Case study – Streamlining Flying Blue local campaign creation

Creating an off-the-shelf project

Flying Blue is committed to delivering exceptional experiences and offers to its members worldwide; however, they faced a challenge in efficiently executing local campaigns. These campaigns, spanning various themes like route promotions, Miles rewards and charitable initiatives, demanded significant time and resources for creation and localization for multiple local markets. Recognizing the need for creating consistency and a user-friendly production process, the Flying Blue team initiated a search for an off-the-shelf solution.

Too many hurdles

Flying Blue local markets have the option of sending campaigns to their local member base, and these are generally variations on the same theme – new destinations, extra Miles or XP rewards, etc. However, these were all treated as unique campaigns. This meant that each one needed the following steps:

1. generate unique copy based on a briefing by the local markets
2. validate the copy by the communications manager
3. localize the English copy to the required languages
4. create test mails
5. perform a sanity check before distributing to members

This was a time-consuming process with a TTM of 14-20 business days, thereby limiting the number of standard and special campaigns.

Collaboration

The off-the-shelf project, integral to value chain optimization, fostered collaboration among Flying Blue, the local markets, Attached and other marketing and communication partners. This initiative aimed to streamline workflows and enhance operational efficiency.

Innovative solutions

The project introduced an inventive concept—a campaign template with standardized copy and dynamic placeholders for customizable elements, such as destinations, cabin classes, etc. However, adapting this template across Flying Blue's 13 languages presented unique linguistic challenges.

In English it’s relatively easy to break up sentences into smaller units and connect the individual parts together to form new combinations. However, in many other languages it’s not because of, for example, grammatical gender, grammatical case, prepositions, words starting with vowels, agglutinaive languages and more.

Based on the linguistic characteristics of the Flying Blue languages, alternatives were needed for adapting the framework of the message. This meant that the template design also needed slight adjustments. Moving the placeholders out of larger linguistic units made the hardcopy less susceptible to grammatical errors.

After writing the English versions, they were then localized into the other Flying Blue languages, which were then sent to the local markets for validation. This provided them with the opportunity to provide feedback on the final product. After a final check, all languages were implemented and tested.

Impact

With the new approach, the time to market fell from 14-20 days to just 5 business days, making a significant improvement in efficiency. It also gave local markets the freedom to create content and greatly reduced involvement from communication managers and consultants. This enabled almost instant creation and deployment of campaigns, freeing up resources and time for other endeavours.

This off-the-shelf project transformed Flying Blue's campaign management, impacting over 150 campaigns annually. The scope has now expanded beyond Miles offers to include co-branded credit cards, partnerships and Miles donations. With this time saver and easy-to-use solution, teams can focus on special campaigns to enhance member engagement.

Conclusion

The Flying Blue off-the-shelf project is a strong example of how collaboration can drive innovation and efficiencies to enhance member experiences. By re-imagining campaign management, Flying Blue continues to elevate its brand and engage with members.

Contact one of our consultants about linguistic or workflow solutions or for more details.