Two weeks ago I had to fly to Aarhus, Denmark for the excellent J Boye conference. This being a business trip ,I had to fly a little bit low budget with Cimber Sterling. I announced through my @klmfan Twitter that I would be on Schiphol airport on Tuesday morning 2nd of November. Suddenly I got a reply from a new KLM account named @KLMsurprise to ask me if we could meet up somewhere on Schiphol that morning. Uuh, sure why not? I was pretty curious what would be happening. I never heard from this account, nor did I know the people behind the account.
Surprise!
When I arrived that morning at Schiphol airport to catch my flight to Copenhagen, i first had to check in at Cimber Sterling, who just started as a new airline on Schiphol. This turned out to be the most chaotic, uncontrolled, no-boarding-pass-printing check-in ever. My mood was below zero, but after all the check-in and passport checks I had around 45 minutes before my plane would depart. I tweeted @KLMsurprise that I was ready for a meetup, unaware of the intentions. We set a place and a time through Twitter and when I arrived there I saw two guys with a big piece of paper with my name on it. This was pretty cool. In some way, people standing with a paper with your name on it makes you feel very important (popstar-like). Or maybey that’s just me. These guys handed me a present: a great aviation watch (limited edition) of KLM’s 90th anniversary and hope that I would remember them next time I would fly. Suddenly I was in a very good mood again. They took a pic, said goodbye and there I was, with a brandnew watch and a smile on my face.
Story
This is ofcourse a genius form of marketing. When I arrived at the conference I have told this story over twenty times to different people and also when I returned I talked about this alot. Not only I was surprised by KLM. Alot of other customers have been surprised by KLM, just check out their Facebook page with every story about surprised passengers. They have been actively scanning social media platforms to try and set up meetings with passengers. When a meeting was set, they tried to grab pieces of info from that person and surprise them during the meeting with a present that fits them.
Brilliant
The hype about this @KLMsurprise has been pretty big and there’s quite some buzz around the social media channel. It’s ofcourse a brilliant form of marketing and being a “victim” myself I loved it alot. The only thing the guys forgot to tell me was that they would post a picture of me receiving the present on Facebook. I found myself back on their Facebook page, but wasn’t aware the picture would be on there. I don’t find this a problem, but I can imagine some people might be “surprised” in the wrong way when are not informed right.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Wim Rampen, Patrice Fleurquin, Kevin Rommen, Tim van Waard, Debbie Kamphuis and others. Debbie Kamphuis said: Way to go @klm! RT @timvanwaard How KLM made me feel like a popstar (social media case). Read here: http://ht.ly/3bpun [...]
Hi,
On Tuesday I wrote a post on our blog about the KLM Surprise team. I then came across this post and thought it would be fun to do a follow-up with a “real story”. However, I’m a bit concerned. What is the connection between @KLMFan and KLM itself? Are you an employee of KLM? This isn’t clear.
Thanks
Jerry
Hi Jerry,
I am not a KLM employee, (never have been as well). I have been tweeting about them through @klmfan which is a fan only account. Regards, Tim
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