KLM Surprise: An Inspiring Social Media Campaign
KLM Surprise: An Inspiring Social Media Campaign
Imagine sitting at the airport, passing time, waiting for your flight to depart. You go through your social media feed and decide to post an update about the upcoming travel. You input the activity (travelling), input the destination, input your current location and tag the airline. You post the update and continue passing time on the airport. Sometime later, an attendant from your airline taps you on the shoulder and surprises you with a gift. This never happens except when KLM decided to make it happen with KLM Surprise social media campaign.
KLM, the international airline based out of Netherlands has built a reputation for doing stellar social media campaigns from time to time. Today, we turn back the clock to November 2010, when KLM decided to use social media to surprise its passengers with a personalised gift.
What is KLM Surprise?
True to its company slogan “Journeys of Inspiration”, KLM wanted to offer its passengers a memorable travelling experience. Using social media as a way, KLM wanted to establish a deeper connection with their customers. In November 2010, for a period of three weeks, the KLM team at the Schipol International Airport scanned Twitter and Foursquare for KLM passengers who had checked into these social media platforms at the airport.
After identifying a KLM passenger, the team would go through their social media account and look at the information available to get to know more about them. They would then purchase a personalized gift for the chosen passenger, track them down at the airport and deliver it to them.
While a flight attendant delivered the gift to the passenger, the KLM team clicked photos of the encounter and the surprised passenger for their Facebook Page.
Results of the Social Media Campaign
In total, 40 passengers were approached and surprised with gifts as a part of this campaign. Even though 40 is a small number, the campaign received appreciation far and wide as the passengers thanked KLM via tweets and re-tweets generating over a million impressions on Twitter. KLM created a website dedicated to KLM Surprise and posted the following video on YouTube and Facebook Page.
The video was posted on many blogs and featured on BBC & The Next Web.
Key Takeaway and Lessons
The KLM Surprise social media campaign is a prime example of creative, out of the box thinking. It shows that small gestures of “surprise” can go a long way to earn goodwill with people. It highlights the importance of getting to know your customers, understanding and fulfilling their needs.
In a sentence, get to know your customers and show your appreciation to them. Given the timing of this social media campaign, it also showed how social media was a viable method to do just that and get excellent results.
The commentary in the video said something that prompted me to share this social media campaign with you today, it said,
“In the age of social media, doing something that actually puts a smile on somebody’s face is much cooler than attaching a smiley face. Using social media, an airline can surprise and make a small difference in a person’s day. We are not just guessing that, we know, because they told us ”
We at Letinfluence.io appreciate such creative thoughts and ideas when it comes to marketing and connecting with people using social media. We execute creative social media campaigns and influencer marketing campaigns for amazing results