Yesterday I and three colleagues traveled to Austin to attend the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) (hosted by Clickz.com). All in all it was a day well spent with some excellent learning going on.
The highlight of the day was the lunchtime keynote with Paula Berg from Southwest Airlines who discussed some of Southwest’s social marketing successes and failures. The more I learn about Southwest, the more impressed I am with them. For Paula to be free to speak to a group and be open and honest about the good and bad of the company is very refreshing. It reflects well on her and Southwest as an organization. He talk was wonderful for a couple of laughs and some very good lessons. I appreciated her comments very much.
Paula used as an example of a situation where Southwest didn’t do so well in the social space, the incident with Kyla Ebbert and the “clothing adjustment.” Paula opined that they took too long to respond to the growing situation as it gained national attention
In contrast Paula talked about the situation with Nisreen Swedberg and Sarah Williams, who were denied boarding on a connecting flight after causing a disruption on the previous leg of their trip. In this case, Southwest was quick to respond to the situation and tell their side of the story after the two young ladies appeared on television claiming they were discriminated against because they were pretty.
Whatever your opinion on the validity of the claims of these three young women, I think from a PR and marketing perspective one can see the second situation was handled much better.
Other sessions I attended:
- “Planning & Strategy: Top 10 Usability Mistakes Not To Make” by Thanh Ngyuen of BusinessOnline
- “Introduction To Demand Generation Essentials” by Jeff Pedowitz of The Pedowitz Group
- “Social Media Fundamentals In The Mix”
- “What It Takes To Make Social Marketing Work” by Richard Evans of Silverpop
- The final item of the day was the “Big Brands, Big Plans” panel, which was fun and informative. There’s nothing like bribing attendees with free beer and wine to get some great questions for the panel.
There are still some dates available in other cities. If you have a chance, I recommend attending OMS.
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