In an earlier post (Will Facebook “Fans” be Missed?) I touched upon the fact that having Facebook Fans, aka people that like your brand, is not an ultimate measure of success. Rather a relationship of value (for both the fan and the brand) is created by activating your Facebook community through content, messages, offers, and other interactions and applying metrics to evaluate these efforts over time. Recently Augie Ray of Forrester Research posed the question of whether a Facebook fan even has value unless a brand does something to create value with the fan. His post What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Zero! evoked such a lively discussion that he made a second post on the topic What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Part 2. I recommend reading both posts as you assess the value of your fans and your relationships with them, as well as the impact of your go-forward marketing programs.

In February 2007, a series of very, very long tarmac delays (most notably on Jet Blue flights departing JFK) ushered in a new awareness of passengers’ rights for food, functioning lavatories and generally a way off the plane in case of claustrophobic anxiety attack.  Laws were passed, fines were established and now we can count on every substantial delay due to weather, mechanical or other acts of congress being reported in real-time by well-connected bloggers.

Well a few weeks ago, it happened again.  A perfect storm of a blogger with a web cam and, well, a storm.

Virgin America flight 404 from Los Angeles to New York Kennedy (or as we airline geeks would say VX404 from LAX to JFK) departed L.A. on time on Saturday, March 13.  Due to poor weather, the flight was diverted to Stewart International — about 90 minutes north of NY to wait out the storm and get clearance for landing.

Stewart is a small airport, with limited gates, so VX404 was not given a gate, but passengers were allowed to leave if they chose and cases of water were delivered by the ground operations crew.  After several hours, a gate became available and the aircraft docked and deplaned.  When it became clear that JFK would not reopen in the near future, a bus was chartered to bring passengers to New York.

But that’s not the interesting story.  Sitting in first class, utilizing Virgin America’s wifi and “sharing” with his webcam was David Martin, CEO of a social media site that encourages its followers to upload videos or images of what they’re doing “right now.”  A perfect opportunity to promote his site as he experienced another episode of “Torture on the Tarmac.”  (probably of more interest was his cabinmate Carrie Ann Inaba — of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars 

The SF Chron documents the day nicely.

While VX did everything by the book with regard to the ground delay, what they did really well was addressing the blogosphere head on.  Here’s what impresses me:

Virgin actively encourages social media contribution — all of which they monitor and react to.  This allowed them to rapidly see what was happening and respond directly to the blogger.  Virgin America’s CEO, David Cush, personally reached out to Martin.

Next, Virgin leveraged its strong group of loyal travel bloggers to launch a counter attack.  In fact I heard of the events not from the news media, but from Cranky Flier’s Brett Snyder who wrote a blunt rebuttal to any criticism that may have been suggested about the incident.

In the end, Virgin did an outstanding job balancing the open, real-time nature of social media by quickly responding to blogger.  Unlike other airlines that allowed incidents to become Top 40 YouTube hits, Virgin America rapidly, appropriately and professionally dealt with a tough day and an even tougher situation.

Today, MediaPost’s Research Brief highlighted the latest survey on loyalty from the CMO Council.

It’s a solid overview of general member satisfaction and general marketer satisfaction with their programs.  In fact, generally very good news for the loyalty industry:  Members really do appreciate the additional value that loyalty programs deliver and marketers’ returns justify increased investment in 2010 and beyond.

I was, however, struck the by title:  “Loyalty Programs Need to Engage.”

Based on the research, there still is a significant gap in marketers’ ability to build a dialog with their members that is based on points of interaction that extend beyond the transaction.  While a clear majority of the respondents are increasing their digital spend, few seem to be ready to take the highly personal inputs of the engagement to drive big lifts if frequency, retention and measurable advocacy.

As reported in the Council’s research:

When it comes to in-depth profiling of customers, the vast majority of marketers still only aggregate and analyze limited customer data sets.

• 73% collect basic demographics and
• 68% track the location of members

But critical insights are not being leveraged:

• Advocacy rates (14%)
• Brand loyalty and attachment (27%)
• Personal preferences (31%)
• Satisfaction levels (33%)
• Product preferences (38%)

Clearly the gap needs to close.  This year, we’re doing our own research in collaboration with Razorfish on member engagement and loyalty.  Stay tuned – and if you would like an advanced peek, email me at david@loyaltylab.com