Latest on airline social media marketing: Vueling leveraging the Instagram craze

Your Instagram pictures could soon be on a Vueling A320 like this one

It is hardly news that airlines, as most consumer-oriented companies, are embracing social media to connect with the public, sell tickets or sort out crisis. Some go the extra-mile and even develop their own innovative applications exploring the social travel space (whether successfully or not is another matter, the jury is still out)...But the key element here is that the hyperconnected world we live in provides also a platform to test new marketing and leverage user-generated content...I mentioned in a previous blog post that "visual" is the word of the day and the recent billion-dollar sale of Instagram to Facebook proves the point...

So what best than try riding the Instagram wave? This is what Vueling is doing with its latest campaign, the Vueling Air Gallery (running on Facebook, of course!)...take an Instagram picture from one of Vueling's destinations, tag it #vuelingairgallery and get the public to vote for it (obviosuly the goal is to make it viral by asking your friends to vote for your picture). One of Vueling's Airbus A320s is going to be painted with the 200 best pictures and the best 50 Vueling instagrammers (chosen by some judges) are going to get free flights too..

To be fair, this is not the first time that an airliners has been decorated this way, KLM already painted one of its aircraft with its fan's Facebook pictures styled as blue Delft porcelain tiles...but it is a nice and engaging initiative nonetheless...I am actually wondering why we do not see more campaigns along these lines.

British Airways to be soon owned by...the Spanish state?

One of the side-effects of the economic and financial turmoil in Spain might be none other than British Airways falling back into government hands...but in the hands of the Spanish state this time!

How's that?

The main shareholder of British Airways' parent company, International Airlines Group (IAG) is non other than Bankia, formerly Cajamadrid (Madrid's savings bank before the latest reform of the Spanish financial system), with over 12% of IAG's capital (a vestige of the times when Cajamadrid was one of Iberia's main shareholders). The fact is that Bankia is in deep financial trouble, so deep that all points towards a bail out and nationalization by the Spanish government, who would then, through the back door, control 12% of IAG...

But before you start fretting about a new Spanish Armada taking over the British flag carrier, have a look at IAG's consolidated accounts and you will see that British Airways is bringing in all of IAG's profit  (is losing less money than Iberia)...so, whatever happens, I would expect Willie Walsh to remain firmly in command!

More ways to follow Allplane

This is kind of a service announcement, but I would like to share with you the new platforms where I am posting airline and aviation-related content.

You will see that the web is getting visual and that it is seems that it is all about social curation now...the great advantage of these platforms is that they are all interconnected, so they are great complements of this blog and allow me to share my content in new ways as well as uncover some great aviation-related content produced by other aviation enthusiasts out there.

If you like what I post on this blog, then I suggest you follow me also on:

Pinterest
A great enjoyable way to share all sort of aviation pictures

Tumblr
A new way to share content, very visual and with a point of randomness

Scoop.it
This platform allows you to share stories and content in a similar way to what Pinterest allows you to do with images

And, of course, Allplane is on Twitter, Facebook and Google+  too!