Brien show about spoiled flyers and others. He puts it this way: “Everything is amazing right now, and nobody’s happy” (the bit about flying begins about two minutes into the four-minute clip):

There. I feel much better.

©istockphoto.com/Terry Morris

You know that scene in Austin Powers, with Dr. Evil’s henchman screaming in horror as the giant steamroller inches its way towards him from across the room? To me, it’s a good depiction of how media companies are continuing to brace for the ongoing impacts of digital technology and an on-demand world.

Digital advertising has transformed the traditional media business. In the broadcast world, advertisers are no longer steadily buying ads adjacent to “appointment television programming.” Personal video recording systems like TiVo allow audiences to set their own appointments and watch programming when they want. Brands today are finding innovative ways to speak to consumers while measuring marketing ROI within digitally-driven social environments like Facebook, on-demand services like Hulu.com and performance-based search advertising on Google.

Television still reaches more people than any other ad-supported medium. But broadcast delivery technology leaves much to be desired by advertisers. Unlike online media’s impression-based advertising model, television ads are unable to reach or target audiences with the same granularity.

There is no way to traffic TV ads on the “viewer level” because subscriber-based data is currently protected by cable TV service operators. If service operators were to release subscriber data to advertisers, ads could be targeted based on household viewing habits, channel loyalty and patterns of viewing. This is Broadcasting 2.0! It’s very similar to how “tracking cookies” are used to unlock the Internet’s targeting capabilities for advertisers.

The folks behind Hulu.com understand how much more targeted its advertisers can be on the Web compared to television. A joint venture of Disney, Fox and NBC Universal, Hulu allows U.S. viewers to watch advertiser-supported TV shows and movies on demand, for free. Hulu has the best of both worlds: a captive audience and advertising that that can be trafficked down to the individual viewer level. Advertisers that buy ads on Hulu can measure ROI better than on traditional television because of the targeting data made available by cookie tracking on Hulu’s site. As Seth Godin noted recently, viewers will gladly pay attention to advertising “if it’s anticipated, personal and relevant.”

Broadcasters can also look to the world of inflight entertainment for inspiration. Desperate for distraction during a recent 7-hour+ Air France flight, I happily sat through 30 to 45 seconds of car ads before watching a feature film and a few episodes of my favourite TV shows on the inflight system. Despite the variety of content I viewed, I counted only two unique advertising pre-rolls over the course of my flight, which suggests that Air France’s system does not traffic ads based on my viewing behaviour.

But airplanes are already a highly distinct and targeted viewing environment. Airline advertisers have a pretty good idea of who I am and what sort of products and services I want. Television advertisers don’t.

In the next few years, our television screens will become our computer screens and our cell phones will carry our content above the clouds. Doesn’t it make sense to provide advertisers with the technology and control they need to actively participate in the evolving viewing experience? If broadcasters and cable companies can’t put the power of Broadcasting 2.0 into the hands of advertisers, I bet services that understand the audience’s needs and the role of advertising might actually steamroll the entire industry.

What do you think about advertising’s role in an on-demand world? Are ads a necessary evil or do they add value to the overall media experience?

Blank Check-Out

Challenge While the rest of the world moves 24/7, most hotels still cling to a dated 19- or 20-hour day concept with rigid check-in and -out times and nightly rates that penalize the fast-moving transumer.

Spark Top hotels, like GHM’s The Setai in Miami, The Peninsula in Beverly Hills and Raffles hotels have offered the courtesy of flexible in and out times; many more offer late check-out – for a fee. Airport hotels can learn from the “by the minute” practices of long-distance and cellular companies and charge guests for the number of hours they stay. By-the-hour business models like the Yotel capsule accommodations at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports and MetroNaps sleep pods at YVR in Vancouver show that the demand exists for something between a full-night hotel stay and snoozing on an airport lounge bench. The Fairmont hotel within YVR in Vancouver also offers short-term nap rates for stays in “Quiet Zone” rooms that offer comfy respite for connecting travellers.

Outlet Shopping

Challenge The frequent business traveller can develop rug burn from crawling under hotel desks in search of enough outlets for charging multiple devices.

Spark Hotels need to start by installing more, and more accessible, power outlets. Rooms geared to business travellers should showcase the latest in docking and charging stations. The devices could be placed in rooms through partnerships (with tech brands like Monster or Belkin, or design-conscious brands like Lessiv or Bedford). They could even become a potential for-sale item (think: the pre-WiFi internet cable) as part of in-room boutique offerings. Better yet, make the device solar (like iSun or Solio models) and make it an integral part of the desk design – but off the hotel’s power grid.

Savings and Loan

Challenge Attempts to travel light can be easily foiled by just one or two tasks that require more than your smartphone or PDA – not to mention what happens when that device doesn’t work well, or economically, overseas.

Spark In-room and loaner iPods are already common at boutique hotels; loaner cell phones should be de rigueur at business hotels (Fifteen Beacon in Boston has them), along with hotel switchboard call-forwarding to your temporary local number. Extend the service to having hotels provide loaner laptops, the way that Air Canada and IBM did on some flights a few years ago. It’s an opportunity to partner with brands that want to expose travellers to their latest and greatest technology.

Brand Muscle

Challenge An indoor fitness centre, no matter how well appointed, is never as good for you as getting out of the hotel and exploring a new locale.

Spark Hotel programs providing route maps and stylish loaner bicycles (like Jorg & Olif city bikes at Opus Hotel in Vancouver, Bianchi Nyala cycles at Four Seasons Marunouchi in Tokyo and BMW models at Fairmont) prove that this trend has legs. The Wynn Las Vegas has top Callaway loaner clubs for its golfers; Four Seasons Whistler will outfit you in Prada or Spyder ski gear. How long will it be before a savvy retailer opens something like Nike’s innovative Runner’s Lounges in a hotel near Central Park or Hyde Park, along with a retail store specializing in sporting goods for people on the go?

Scentology

Challenge A hotel room just can’t quite feel like home when canary-coloured shampoo and watery body lotion are the standard amenities.

Spark In a world where travel restrictions on liquids and gels mean bringing your own full grooming kit isn’t possible, more hotels are adopting top-end creature comforts: just witness what in-room placement with Four Seasons has done for L’Occitane en Provence’s Aromachologie Volumizing Shampoo and Repairing Conditioner, now a cult favourite product that L’Occitane sells as part of a popular travel set. Recognizing that scent creates powerful memories, hotel groups from Shangri-La (with its exclusive Essence of Shangri-La scent) to Starwood (which has unique “scent logos” for each of its brands, from Sheraton to St. Regis) are creating custom fragrances. The Intercontinental Montelucia in Scottsdale went local and unique, using the essence of a rare night-blooming cactus for the signature Joyambrosia scent for its spa. But One&Only Palmilla won my heart with the most personal touches of all: local agave-rich suds and a bespoke sewing kit with hand-wound thread to match the colours in my wardrobe.

In the hotel industry “the box” is insider jargon for a typical room. Which makes it especially apropos and exciting for transumers to imagine more hoteliers thinking outside of it.

Wiki-Seating

A Web-based pre-flight discussion board can help customers connect at the very beginning of the journey cycle. Giving passengers the option of sharing their travel plans, interests and destinations before the flight could help users build their own “wiki-seating plan” together. Business travellers could choose to sit next to fellow attendees of a particular conference. Backpackers could find like-minded travellers to explore with.

Itinerary-sharing sites like vtravelled and social applications like Dopplr are already allowing passengers to connect and share information. But why should airlines concede this ground to outside parties (or in vtravelled’s case, leave the network itself on the ground)? Consider the long-term branding power of your customized application being responsible for a new pair of travel buddies, business partners or even close friends.

Social Embodiment In Flight

Enabling passengers to access Twitter from their seats is a great start. But why not construct your own inflight social network? I’m not just talking about seat-to-seat chat. That’s so AIM; this is the Facebook era. Passengers could volunteer biographical information that can be used to generate relevant social statistics. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that “14 people on this plane are flying for the first time,” or that “there are seven Spanish speakers on this flight”? A sophisticated social interface could allow passengers to customize their privacy settings, allowing more discreet passengers to participate in conversation threads without feeling vulnerable.

This type of content could also be a key marketing point, as statistics could present brand-specific information (i.e. “64 percent of the people on this plane booked their flight through Cheaptickets.com” or “59 people on this plane are staying at Holiday Inn”). If Facebook has taught us anything, it’s that people are happy to share personal information – with both people and brands – so long as they get something in return. That something could be a new best friend, an interesting bit of trivia or a great last-minute deal at a local spa.

Completing the Journey Cycle

The socializing doesn’t have to stop at the terminal. Your inflight system can help passengers coordinate their plans upon arrival. An interactive map of the destination city could allow passengers to pinpoint their hotels or conference centers – and figure out the best way to get there. The system could easily suggest social groups who might benefit from sharing a taxi, helping each other find a connecting flight, or sharing a drink during the layover. By providing these services inflight, you can keep passengers off their PDAs and engaged with your brand and partners throughout the journey.

It’s great to see airlines embracing social media. But it’s time to realize that your airplanes are social media with the ability to convert strangers into travel mates and frequent flyers into loyal customers. With a scientific approach to product design, you can turn your inflight system into a Transumer gateway. The key to real aircraft connectivity is right in front of your nose – or rather, in the back of your seat.

As director of partnerships for Fairmont hotels and resorts, you’ve joined forces with a variety of brands – from Adidas and Aveda, to Lexus and Napa Valley Vintners. Can you talk about some of the mutual benefits of these partnerships?

Our partnerships fall into three categories: the environment, food and beverage, and health and wellness. Adidas and BMW fit nicely under health and wellness. So what Adidas gets is brand exposure at every one of our properties globally through a variety of ways. If you are a Fairmont President’s Club member, in the top two tiers, you can have your apparel size and shoe size on your profile and every time you stay with us you can have Adidas apparel and footwear delivered to your room. Adidas provides us with great pricing. We purchase the Adidas apparel. They get some great market research and our customers are very happy.

BMW is our exclusive car partner in Canada. Later this year we’re rolling out the new X5 Diesels as our official courtesy cars at our Canadian properties. But in order to highlight BMW’s green positioning as well as ours, we thought providing all of our Fairmont hotels in Canada with BMW bicycles was a great way for our guests to stay healthy and also see the local surroundings. That’s just an extra surprise and delight for our guests.

Transumers love buying things that enhance their experience, but I imagine they also see hotels as a kind of sanctuary from the 24/7 hustle and bustle of consumer life. How do you make sure guests don’t feel barraged or overwhelmed by brand partnerships and promotions?

We have opt-in-permission marketing rules that we adhere to fanatically and that ensure we are not bothering our guests with these partnerships and promotions. A lot of them are tied to our Fairmont President’s Club and the co-branded materials that we produce are subtle. But if you look to classic CRM (customer relationship management) strategies, every program we launch is deeply rooted in what our guests tell us they want. So our belief is, if you have a very subtle piece of paper that’s in the check-in slip when someone picks up their key, and it’s something you know that is consistent with the psychographics of your guest, they’re not going to feel offended. I think guests feel offended when they’re getting barraged by marketing messages that mean nothing to them.

So it’s about providing content that is useful and not just advertorial?

Yes. It’s providing content in context.

Fairmont has been a leader in environmental policies and partnerships since 1990. Now that hotel greening campaigns have gone mainstream, how do you demonstrate to guests that you’re not just “greenwashing” to cut costs? How do you go beyond those “please re-use your towel” cards to show that sustainability is not just a marketing buzzword but an integral part of your brand?

We’ve been focused on this for 20 years, so we have some pretty innovative things like our rooftop herb gardens and our bees that produce fresh honey for our guests to enjoy at breakfast. And we also mandate that we source locally and, wherever possible, organic. We feel very passionate about this. We do not have a huge laundry list of global food suppliers so that when you sit down at the hotel restaurant 99 percent of ingredients on the menu are coming from one of the top five food conglomerates.

Do you think you’ve led your guests onto the local food bandwagon, or are you simply responding to customer demand?

We had such a head start but consumers have really caught up. That movie Food Inc. is striking a chord with a lot more people than you would think. A lot more people are starting to become very, very concerned about what’s in their food. So in some ways we are meeting expectations of our guests, and in some ways I think we may be ahead of the curve and we might be introducing a new way of eating to some customers.

Fairmont is known for its iconic, historic properties. How do you incorporate cutting-edge technology into a centuries-old shell without ruining the effect?

It’s really hard and really expensive. It is something that our global tech team is very focused on. Absolutely our guests need to be connected. A huge number of our guests are Blackberry users – it’s a disproportionate amount of Blackberries at our hotels. And so we have to accommodate that. It’s constant upgrades. It’s finding creative ways to use wireless technology. The guest does not care that they’re in a beautiful iconic property if they can’t check their e-mail.

As the traditional magazine industry struggles to retain its footing in the Internet age, custom publications like Fairmont Magazine [published by Spafax, Sparksheet’s publisher] are weathering the storm quite well. I know your father was the publisher of Flare magazine for many years. As someone who grew up around magazines, do you think branded content can save print media?

Our research shows that the people spending the most time with our magazine are the highest tier Fairmont President’s Club members and the most affluent. The content in the magazine is an opportunity for them to explore a brand that they feel very strongly about, that they already connect with. So again it’s about content in context. The magazines that really provide value to readers will thrive even when others are struggling. We feel that in the intimacy of our hotel rooms there is a good opportunity for our guests and a good opportunity for us. People have a lot of time, more time perhaps than they do at home to pick up a magazine. And so it’s an opportunity for guests to explore relevant content, and for us to strengthen our bond with customers.

Delta Air Lines:

http://www.youtube.com/user/DeltaAirLines
Joined: May 11, 2006
Subscribers: 2,005
Channel Views: 87,705
Videos: 47

Delta plays it safe, but with style. Along with the obligatory flight safety videos (in English, Hindi, Japanese and Spanish) viewers are treated to an unguided tour of the Miami Sky Lounge, a crash course on how to use Delta’s check-in kiosk, and 25 intimate and in-depth city guides hosted by Delta employees. Hats off to Delta’s sound team for spicing up the clips with surprisingly good ambient music.

United Airlines

www.youtube.com/user/uniteditstimetofly
Joined: July 29, 2008
Subscribers: 385
Channel Views: 86,033
Videos: 7

No airline today needs a first-class YouTube presence more than United Airlines. Last month, musician Dave Carroll posted a video to the site in which he tunefully accused the company’s baggage handlers of breaking his $3,500 guitar. “United Breaks Guitars” quickly went viral, garnering more than 5 million views and heaps of media coverage.

So far United Airlines has failed to respond in kind and its YouTube channel is littered with comments from angry musicians vowing to boycott the airline. We know we’re not the only ones waiting to hear an equally tuneful apology performed by musically-inclined United employees. Until then, we’ll have to settle for a time-lapse video of a United 747’s construction.

Qantas Airways

http://www.youtube.com/user/Qantas
Joined: February 14, 2006
Subscribers: 886
Channel Views: 42,856
Videos: 54

Aside from a few television ads and some historical footage, the Aussie airline’s YouTube channel is all soccer all the time. Fans can feast on interviews and post-game roundups with members of the Qantas Socceroos, the company’s world-class squad.

Virgin Atlantic Airlines

www.youtube.com/user/ThisIsVirginAtlantic
Joined: October 16, 2008
Subscribers: 354
Channel Views: 18,118
Videos: 38

Welcome to the family channel. Virgin groupies can watch Holly Branson, daughter of Virgin founder Richard Branson, talk about the airline’s charity work or follow Sir Richard himself on an eight-day trip around the world. By spotlighting the Bransons, Virgin succeeds at being both personal and promotional at the same time.

Southwest Airlines

www.youtube.com/user/NutsAboutSouthwest
Joined: June 06, 2007
Subscribers: 662
Channel Views: 31,332
Videos: 129

And the Aviation Oscar for outstanding performance on YouTube goes to… 38-year-old Southwest Airlines. The Dallas-based company takes social media engagement seriously, and its YouTube channel is no exception. We’re big fans of the “My Old Man in Maintenance” series, which stars the airline’s emerging media maven, Christi Day. In each episode, the affable Day interviews her father, a longtime Southwest maintenance man, about hydraulic systems, aircraft flaps and other esoteric airplane parts.

We also recommend joining the roughly 53,000 people who have witnessed Southwest’s rapping flight attendant. And if that’s not enough, check out the audacious “Twitcom,” in which Southwest staff members act out a script written by the airline’s loyal Twitter followers:

You’ve done a lot of work in the hospitality industry and spoken at the Social Media Strategies for Travel conference in San Francisco earlier this year. What’s different or challenging about marketing to airline passengers or hotel guests? How do you take into account the very specific frame of mind and spending habits of the transumer?

The transumer is interesting, because four or five years ago customers couldn’t do much about a negative experience unless they wanted to make a phone call, or maybe it would show up on their blog three or four days later. That’s no longer the case. Negativity is a real-time experience in this market. If I’m having a bad experience on an airline or checking in to a hotel, it’s not going to show up the next day on Yelp. It’ll show up immediately on Facebook, Twitter or some other channel. I’ve seen negative comments by prominent CEOs or celebrities who can do a lot of damage. Or if you happen to know the person making the complaint, and you know they’re a patient person, you’re like, “Oh, wow, if he’s complaining about this hotel, they must have really screwed up.”

That’s what’s so difficult about the travel industry. Brand monitoring has got to be a 24/7 thing. If an airline says, ”Oh, but we can’t do that, we like to send people home at around 6 p.m.,” my answer is, “Then it’s time to build offices in Dubai and Barcelona, so you can take care of your customers.” Just because a company shuts the door of its L.A. office at 6, doesn’t mean they stop doing business. I don’t really have much pity for a billion-dollar corporation that can’t handle its own reputation management.

Talking about reputation management, have you seen “United Breaks Guitars”? Last month, country singer Dave Carroll posted a music video on YouTube that skewered United Airlines baggage handlers for allegedly mishandling his guitar. The video went viral, the mainstream media picked up the story, and United’s online image seems to have suffered a serious blow. If United were your client, how would you advise them to respond? Is it better to downplay the issue until the story clears or address it head-on, even if that risks perpetuating the story?

I’d tell United to start a band, like, yesterday. Get every musician in the entire company and get them to sing a song called, “Dave, we’re sorry we broke your guitar.” They would really have to up the ante. There would be a hip-hop remix, a dance remix, a country version. They’d have to get the entire Chicago Cubs team, Mayor Daley and, it goes without saying, United’s CEO. Think “We Are the World” of broken luggage. If they did this, Caroll would probably say, “It’s cool. You made a really awesome video, and you replaced my guitar.”

I estimate the hard cost of that video would be close to $500,000 or $1 million, but that’s probably one tenth of the money they’ve lost at this point. Now every single musician in the free world who’s been on YouTube knows that if you’re bringing your instrument, you don’t fly United Airlines. That video’s been up for, what, a month now? United’s really dropping the ball on this one.

What are your thoughts on travel portals such as Virgin Atlantic’s vtravelled, British Airways’ Metrotwin and Air Canada’s enRoute Online? Some critics have questioned whether there really is sufficient marketing size for itinerary-sharing or user-generated content websites. Do these sites help build customer loyalty, or is it all just a big Web 2.0 experiment?

I’m not familiar with the other sites but I know some of the people behind vtravelled. In my opinion, the site has some wonderful content, but one critical flaw – a lack of social proofing. Users can’t communicate with each other through the interface. This makes it difficult to foster community and raises the question, ‘Why should I care about other peoples’ travel plans?’ If I’m not sure how other folks are using the site, I’m less inclined to stick around myself.

How important a role does content play in the social strategies you work on? What are some ways your clients have used non-advertorial content to help customers engage with their brands?

Content is absolutely core to what we do. We’re about to kick off an implementation for an international shoe company that has very little to do with shoes. Look at the Nike Women’s Marathon. It’s such a landmark event because it empowers many women to run their first marathon. That’s a life-changing event. People don’t get excited about new shoes; they get excited about life-changing events. In an age where we’re able to surf the Internet on airplanes, advertisers are not going to grab people’s attentions with content that’s blatantly advertorial. If content is not utilitarian, not valuable in itself, it doesn’t stand a chance on the social web.

What’s the connection between content and interaction design? How do you take into account the product’s ultimate function – whether it’s entertainment or information delivery or communications – in the design process?

If we think of content in a broad sense, most interactive products have to do with content: either consuming it (watching an online slideshow), generating it (digital cameras), manipulating it (Photoshop), or some combination of those (social network sites like Facebook). For interaction designers, the important thing is to consider what it means to do one of these activities in the context of use, and design for that.

On the consumption end of the spectrum, often the interaction designer’s job is simply one of providing tools to find and navigate the content structure and to get the hell out of the way. On the generation and manipulation side of the spectrum, it’s a lot more complex, because sometimes the focus is on the tool itself, not just the content.

What effect does or should the aircraft environment have on interaction design? How do you account for tangibles like ambient lighting levels and less tangibles like user frame of mind?

Interaction design is all about behaviour, so things like lighting levels can affect that, helping put travellers into a different state of mind so that different behaviours seem acceptable or expected. Think of the cool violet lighting inside a Virgin America aircraft for instance. And certainly products like the back-of-the-seat touchscreen systems have changed life for the better for travellers by giving them a modicum of control in a situation that used to be entirely regimented.

The addition of the touchscreens can change the way processes have traditionally worked. To use another Virgin America example, the ability to directly order food and drinks from your seat whenever you want pretty much eliminates the need for beverage and meal service.

Ordering drinks on Virgin America's inflight system

What are your thoughts on the proliferation of interactive terminals for travellers—I’m thinking of everything from airport check-in terminals to tourist visitor centres to subway ticket counters. Do you think travellers have been adequately served by interaction designers in this context? Is there any area where person-to-person interaction is always better?

I think they’re great. They are the best additions to a massive service since ATMs became part of banking. Travellers have been well served by them, I think, and are getting better served every day, with online and mobile applications in addition to kiosks. Of course, like with ATM and bank tellers, there are situations too complex for the regular system to handle; sometimes you just need a person to explain a situation to, and they can use the more powerful tools at their disposal – as well as their knowledge of the system – to address complex problems. Not everything can be turned into hardware/software. Nor should everything be – major systems like transportation are so complex, it takes humans to work them.

What are some ways that brands can engage users through interactive interfaces? What are some examples of effective engagement, and where have people been turned off?

The simple answer to this is to make great products that meet people’s needs and that they enjoy using. That will make a positive connection in customers’ minds to the brand. Of course, that’s really hard.

I think it’s important for companies to remember that, except in some rare circumstances, customers aren’t there to “experience your brand”. They are there to do something. If you make it easy and pleasurable to do those activities, it creates brand loyalty. If even a fraction of the money spent on marketing and advertising was spent to make interactive products better, you’d see a huge improvement.

You can see effective engagement in products like the iPhone, TiVo, Facebook, Twitter. They are all products people use and then advocate for. You can tell bad products because people quickly tire of them or are reluctant to use them unless necessary. Products that are ugly and poorly thought out. We’re surrounded by this stuff all the time.

Well Fargo's popular ATM interface

Are gestural interfaces going to replace touch screens or other traditional interfaces? Are they simply a more advanced technology or is there still a place for good old push buttons?

To paraphrase Bill Buxton, all technologies are good for some things and bad for others. I imagine a future – a near future – where gestures, touchscreens, and mechanical/physical interfaces all exist side by side, used when and where appropriate based on the context of use. Take public restrooms, for instance. Gestural interfaces (in sinks, paper towel dispensers, hand driers, etc.) seem to have taken root there, in part because it makes both practical (because the less you touch in public bathrooms, the better) and business (it saves water, paper, and electricity) sense. Touchscreens and certainly not keyboards and mice don’t belong there. Likewise, I don’t see keyboards vanishing from offices anytime soon, because they are quite good for doing large amounts of data and text entry. I think we’re still in the process of finding out what gestural interfaces are good for, really.

Are gestural interfaces culturally sensitive? Is the iPhone as “intuitive” for someone in China or India as it is for someone in San Francisco?

Gestures certainly are culturally sensitive. The OK sign, for instance, is very offensive in certain parts of the world, as is a thumbs up. Touchscreen products have their own interaction design language that has to be learned, the same way there is a language on the desktop software (“cut and paste,” for instance). The hope is that there is less of a learning curve for products that are manipulated directly with the fingers than with a mouse or via menus. I don’t know if that is necessarily true, but anecdotally we keep hearing about children as young as two picking up iPhones and figuring them out. If children who can’t read can use something, it should translate across borders pretty well.

You edit a blog called No Ideas But In Things where you feature mechanical interfaces that inspire you. What are some of your favourite interaction designs from the physical world?

I really love controls for heavy machinery like cranes, bulldozers, and the like. There is something about their bluntness and clarity that all designers can learn from. Plus, the icons are incredible. Since a lot of the operators now don’t read English, there are more icons than words. My favourite was a Fast/Slow lever that had a rabbit on one side and a turtle on the other. Genius.

Hospital bed controls via No Idea But In Things

Are there any everyday appliances that you think ought to be completely redesigned? Is there a point of no return at which the way something works becomes so intuitive to most people that it can no longer be reconfigured?

Most of the appliances we have now have been refined over decades, so there are probably only incremental changes we’re going to see to them. Although who knows? I’d love to design a gestural stove. And the initiative to be more environmentally friendly may cause some changes in food preparation and storage that require new appliances.

It’s more likely we’re going to see the interplay of our appliances, and them becoming smarter and more aware. Dishwashers running when energy is the cheapest, for instance. Stoves that detect burning and lower the heat.

I don’t think there is ever a point when a product can’t be improved. Forks, for instance, evolved over several centuries. But the TV, for instance, was a fairly stable technology until DVRs disrupted the service.

What are the differences between designing for the stressed commuter, rushed businessman, Luddite senior citizen, multitasking teen, etc.? Do you aim for the lowest common denominator when designing a user interface, or for a specific demographic?

You might have all these seemingly diverse groups, but they might all have the same expectations, motivations, and behaviour. Those are the three key components to think about when designing. When there is variation in those, you have to figure out how much the interface has to adjust for. In some circumstances, like for public transit ticketing machines, it is designing for the widest acceptable range. For many other products, that’s not the case at all. You target one set of expectations, motivations, and behaviour and that is your product. Other products are made from other sets of those characteristics.

What are some common mistakes you’ve seen in other people’s designs? Any pet peeves?

Emphasizing the wrong button is one I see frequently. Drives me crazy. Squint at the screen or the device and see what is the most prominent item. If it isn’t supposed to be the most important control, the design is likely wrong.

Saffer’s presentation on gestural interfaces at the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) conference in New York City