It’s almost like magic. Every time a British Airways plane flies overhead, a child on the screen stands up and points at it, following the flight’s trajectory; the flight number and source of departure follow the lad as he walks across the screen.
The child, pretending to be an airplane as he or she follows the path, recalls the (what’s become quotidian) magic of being able to leave your front steps and arrive in another country in just a few hours.
With literal childlike wonder, these digital billboards use a bit of magic to not just capture customers’ attention, but delight them at the same time.
Designing Smarter Digital Experiences
From a customer experience perspective, this billboard is important for several reasons. First, that it leverages sophisticated digital technology to deliver a very “simple” experience. Second, that it makes a traditionally “dumb” or static touchpoint (a billboard) into something much more. Third (and by no means last), it represents the growing trend of forward-thinking organizations that look for ways to leverage digital innovation to better connect with their customers.
In this campaign, British Airways realized it had an excellent opportunity to drive both engagement and inspiration among onlookers by leveraging social media in concert with the digital touchpoint. #lookup provides a platform for those who’ve come into contact with the ad to comment, question; in other words, connect.
The fact is, businesses that fail to leverage digital innovation will be left in the vapor trails. Those on the cutting edge are continuously, meticulously reexamining and adjusting their customer experience to better understand and provide products, services and – as in the #lookup campaign – promotions to their customers.
Measure and Analyze What Works, and Learn Why (So You Can Do Even Better)
As companies develop ways to both directly and indirectly inspire and delight customers with technology, there need to be multiple mechanisms in place to track which and how well individual touchpoints influence and affect them.
While almost certain to cause word-of-mouth attention, these billboards aren’t inherently intelligent enough to track customer engagement with the brand. This is why the social component is important. It gives BA greater capability to measure and track customer experience through both the qualitative data gained through Twitter posts, as well as quantitative data derived from the people who responded on social media.
The next step is being able to understand exactly what expectations this campaign is setting – and measuring how well the brand is able to meet the implied promise of, and expectations for, the “delightful” experiences established through the campaign.
Because even the most successful campaigns can ultimately fail to meet business goals if they set expectations that are beyond what a company has the ability to deliver. The number of companies that over-promise and under-deliver is legion. Which is why those that get this balance right – setting expectations, and meeting or exceeding them – are the ones we want to patronize.
After all, most of us enjoy having our attention captured in ways that delight us. The trick is to make sure the experience delights us too…
This blog originally ran on CMO.com, where Michael Hinshaw writes the weekly “Get Customer-Centric” blog.
