Shaun Smith

At the Farnborough Air Show this weekend, Britain saw its first Boeing Dreamliner (above) – on which the company has bet its future. ‘Parked’ alongside it in the civil airliner area of the air show is Boeing’s European rival, the latest Airbus. But, amazing, high tech aircraft that they are, when it comes to creating a flying customer experience, these multi-million dollar aircraft will fast become mere commodities.

So, let’s take a look at how you would take your multi-million dollar commodity aircraft and build a unique customer experience around the flight itself. And to do so we have to look, of course, to the masters of creating an airline customer experience – Virgin. We’ve looked elsewhere in this blog at how Virgin crafts a unique experience for its passengers on the ground, before they even reach the plane. This post focuses on the bit that happens up in the air.

Create ‘difference’ in the experience

Like all other airlines, Virgin Atlantic...

I had dinner recently with Greg Gianforte, CEO and Founder of RightNow Technologies, who was telling me about his mantra ‘fix it or feature it’. In other words either improve a software or product characteristic or turn it into a product advantage and feature it as a selling point.

A great example of ‘fix it or feature it’ is the need to wait for Guinness to be poured in two stages and then wait for the head to form. This cannot be ‘fixed’ so Guinness ‘feature it’ as part of the proposition.

‘The wait’ as Guinness marketing people call it, is part of what makes ordering Guinness in a bar or pub unique; the wait was turned from an inconvenience into ‘good things are worth waiting for’, which taps into (pardon the pun) the emerging feeling among consumers in recent years that too much of life is a rush and that moments need to be savoured.

Watching the launch of Apple’s iPad, I was struck by the fact that Steve Jobs famously doesn’t pay too much attention to customer research. (“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants,” he said recently).  And yet – or should that be because of – this refusal to pay much attention to what customers say they want, Apple has become the ultimate game changer.

Whether the iPad – a giant version of the iPhone, more or less – is as big a success as Apple’s last two blockbusters – the iPod and iPhone – remains to be seen.  If history repeats itself we will be asking ourselves in two years, “How did we ever do without the iPad?”. Jobs’ determination to carve his company’s own path to innovation is an example of why you need to be bold to win in business today...

We are currently researching leading brands for our forthcoming book ‘Bold brands-how to be brave in business and win’. There are some obvious examples that we shall include but one brand that is causing us to pause for thought is Ryanair, the low cost airline.

Our research and experience of working with many leading brands suggests that those organizations that have a crystal clear view of their strategy and communicate their value proposition to target customers will outperform their sector. We also believe that the more focused organizations are in creating a customer experience that delivers their brand promise the more likely it is that they will win share of mind and ultimately, share of market.

Unbundling air travel

There is no doubt about the clarity and single-minded focus of Ryanair; their stated aim is to disaggregate air travel and reduce costs to the point that they are able to sell seats cheaper...