Lisa Harris Marketing

At the Future of Social Media Conference in London recently, one of the most interesting presentations was from Chris Davies of British Airways.

Chris described how the objective of BA’s recent social media campaign involving the Australian comedienne Pam Ann was to reach a new audience in a less formal tone of voice. The videos involved budding actors and actresses among BA staff who had to audition for a role alongside Pam Ann – as you can see in this example:

http://www.britishairwaysandpamann.com/?destId=full_feature

The marketing team faced a significant challenge in that Pam Ann was not felt to be an ‘appropriate personality’ to champion the very traditional BA brand, and so obtaining internal sign off was very difficult.

However, the campaign was successful and so is likely to be repeated – with over 1,200 links made to the video clips, and significant levels of positive WOM about the unexpected communication style from BA.

Chris’s learning points and recommendations for social media marketing:

• New ways of working may be required, for example sourcing business partners with specialist knowledge
• Get lots of advice from a range of sources before diving in
• Take care re legal issues around managing user generated content and mitigate the risks
• Develop a robust moderation policy
• Engage but don’t dictate the message
• Make it fun!

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