Late last month, American Airlines launched a social media campaign to register 10,000 New York area "friends" on Facebook. I think the program evidenced a number of neat ideas, though ultimately revealed the limitations of social media as currently defined.
First, the smart stuff: the campaign was goal-oriented, in that the 10,000 participant target made the request real. People like to be a part of something with a purpose, even if it's nothing more than an a numeric abstraction. A goal also means that something has a beginning and an end, so it seems more authentic, and participating feels more immediate.
Second, it promised a payoff. The pitch was easy to understand, and compelling: friend AA, and get your friends to do the same, and you'll get access to some special promotions once the participation target is reached. While not exactly an explicit quid pro quo, it did give the friending behavior a sense of purpose.
Third, the first two points provided the context in which qualitative content about AA, its routes, services, and related passenger experiences could be posted. This allowed the airline to encourage de facto evangelism without asking for it directly; there's nothing better than such organic storytelling.
OK, so what's wrong with all that?
Technically, nothing. It's great delivery, and an actionable list of 10,000 people who've opted-in to a sales promotion distribution list is a great accomplishment for AA (for a cost of, what, something close to nothing)?
It's just not friendship. Nor is it a relationship with the brand, or an active, functioning community in any sense of the term. When American’s VP of Sales comments "...what better way to create a tighter bond with our followers than to ask them to join us on Facebook," he's either kidding, or just stupid. There's no bond here; it's a nice promotional idea, and that's about it.
American Airlines already has its true loyal mechanism, and it's called a frequent flier program. As such, it's woefully underused. Bob Crandall's genius was to create a metric for fliers to grasp and monetize their relationship with the airline. Frequent fliers are already much more than friends of the airline, and it makes the idea of Facebook "friends" almost laughable.
So far, this promo further proves that Facebook is a glorified distribution list.
AA should use it, and Twitter, and any other social media technology du jour as actively and intelligently as it can. This campaign shows that it knows how to translate said programs into meaningful returns for its business.
But it's not friendship, nor is it community, is it?
