Blog Archives

Two very newsworthy social media initiatives by Nordic airlines saw the light of day last week.

One sees a very creative video stunt that is circling the globe via YouTube. The other goes new ways and explores smash hit service Instagram as a new interaction channel with customers and stakeholders.

Finnair goes viral for India Republic day

Passengers on a Finnair flight to Delhi, India were both surprised and delighted on January 26. The cabin crew took to the isles brandishing their brand-new Bollywood style dance in honor of India’s Republic Day.

The company uploaded the video of their stunt to YouTube, and it has been an immediate hit: At time of writing, the video has been viewed more than 2,5 million times.

Finnair as a company are by no means novices to the social media sphere. In addition to the practically mandatory Facebook and Twitter presence, they maintain several blogs in both Finnish and English.

And when Finnair launched their new route to Singapore last year, they did it with a massive Angry Birds campaign. Almost needless to say, the campaign went crazy viral.

Scandinavian Airlines joins the Instagram afficionados

SAS, Scandinavian Airlines, have recently started trying out Instagram as a marketing tool. Their Instagram account, flysas, has almost 300 followers – not bad, concidering the relative newness of Instagram.

Christian Kamhaug, SAS’ head of social media, writes in a blog post (in Norwegian) that this is purely an experimental stunt, but that SAS gets new Twitter followers every time they post new pictures on Instagram.

Their Instagram glory may be on the rise, though. Last Friday, SAS launched an Instagram contest with a trip to Shanghai, China as the prize.

Photos have already started coming in on the Instagram hashtags connected with the contest. I look forward to following the contest towards the February 15 deadline!