Aeromexico

1. Initial brand audit assessment: what is the brand doing right and wrong?
Aeromxicos current competition is getting more and more intense, especially on international
flights. As Mexicos flagship airline, Aeromxico has to continuously invest to keep its
competitors away and justify its premium positioning. This investment should target the whole
spectrum of their offered services: aircrafts, schedules, lounges, in-flight menu, customer
services, etc. For example, as a way to support its growth of the previous years, Aeromxico has
been investing in new aircrafts (delivery expected starting 2016), and they have always had the
best fleet in Mexico.
Our research shows that Aeromxico has a big lack of alignment with its customers needs. They
need to gather more feedback from the current customer base (business travelers) in order to stick
to their needs and deliver the value they actually expect. Actually, according to several customer
s opinion Aeromxico forecasts longer times for their flights so that they are never late.
2. Describe and argument about the key issues and opportunities areas identified
The opportunities that Aeromxico currently has are:
-More benefits and recognition to heavy users. (Loyalty plans)
-Reinforce the perception of Premium Service rather than just Expensive.
-Maintain their premium price strategy based excellent service as a differentiator.
While things that Aeromxico needs to change are: to reinforce their B2B brand focus, without
losing appeal to high-end leisure travelers, and to invest in Market Research to remain in the top
of mind of their target customers.
3. and 4. Marcos Garnier
5. Selection of the communication strategy (push, pull, hybrid).
This campaign is more likely to be successful through a pull communication strategy.
Developing a pull side on the Vuela Verde campaign through, for example, large advertising
billboards in airports or inserts in magazines, would increase awareness towards potential flyers
(i.e. the target segment), and thus highly help the campaign to be successful. A fine targeting on
websites would also be relevant, as it may inform and influence potential customers comparing
ticket prices, for example.
Indeed, this campaign relies entirely on the customers, since they are the ones actually
contributing to the social project at the end of the day. Aeromxico is nothing more than a vector
to help this initiative come to life, and the companys economic integrity is not threatened by an
eventual failure.
What Aeromxico could get in return is a slight change of its image in consumers minds, since it
will end up being associated with a good cause and considered not like the average airline
company. For instance, people actually sensible to environment protection issues considering that

their donation could have a positive impact on Yucatan communities may be tempted to fly with
Aeromxico instead of another potentially cheaper competitor. Thus, a successful campaign could
somehow help it increase its sales.
Focusing on a push communication strategy seems irrelevant in this context, since the campaign
actually increases the price of tickets. This is in no way something potential customer will take
as an incentive to fly on Aeromexico rather on another airline.
6. Using as a reference the 6Ms framework and a huge amount of creativity, define and
allocate budget across Traditional, Digital and Mobile channels. Provide Arguments
supporting this allocation.
Since this campaign is scheduled to be aired for a short period of time, communication supports
need to be efficient, to-the-point and precisely targeted in order to reach an acceptable ROI.
-

Traditional: This medium is particularly well fitted when it comes to convey a message
like Vuela Verdes one, since you can reach an audience quite well segmented and
express yourself in a very clear way. Nevertheless, the supports are generally expensive
(billboards, TV spots, magazines...) and thus more convenient when the campaign is
supposed to stay for a certain amount of time, which is not the case here. Allocating a lot
of money on that channel will probably result being a bad move in terms of ROI. An idea
to reduce the costs could be to integrate information about Vuela Verde on
communication supports already planned, as an information complement. Estimated
optimal allocation : 30%

Digital/Social Media: this medium is very likely to be the most fitted for this project. It
enables you to reach a broad audience and is the perfect way to 1) Educate your customer
while he is looking up information, and 2) Potentially take your customers from the ad to
your website, where they can buy their tickets or get some more information on the
project, etc Optimal Allocation : 70%

Mobile: Since this campaign is focused on targeting the current customer base we would
not include mobile media because this channel is more used to attract to new customers
when they benchmark their flight alternatives. Optimanl Allocation : 0%

7. Mission: Main goals for the campaign to be developed

Mission (main goals):
The main goal of the "Vuela Verde" campaign is to provide a means for Aeromxicos customers
to help to compensate for the CO emissions generated by their flight. This contribution comes in
the form of a $55 pesos optional donation that can be made when purchasing the ticket. With
this, Aeromxico aims to create a stronger bond with the growing population of their customers
who are interested in contributing for green causes. This bond is intended to create more brandequity and improve their image as a socially responsible and "green" company.

Whatever money is received through these contributions will be used to complete two goals in
the short term: On the one hand they want to contribute to the development of the Calakmul
Biosphere Reserve as it represents one of the major sites in terms of biological and cultural
relevance within Mxico. On the other hand, the donations are used to develop community
projects in order to conserve the natural resources of the rainforest with particular emphasis on
wood-saving stoves, water treatment systems as well as biogas digesters in order to improve the
quality of life of the Mayan population. Moreover, they offer awareness and environmental
education programs and promote projects to generate an income for the community in a
sustainable manner.
On an institutional level, Aeromxico wants to increase the perception of them being one of the
first and major airlines dealing with the topic of sustainability in relation to emissions. By
cooperating with A.C. Beta Diversidad they strengthen their seriousness about the program as
they are relying on their well-regarded and over years established and proven expertise. The
amount of $ 55 pesos derives from the standardized costs of each ton of CO multiplied by the
average of CO emitted per passenger. This results in an average of 0.25 tons, equivalent to 250
kg, for each passenger per flight.
By contributing to save the Mayan Rainforest Aeromxico includes its passengers to give
something back in return for producing emissions resulting from the flights. With this program,
Aeromxico would create a deeper bond between the company and its passengers, increasing its
Brand Equity.
8. Choose the market: segment to be targeted
For the campaign the segments would be defined according to: use of Aeromexicos website for
buying tickets, disposable income, travel frequency and environmental consciousness.
The first criterion was considered because the only channel the company uses to collect donations
is the webpage. Clients who buy tickets through other online platforms or physically at
representation offices or travel agencies are not offered to participate in the program.
The second criterion was chosen taking into account that even though Aeromexicos clients are
usually people from segments A/B and C+ (due to the higher price they pay for the tickets),
clients with higher disposable income would be more willing to donate.
Regarding the third criterion, Aeromexico should primarily approach frequent travelers. They are
a very profitable group of people because of the extensive use they make of Aeromexicos
services and the higher probability of receiving repetitive donations from them.
The last criterion is related to the degree of empathy the client has towards environmental issues.
Those clients usually have higher level of education, which is related to these kinds of initiatives.
Considering the analysis of the 4 characteristics mentioned above, Aeromexico should segment
their clients into 2 categories:
Travel Segment

Business Segment

Travel alone or with family for vacations or

Travel for business purposes.

just for leisure

Age: 30 to 65
Socioeconomic: A/B and C+
Travel frequency: 3 or more times per year.
Independent professional, executive or

Age: 25 to 45
Socioeconomic: A/B and C+
Travel frequency: 1 or more times per month.
Independent professional, executive or

businessperson

businessperson

9. Message to communicate across channels:

The message to communicate Vuela Verde

has to start by sensitizing and creating

consciousness about what carbon footprint means.

How much land area, or how much emissions does it take to support any activity or product, in
this case, how much carbon dioxide is liberated to the atmosphere by the use of air transportation
contributing to climate change. Explain deeply about the transportation contribution to global
emissions and how much of this does air flights contribute to.
The core message should focus on the solutions that Aeromexico is proposing through the Vuela
Verde campaign. What are the Ecofuels and why it is important to start using them, and their
positive impact in CO2 emissions, as well as how can we offset our carbon footprint by
contributing to Vuela Verde.
Most of the Passengers of Aeromexico are repeat customers, wether they are from the travel or
business segment. Following this argument, the main message should be delivered on board with
a 3 minute video, calling to action on the next purchase. Also, we recommend using digital
platforms to inform about the actions that are being made by the third party organization (AC
Beta Diversidad).
10. Media vehicles:
The media vehicles for the Marketing Campaign of Vuela Verde would be: social media, digital
media, and traditional media.
Regarding the social media, we would focus on Facebook since it is the network with the highest
number of our target users. On May 29th 2015, Aeromxicos Facebook fan page had 642,997
followers. Through this media, we think that Aeromxicos followers would be aware of the
companys information and also could find out about its routs, promotions and especially about
the Vuelo Verde program. Through this page, the company would be able to show how the
donation to the program could be done, and also how this program would help the environment.
In addition to the current Facebook fan page we recommend creating a Facebook Vuelo Verde
Fan Page. With this fan page we pretend to reach a customer that is more interested in AC Beta
Diversidads activities.

On the other hand, on the digital media, we are taking in consideration Aeromxicos webpage as
well as YouTube videos.
The webpage would have an explanation of Vuela Verde program as well as the destination of
the collected money. In addition, the page would have information about the benefits done to the
environment with that money.
In YouTube, we consider that it would be important to include short videos that explain the
program and how to donate, and also how it would benefit the environment by showing
illustrative pictures.
Finally on the traditional media, we think that it would be significant to include advertising on
business magazines, since many of Aeromxicos users are business people, who usually read this
type of magazines in their offices as well as during the flights. Those advertisements would have
information about the program, pictures that show benefits of the environment, and an
explanation of how to donate.

11. Measurement criteria and metrics (evaluate the success of the communication efforts)
About social media; a simple-to-prove metric for the campaign would be the number of
likes/followers for the brand and more specific for Vuela Verde campaign. This can be
successful because the users actually have a good relation with the brand.
By measuring only the campaign output (everything of what the campaign team is completely
responsible for) we would take into consideration three aspects: 1) the number of social media
posts per day, 2) the number of social media posts by time of day/frequency of posting content,
and 3) the number of social media posts by percentage of social media posts that contain
messages responded (response from the audience).
Usually a campaign activity is to generate sales or to change behaviors, however in this case
Vuela Verde is focused on caring about the environment, so we have to measure and see if the
reputation of the brand is having a positive impact.
12. Propose a timeline to implement the campaign.

14. Main challenges/problems encountered when creating the communication strategy and
allocating resources.

As a team we have found that detaching oneself from viewing the company through our own
experiences (good and bad) was rather challenging. The fact we had to create a communication
strategy that would best serve the companies goals was an exercise of comparing the way each
one of us perceives Aeromxicos current efforts on communications and coming up with the
most pragmatic and less biased way of proposing the strategy. We learned that to create a
campaign we have to see it through the eyes of our target customers instead of our own. While
this may appear simple, it is quite complicated to do but once we achieved that it was much easier
to decide on how to allocate the resources we have.
15.Take-aways.
We understand that green or social responsibility will indeed be a great part of communication
campaigns in the future. Even when the campaign is not trying to push a green policy/program
their message should (and will) emphasize these characteristics of the company and the brand.
This is because social responsibility and green policies will become the most important sources
of brand equity for companies in developed markets.
As competition for services increases and consumer become more and more aware of companies
responsibilities towards society and the environment the kind of campaign we are presenting now
will result in a brands most efficient weapon to create brand equity. For this company should
invest time and resources on investigating what are the best communication strategies and what is
the best resource allocation strategies in order to properly capitalize on creating the desired
impact.

The timeline proposed involves

Sources
http://footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/
Airbus Aviation RoadMap Brochure, 2013
Campaign Measurement | 2015 Brandwatch.com Introduction In 2010

Attachments
Total amount of Aeromexicos passengers of 2014 was 17.2 million: * some people are repeated;
so 1 person could be counted many times depending on the number of flights he took.
(Source: Aeromexico 2014 Report)
During January and February of 2014 there were 4.7 million passengers in all the industry for the
domestic flights category, corresponding 39% of them to Aeromexico.
During January and February of 2014 there were 5.6 million passengers in all the industry for the
international flights category, corresponding 14.5% of them to Aeromexico.
http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/empresas/aeromexico-mantiene-mayor-participacion-demercado-en-el-ano.html
Socioeconomic level of travelers in 2009:

A/B: 20%
C+/C: 80%

Age of travelers in 2009:

18 to 25: 25%
25 to 35: 25%
36 to 50: 25%
51 or more: 25%

Reason for travel in 2009:

Vacations: 71%
Business: 29%

Highest traveling periods during year in 2009:

Holy week
Summer
End of year

(Source: Traveling Habits Evaluation in Mexico City Report, AMAI, 2009)