Tag: Air Canada

We in the content industry tend to go to a lot of conferences. And there are a lot of conferences about content. With the vast changes in technology, everyone in the field wants to know the ins and outs of content and content strategy to better service their client needs. That’s perfectly understandable. But it also leads to something we’re starting to call The Conference Bubble: if you stay inside of it for too long, you tend to stop experiencing the outside world. The real world. And that disconnect is not good for content providers and it’s especially not good for their clients. It’s disastrous. In the end, the conference was really about a big idea and that was: quality over quantity. It’s something we preach at Spafax and it’s nice to know that after a few years of everyone trying to parcel out content in the shiniest baubles

At the recent International Content Summit, held in London, we were lucky enough to hear some compelling stories from the trenches (there’s more on the “big idea” from the conference here, at Sparksheet).

People Still Like Print

This is perhaps self-evident but you wouldn’t know it from The Conference Bubble. At least conferences that are about “content” or “content marketing.” The irony, of course, is that many of the speakers at these conferences are published authors pushing their books. Irony, another inconvenient truth.

Richard Cope, Global Head of Insight at Mintel, called print a status symbol. He said research has shown that “we still need to carry badges and emblems of taste” and that print fulfils that function. (This thinking went into the relaunch of Air Canada’s enRoute – we wanted to make it “printier” and also speaks to the sumptuous feel of our print media for Bombardier Business Aircraft, among others). An iPad may say something about us but a magazine says something specific. And then he put numbers to something we all understand intuitively: 42% of people consume print for “long journeys” (this is a UK study so take that to mean train trips) and 71% would rather read print than online. This stat was one of the most retweeted from the conference. For obvious reasons. Reading is a luxury, or should be qualified as such, because time is the new luxury, and it is relatively accessible, just like reading. Print might be on the way to niche status but it is an aspirational niche, and anything aspirational is also marketable.

These insights jibe closely to what we at Spafax have been saying for a while now: print is still important and a key component of a multi-channel communication strategy. Speaking of multi-channels….

What Hath the Touchscreen Wrought?

Nothing. It’s great. The Telegraph’s Mark Challinor even showed off the “nightmode” button on their app – a smart idea, brought on by user analytics (that is, a good number of their subscribers read the newspaper on their iPad in bed).  In good news for people who like to make money, the Telegraph’s studies have also found that readers like ads because it gives the newspaper app “a premium feel.” This goes back to the great thing about ads in print: readers have long found that ads are “content” as opposed to something they can skip over, a fact that has long explained the mammoth sizes (and success) of the fall fashion books. And Richard Cope asked a question that lingered long after he had asked it: Is the touch screen dulling our sense of touch or reawakening it? I’ll be thinking about that one for a long time.

One Brand, One Voice

Ruth Spencer, Head of Loyalty, for Boots (the largest drugstore chain in the UK and the home of one of the world’s great integrated content programs) affirmed that her company is “absolutely a content company.” And with a wide-ranging content strategy that embraces almost every form of media she insisted that her content must: be consistent, get integration right and play to each channels’ strengths. Meaning, quite often, one photo shoot for print, digital, in-store, you name it. What this says, really, is no silos, something I’ve touched on earlier. By employing a brand strategy without silos, Boots wins. And they do. Their program is something to behold.

Customer Loyalty

Myf Ryan, GM Marketing for Westfield UK, a large shopping mall developer, spoke of launching an enormous new mall in a relatively depressed section of East End London during the current economic climate. Westfield did this through the power of storytelling. That is, they gave a shopping mall that didn’t exist a backstory and then sold that story (as opposed to selling a mall) with stunning success. But more importantly, Ryan realized that any audience is “not channel loyal, they are content loyal” – so her story was consistent over multiple channels. More importantly, she said “Don’t tell a story about the brand, tell compelling stories that embody your brand” – something any good content marketer tries to get their clients to understand every day. The best brand stories are the ones the audience wants to be a part of, after all. No one really cares about a brand. Just what it can do for them. Brands that understand that are successful.

All great examples of good content done well. But more than that, all great examples of smart strategy in the service of great content working toward the same goal. It is really what all content marketing should strive for.

Last week, I spoke to the Custom Content Council at their pre-Pearl Awards gathering in New York. (For the record, Spafax won 5 Pearl Awards for our work for Air Canada’s enRoute, enRoute online, Air Canada’s OnAir and Mercedes Benz Canada.) Speaking about in-flight magazines and our long-standing partnership with Air Canada, I then conducted a Q&A with Air Canada’s Senior Director, Product Design Louise McKenven. We spoke about our long-standing partnership, how enRoute media enahnces Air Canada’s brand, how enRoute allows Air Canada a different level of communication with their customers, about earned media, and about the compelling brand story we (Spafax) can offer advertisers on Air Canada’s behalf.

The audience was fascinated. One, because the perception of in-flight media in the US is so different than it is in Canada (and in many other parts of the world). Two, because the story itself, of a brand leveraging the talents of its content agency to tell quality stories to a highly mobile audience – and then commercializing that conversation – is an amazing story in and of itself. Three, the audience (composed of other custom content providers) tried to figure out how to apply the in-flight model to their own customers.

At Spafax, we have taken the knowledge and experience we’ve built up with the airline and travel industry, and come to some basic truths. The people who travel, an amazing mobile and global audience, is, in fact, the customer base that all brands crave. The audiences our clients reach on the in-flight/IFE side of things and the custom media side are, basically, one and the same. And so it makes sense for Spafax to include the likes of Turismo Chile, Bombardier Business Aircraft, and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts in a client base that also includes the likes of British Airways, Emirates and Singapore Airlines, to name a few.

We have long been about content, curating brand stories for a mobile – and highly coveted – audience. What the gathering in New York learned is that the richness of the experience we have created with Air Canada is applicable to “terrestrial” brands as well. Because telling brand stories, and telling them well, is universal.

Q&A with enRoute Editor in Chief Ilana Weitzman, about the recent relaunch of Air Canada’s enRoute magazine

Q: What’s the backstory on the relaunch?

IW: In October, Air Canada’s enRoute magazine relaunched with a new look, feel and editorial focus. I’ve been involved in several magazine redesigns in my career as an editor, but nothing compares to relaunching an iconic title like enRoute, which reaches about a million readers each month and is a beloved national title. 

Q: You’ve relaunched other magazines in the past. But in a multi-platform, multimedia age, is it still the same thing? 

IW: A magazine is no longer a stand-along product – it’s part of a multi-platform brand, which for us now includes an award-winning website, a new dining guide app (our enRoute Eats app just launched on iTunes – download it now! ) and a vibrant, ongoing social media conversation. That context didn’t exist even just five years ago, when enRoute last went through a design overhaul. So our team had to think not only of how to “webify” our content but also, ironically, how to make the most of the qualities of print.

Q: How does one “webify” a magazine while making the most of the “qualities of print” at the same time? 

IW: We started the process by looking to blogs, twitter and other web properties to distill those ineffable qualities that make them so addictive. Could we bring that feel into the printed medium? Reader engagement on the web comes from first-hand, personalized finds. The new enRoute delivers that almost off-the-cuff sense of discovery that you get online. But we then refine that content with all the powers of print – including glorious photography and excellent journalism. This approach means that the print version seamlessly feeds back into our greater media world; it’s made to be blogged, posted on enroutemagazine.tumblr.com and integrated into our City Guides on enroute.aircanada.com, only with a slicker feel.

enRoute has always been a conversation starter, moving ideas throughout the world at the speed of flight. Only now that kind of word of mouth has the entire web behind it. Still, I like to think of that business traveler getting off the plane and having something new to talk about over a client dinner, a little piece of intelligence he picked up in enRoute. That will always be for me what defines a true find.

The North American Travel Journalists Association is the premier professional association of writers, photographers, editors, and tourism professionals dedicated to redefining professional development for the travel industry. The competition is always fierce and the print and online versions of Air Canada’s enRoute was yet again very well represented.

The awards:

• Gold: ENROUTE, In-Flight Magazine
• Gold: Julian Smith, Sports and Recreation, Internet
• Gold: Sarah Steinberg, Personality and Profiles, Internet
• Gold: JF Legaré, Isa Tousignant, Susan Nerberg, Travel Tips and Adivce
• Silver: Leda & St. Jacques, Photography and Illustration, Overall Excellence
• Bronze: Lorne Bridgeman, Photography and Illustration, Overall Excellence
• Bronze: Susan Nerberg, Eco, Environmental or Special Service Travel, Print

Congratulations to the enRoute media team, all those at Spafax who support them – and a huge thanks to Air Canada for their inspiration and support.

What do enRoute.aircanada.com, Brides.com, Seventeen.com and Vogue.com have in common? They’re all finalists in Min Online’s Best of the Web Awards in the Best Relaunch: Consumer category.

According to Spafax online web editor Sarah Steinberg, the nomination is a tremendous honour – there are a lot of travel and lifestyle websites out there but Spafax and Air Canada create something unique. And just look at the company we keep!

Min Online, the premier online resource chronicling the intersection of media and the internet, will present the awards April 7 in New York City’s Grand Hyatt Hotel.