The Blog

The Future of The Pillow Mint

May 23, 2013 by napkinlabs

The movement into the digital age has flipped the travel and tourism industry on its head. The increase in readily available information has made the travel research and booking process easier for the consumer. With more options available to the consumer, travel and tourism brands are facing a new challenge of how to keep tourists loyal. Current loyalty programs, based on basic point-driven rewards, fail to offer an emotional connection that truly keeps consumers loyal. To succeed, travel and tourism brands must find a way to use the new digital space to develop more in-depth and personal loyalty programs.

To download the full whitepaper, click here.…

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Influencer Series: Laurie Meacham, Manager of Customer Commitment at JetBlue Airways

May 17, 2013 by napkinlabs

Travel and hospitality brands are some of the original pioneers of the digital world. Brands in these verticals are responsible for some of the major shifts in the space. JetBlue currently stands as a trendsetter for the industry and social world. They have been excelling in and pushing further the brand-consumer relationship. We had the opportunity to sit down with Laurie Meacham, Manager of Customer Commitment at JetBlue Airways. Laurie leads customer responsiveness as part of the BlackOps team. She had a lot of great insight to share on how the digital age has changed the industry and examples how other brands in the space can take advantage of the opportunities digital offers to connect with travelers.

On the consumer in the Digital age:

On the consumer experience:

Why JetBlue succeeds at the consumer-brand relationship:

JetBlue has time and time again pushed customer service and the social space further. …

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Tourism: Crowdsourcing The Story

May 14, 2013 by napkinlabs

‘An advertising campaign might draw the attention of visitors to a destination but it doesn’t build a destination brand.’ says Marcus Osborne, @Brandconsult in ‘Building a Country Brand Requires More Than Just a Well Executed Advertising Campaign.’

The tourism industry is rooted deep into advertising. And, we’ve seen a lot of great campaigns that succeed at driving excitement around a location. As the buzz fades, however, so does the excitement and interest. Tourism promotion must run deeper than advertising to tell a longer-lasting story of the country, state or city and its people.

For example, from a traffic point of view Queensland Tourism’s “Best Job in the World” campaign was one of the most successful tourism campaigns to date. The campaign drew 7 million visitors to the site and even won at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards. The campaign garnered a lot of excitement …

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A Hypothetical Case Study: United Airlines

May 9, 2013 by napkinlabs

As we take a dive deeper into the world of social media and the travel industry we wanted to revisit a concept we wrote about a few months ago: ‘Turning Complaints into Customer Driven Innovation.’ As CEO Riley Gibson writes, “Social media is a global test kitchen for brands to engage and co-create with customers in real-time and at amazing scale.   It can push the idea of a focus groups, qualitative research, and beta testing to new levels of reach, richness, speed, and efficiency.” The travel industry is rooted deep in customer service. When something goes array, and something always does, airline social media teams need to be there to calm and make everything right. Here’s a quick case study from the aforementioned post which highlights these instances and what can be done to turn the negative into a positive for the company.

A Hypothetical Case Study: United Airlines.

Lets …

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Guestsourcing a Local Travel Experience

May 6, 2013 by napkinlabs

Whether traveling for business or for pleasure, travelers are looking more and more past the traditional ‘tourist’ sites and scenes for a little more local flare. But, ‘traveling like a local’ goes beyond couchsurfing or renting a local’s home.  Extreme Concierging is a recent trend among many hoteliers going above and beyond these days to make their guests feel right at home and immersed in the local scene. However, as a brand in the travel and hospitality industry, it’s a tough job to keep up with the local hot spots that fit each unique traveler’s personal tastes and needs. And, with the amount of guests passing through hotel  lobbies, is it a sustainable practice to meet each and every travelers’ different tastes and needs. A team of concierge can only do so much, correct?

What if recommendations for your guests could come from other like-travelers?

‘Guestsourcing’ is based on the …

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Creating an Experience for The Fast Food Consumer

May 2, 2013 by napkinlabs

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The Fast Food industry is competitive and only growing more competitive by the day. With new trends popping up constantly creativity and innovation has been proven to be the key to success. That’s why social media has been such a great partner to the industry. However, the power in social lies within the rate at which people share and communicate with the brand.

And, the truth is, most consumers don’t care as much as we think they do.

As simple as it may seem, it takes time and thought to engage with brands on social media. Most of the time consumers only engage when they have something meaningful to share: feedback, complaints or an outstanding experience. But, think about it – how compelling is a plain cheeseburger? The key to selling more fast food and spurring more engagement is enabling hungry consumers to have a shareable experience. So – the …

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Exploring an Analogy for Consumer Research in the Social Media Era

April 30, 2013 by napkinlabs

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One of our Napkin Labs’ co-founders, Warren Ng, was recently inspired by many of the conversations he’d been having with brands looking to derive useful data from their consumer base via social media. After much thought, he wanted to share a few words on consumer research in the social media era. 

Recently I was exploring an analogy for consumer research in social media compared to traditional means to help communicate what Napkin Labs does to a friend. The resulting analogy was really thought provoking so I thought I’d share.

I’d love to hear what you think about this analogy so share some comments below.

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For context, consumer research is often seen as studying consumers under a microscope which for the purposes of this analogy we’ll call a telescope.  Social media however has made the dialogue between brands and consumers highly scalable, putting a ‘telescope’ in consumers hands as …

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Guest Blog Post // Your Most Valuable Asset May Be Lying Dormant by Saneel Radia

April 25, 2013 by napkinlabs

This is part of our guest blog post series.  Saneel Radia, EVP of Product Innovation at VivaKi, is an esteemed agency mastermind with an outstanding understanding of the digital and innovation space. Napkin Labs is lucky to have Saneel as part of their advisory board. You can dive deeper into Saneel’s work and thought-process over at Finch15, an innovation boutique he founded.

A few years ago, I heard marketers start using the word “assets” to describe some of the things they created. My initial reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Why shouldn’t it have been? Previously, every output from marketing spend was formalized as an expense. The idea of jumping over to the other side of the balance sheet– of moving from “the cost of doing business” to “something with future value”– was appealing.

Then reality set in. Most things marketers and their agencies create are indeed expenses– a point …

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Innovation & Collaboration

April 24, 2013 by napkinlabs

We are lucky to be featuring a guest blog post from Saneel Radia, EVP of Product Innovation at VivaKi, in a few days. He’ll be writing around the discussion of ‘fan collaboration.’ This topic is something Saneel has had his eye on for quite some time now. We wanted to share an oldie, but goodie slideshare he created titled, ‘Innovation & Collaboration.’ It may be a few years old, but we think Saneel was just beginning the conversation we are discussing today. Check it out.

 

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Turning Social Media Into Menu Innovation, Insights and Sales for QSRs: Part II

April 23, 2013 by napkinlabs

Part II: Redefining loyalty to drive sales and brand recognition.

In part 1 we discussed how social can be leveraged to get closer to customers.  In this post, we cover how the definition of customer loyalty is broadening and how QSRs can increase brand engagement and help drive sales.

Recently QSR Magazine reported that store visits influenced by deals is on the decline.  The report outlines a changing marketplace and states that “all types of deal visits are down with younger consumers.”  This study, and others like it, suggest that as younger customers make up a larger percentage of the market, loyalty programs, deals and rewards need to be rethought and re-engineered to appeal to this group.

At the same time, many QSRs are struggling with leveraging social media as a channel to drive word of mouth and earned media that translate to store visits.

While these seem like disparate …

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