News

Ready for Takeoff (washingtonpost.com)
Speaking about customer evangelists, Southwest Airlines is often mentioned as the ‘fun airline’. We’ll see what happens as more low cost airlines enter the market and the big guys reinvent themselves.
From the article: “As we looked into it, all of this was really pointing to the fact that this was an intelligent risk to take and exciting opportunity to put our brand out there where we might not normally be,” Rutherford says.

Older Airlines Embrace New Sales Tactics (washingtonpost.com)
Like everyone else, I spend a fair amount of time chatting about ‘integrated’ marketing programs or those that include traditional and interactive tactics. Here’s an article that talks about street tactics used by low cost airlines entering the Washington, DC market. Now, if the low cost guys would add viral marketing to the mix- then we’d have some excitement!
Interesting quote: “The low-fare carriers are forcing this change,” said B. Ben Baldanza, US Airways’ senior vice president of marketing and planning. “We need to not only tell people what we’re doing but remind them that we’re not the same company we were.”

The Chronicle, 6/10/2004: Online Donations Surge
“Combined Internet donations to the 157 nonprofit groups that provided data for this year’s survey topped $100-million.” (hat tip- Elizabeth Miller)