British Airways has hit some turbulence in recent months. There has
been the defection of many business and first-class passengers, falling
occupancy levels and criticism from Egon Ronay about the quality of its
onboard catering.
In the eyes of many former BA loyalists, the airline has deteriorated on
almost all fronts, ranging from delayed take-offs, misplaced
reservations and increased lost luggage to aggressive ground staff and
inattentive cabin crew. One frequent flyer and BA Gold Card holder sums
up his growing disillusion thus: ’Flying with BA today is a hassle -
you’re not made to feel special and it’s out of its depth if anything
goes wrong.’
Many trace the malaise back to the cabin crew strike of 1997. While the
tough BA management might have won the picket-line battle and pursued
its outsourcing ambitions, it may have lost the war for the hearts of
its employees.
BA seems to be responding to this crisis. In what appears to be a U-turn
on recent strategy, the airline now admits it has been stretching its
marketing resources too thinly and will refocus on business and
first-class customers. An early manifestation of this approach is a
below-the-line campaign called ’promise’, which began in October and
ends this week.
Cathy Smith, business marketing manager, trade and corporates, for BA in
the UK and Ireland, is the woman in charge of ’promise’. Unfortunately,
a promised face-to-face interview with her was abruptly cancelled after
BA’s zealous PR people decided they didn’t like the look of Campaign’s
pre-faxed questions which, unsurprisingly, touched on the thorny issues
outlined above.
When the interview was resurrected, the unsatisfactory result was the
briefest of telephone chats, heavily stage-managed by the PRs to allow
no time to address the heavier stuff. Such defensiveness - some might
say paranoia - does not suggest a company at ease with itself.
Nevertheless, a few insights into BA’s strategy could be gleaned from
the media morsels on offer. The ’promise’ campaign was very
face-to-face, Smith says, particularly in communicating with travel
agents.
Smith describes it as ’the single largest and most integrated campaign
we have ever run’; previous campaigns have kept a divide between the
travel agent fraternity and the business clientele. The catalyst for
this type of campaign was a management reorganisation, which opened up
the lines of communication between BA’s many and varied marketing
channels.
’Promise’ brought together BA’s three main below-the-line agencies -
Tullo Marshall Warren, Claydon Heeley and Carlson - together for the
first time. ’The size of the campaign was likely to be too large for any
one agency,’ Smith says, ’and also required a lot more lateral thinking
because it had to appeal to very different audiences.’
Although she is keeping mum about the results of this campaign, Smith
says she has found the multiple agency approach ’a successful way of
working’ and is already planning a similar initiative for a campaign in
February and March.
A key part of the ’promise’ campaign was to begin building a powerful
trade database which could match the one already in place for corporate
customers.
Although she has only been in the job since April, Smith, 37, has spent
the past ten years with BA, working in various sales and marketing
posts.
Her two most memorable BA achievements to date are the ’promise’
campaign and this year’s ’summer fruits’ campaign. This was the ’first
proactive use’ of BA’s UK salesforce in developing a trade relational
database.
It also had a ’fun’ element by featuring a range of Body Shop scratch
’n’ sniff products.
Smith’s views on the merits of below-the-line versus above-the-line are
hard to gauge. The question may have prompted PR suspicion that what
Campaign meant was: ’Do you agree that BA’s advertising is rubbish?’
But Smith was happy to state that ’targeted tactical activity clearly
has a depth not achievable above the line’ and she appears committed to
big numbers when it comes to direct mail. ’Promise’ featured packs sent
out to 11,000 travel agents and more than 200,000 Executive Club
members.
Chris Freeland, group account director at TMW, which goes back a decade
with BA, says his agency has regular planning meetings with both Smith
and Sandi Lee, the leisure marketing manager. ’There is a strong
commitment from both teams to maintain an interdependent working
partnership,’ he says.
Now, if only BA could get its PR department to forge a more
’interdependent working partnership’ with the media.
