Social Media Gipfel #4
June 2, 2010
We at Amazee totally love getting up early. Seriously (nudge nudge)! Thus, the Social Media Gipfel (Summit), which takes place every two months in Zurich’s NZZ Bistro, is exactly our thing. Your early dose of coffee, croissants and Social Media Marketing.
On today’s menu: Christian Lüdi of Swiss International Air Lines and Mathias Kienholz of Swisscom. Christian startet things off nicely with a presentation on how he works the Social Media accounts of Swiss and how the Swiss Marketing team managed the recent wrath of the icelandic volcano Gods. Pretty soon it became apparent to them that a Social Media Emergency Campaign was exactly what was needed, in this case.
What played into Swiss’ hands was that this crisis was not self-made, but out of their control and customers were somewhat more understanding. Many people travelling with Swiss requested information via the company’s Twitter & Facebook accounts instead of having to wait for hours in the information hotline queue.
The situation proved that communication via Social Media can be a lot quicker than via a classic Homepage setup, and moreover, another social aspect came into play: travellers were helping each other via Social Media! The question remains, however, if a self-inflicted crisis situation can be handled in the same way if customers are not as understanding.
Another quick case study exemplified the importance of answering up to single customers, as they can easily become a beacon into whole communities (in this case it was a handicapped traveller).
Mathias Kienholz, Head of the “Codex” project at Swisscom subsequently talked about a joint project with various publishing and bookstore stakeholders to develop (yet another) digital reading device. Although the technology seems to be well-conceptualized, the venture was met with much scepticism, the central arguing point being: Why do we need another gadget?
The general opinion seemed to be that the digital publishing business requires a good deal of innovation fast and that many are actually willing to read texts and even books on digital devices; but not if they are restricted to a closed system of devices and stores to buy from.
Thanks again to Marcel Bernet and Peter Hogenkamp for putting the event together once more. The next dates for the Social Media Summit are September, 1st, and November, 3rd. In order to receive updates on how to get in, follow @smgzh on Twitter and sign up for the mailing list here. Our own Michael was official photographer of the event, you can find his pictures on flickr. Videos of the talk will be uploaded on Youtube, watch out for notifications on this via said channels.
On a side note: Swiss will be tweeting their first direct flight from Zurich to San Francisco live today on their Twitter account. Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair!
One Response to “Social Media Gipfel #4”
Hello Mathias – thanks for one more 1. very swift and 2. very much to the point sum-up of our gipfel-summit. The videos are now live on http://www.youtube.com/bernetblog and we will embed them with our german blogposts for both events (all Social Media Gipfel articles here: http://bernetblog.ch/tag/smgzh/)