 Caselet 2 (15 Marks):

Consumers are adopting increasingly active roles in co-creating marketing content

with companies and their respective brands. In turn, companies are looking to online
social media and campaigns in an effort to reach consumers where they ‘live’ online.
However, the challenge facing many companies is that although they recognise the
need to be active in social media, they do not truly understand how to do it
effectively. This case study highlights a best-practice organisation and its successful
efforts to leverage social media in reaching an important audience of business
consumers. Specifically, this case study explains Cathay Pacific Airways,

Hong-Kong based airline, used LinkedIn successfully for brand building and it points
out how companies can maximise the potential of social media to better meet
customers’ needs.

Cathay Pacific Airways is an international airline registered and based in Hong Kong,
offering scheduled cargo and passenger services to over 140 destinations around the
world. The airline’s primary product is premium non-stop service to Asia with a focus
on the business class market. The company was founded in 1946 and it continues to
make substantial investments to develop Hong Kong’s aviation industry and enhance
Hong Kong’s position as a regional transportation hub. In addition to the fleet of
aircraft, these investments include catering, aircraft maintenance and ground handling
companies, as well as the corporate headquarters at Hong Kong International Airport.
Cathay Pacific and its subsidiaries and associates employ 21,000 staff in Hong Kong.
Additionally, Cathay Pacific Airways is a founding member of the One World global
alliance whose combined network serves over 600 destinations worldwide.

Despite its success in Asia, the challenge faced by Cathay Pacific Airways is to reach
the business class air travellers with a personal message that is compelling to them as
individuals. Cathay Pacific Airways therefore turned to LinkedIn in order to increase
brand awareness among travellers who fly business class between the United States
and Asia. LinkedIn differentiates itself from other social media sites, such as
Facebook or Twitter, by mainly attracting users who are professionals or business
people. Therefore, Cathay Pacific Airways is able to precisely target potential
customers via LinkedIn by industry, group, job title and/or company. In addition,
because of the social networking nature of LinkedIn, Cathay Pacific Airways can
engage with time-strapped business travelers in an environment where they are
already comfortable, receptive, engaged and spending time. The three marketing
approaches adopted by Cathay Pacific Airways via LinkedIn include:

i.        Identifying members who belong to LinkedIn groups who are related to
business travel in Asia, such as Global Workers, China Networking Group, Hong
Kong Connection.

ii.       Target these members with Display Ads and Sponsored Polls, i.e., using
Sponsored Polls to ask business travelers what else they might want to redeem their
airline points for, in addition to free airline tickets. Poll results gave Cathay Pacific
Airways insight into customer preferences, as well as identifying prospects and loyal
customers.
iii.      Establish Cathay Pacific Airways Page on LinkedIn and use Status Updates and
Recommendations to build brand awareness and drive engagement.

Results for Cathay Pacific Airways from using LinkedIn:

Three Sponsored Polls generated a total of 1,324 responses for Cathay Pacific
Airways from business travellers. Recommendation Ads generated 97
recommendations on the Product Page of Cathay Pacific Airways. LinkedIn Research
Network provides Cathay Pacific Airways ongoing insight to advertising
effectiveness and provides useful data for the future campaigns. Interestingly,
LinkedIn also helped Cathay Pacific Airways to identify many small and medium-
sized companies and individuals who are much harder to be identified when compared
to big organisations. As this case study shows, social media platforms provide
extensive opportunities to customise user engagement.

Although the social media platform does not require participants in the sphere of
influence to learn anything new, companies should provide some element of
uniqueness and authenticity in branding via social media, which will give consumers
a reason for engaging electronically and be a great weapon against boredom: the one
sin for which there is no forgiveness online.

In the digital era, social media is being used more frequently by companies to better
achieve corporate goals through meeting and exceeding customer needs better than
the competition. As the marketing power of social media grows, it no longer makes
sense to treat it as an experiment, and marketers of companies should tailor their use
of social media for each stage of the consumer decision-making process for
maximising the impact of social media on marketing.

This case study shows how Cathay Pacific Airways utilised LinkedIn to identify and
target potential air travellers, drive engagement and create two-way dialogues.
However, more than targeting potential customers, future opportunities that social
media can create for companies could include obtaining customer feedback, creating
new products/services, strengthening customer loyalty and engaging in online
dialogue with followers. Specifically, it has been shown that social media enables
targeted marketing response at individual touch points during consumer decision-
making process. Also, the various functions that social media can achieve for
companies include brand monitoring, crisis management, customer service,
facilitating referrals and recommendations, fostering communities, brand advocacy,
increasing brand awareness, facilitating product/service launch, communicating
targeted deals and offers, and utilising customer input for new product/ service
development. Therefore, apart from using LinkedIn, Cathay Pacific Airways and
other companies can harness social media to shape consumer decision- making
process in order to maximise the potential of social media to better meet customers’
needs.

Answer the following Questions:

A. Explain why LinkedIn is suitable for Cathay Pacific Airways in reaching the
business class air travellers with personal message that would increase brand
awareness. (5 Marks)
Answer: Because it’s very easy to reached customer’s in a noisy, crowded market for
its premium service to business class market.

Cathay Pacific Airway turned to LinkedIn to help increase brand awareness among
people who fly business class. They knew what they needed to advertise where the
business people – and especially business travellers are going to be. And on the social
media side, where is the business person? They’re on LinkedIn.

Targeting Tool

LinkedIn has a variety of ways in which companies can target members. First and
foremost, companies have access to a wealth of user-provided prole data. For
example, members can be identified based on seniority, function and company size, as
well as their affiliation with LinkedIn groups. For Cathay Pacific, the airline looked at
the large number of Asia-focused business groups, such as China Networking Group,
Global Workers and Hong Kong Connection, and targeted members of those groups,
wherever they were on the LinkedIn site. LinkedIn’s marketing solutions experts
worked with Cathay Pacific to put together a program to reach this audience through
Display Ads and Sponsored Polls. Sponsored Polls asked business travellers what else
they might want to redeem their airline points for, in addition to free airline tickets.
Poll results gave the company valuable insight into customer preferences, as well as
identifying prospects and loyal customers

B. Discuss the three marketing approaches adopted by Cathay Pacific Airway via
LinkedIn.

Answer:

The three marketing approaches as given below:

1. Global Marketing adopt by the company because this is a single platform to

connect globally level this can produce a huge platform to introduce their services
and its policies.

2. Direct Marketing is basically used by the company to connect its all the
customer directly platform provided by the LinkedIn. This can produce no
communication gap between the customer and company

3. Social Media Marketing help a lot to the company in the conversion with the
customer, brand awareness, creating a brand identity with positive image and
communication and interaction with key customer.

C. Evaluate the results for Cathay Pacific Airways from using LinkedIn. (5 Marks)

Answer: Initially to the team went smoothly with excellent feedback from the users.
Now the rollout is being extended to other teams, including the stations that are
destinations for Cathay Pacific. The app has allowed the crisis response plan to be re-
aligned, from a team-based response protocol to a task-based procedure that is
consistent and supportive of the airline’s other emergency response plans. In the Case
added more features, more collaboration functions were added to the Cathay Pacific
version of the app, so that upper level management could communicate and share
updates. This included adding the In Case of Crisis Chatroom, an improvement in
other communication network, which Nicholas describes as difficult to administer. At
the time of writing, eight teams are on the app and each has a secure chat feature in
each of their plans. The team has deployed In Case of Crisis in emergency response
workshops to simulate the airline’s reaction and management of a range of scenarios –
with team members following the protocols in the app to guide their response, what to
say and not to say and easy access to the contact details of partners and third-party
stakeholders.