a. Introduction
Since the beginning of time, people have always desired to make travel faster, easier, and more convenient. We dreamed to cut down on travel time so that we could spend their time on other activities we deemed more productive or enjoyable. From the horse and cart to the invention of steam locomotives, man fulfilled their need for speed. However, it still was not enough. We sought to soar towards the sun and glide in the sky. Thus, the creation of the hot air balloon came about. From there, the natural next step was the invention of the airplane. Since then, humans have come a long way. In recent times, technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. Naturally, aviation technology has been caught up in this tide as well. With globalization, the world, once seen as being big, is rapidly shrinking to the size of a village— metaphorically, of course. People are making connections with others with the click of a mouse, and these people they are making connections with can be halfway across the globe. Besides that, people want to travel and visit other countries and experience their culture, learn about their history and gain more knowledge and understanding of the world around them. There was a need for people to be able to go from place to place within a short span of time at an affordable price and low-cost carriers stepped in to fulfil that need. A low-cost carrier is defined as an airline selling very cheap tickets but which does not provide typical services like meals or the carriage of baggage. For this essay, I will be focusing on Scoot. The other four relevant brands that I have identified as falling within the low-cost carriers category include: Jetstar, Tiger Airways, Cebu Pacific and AirAsia. These airlines offer flights going to and flying off from Changi Airport, Singapore’s one and only airport.
b. Perceptual Map
The attributes I selected for my perceptual map:
1. Quality of products (Low quality to high quality)
2. Staff service (very dissatisfactory to very satisfactory)
Why I selected these attributes for my perceptual map:
These are the attributes that I feel consumers would take into the greatest consideration when choosing which airline to travel with. With regards to placing the airlines on the perceptual based on price, although it seems like the obvious choice when people look at low-cost carriers, I feel like it would all be rather similar across the board and therefore would not have much bearing on consumers’ decisions. What differs from brand to brand would be the products they offer and staff service when serving passengers, which is why consumers would look at the quality of products and staff service of the various airlines before coming to a conclusion.
My Perceptual Map:
How I constructed my perceptual map:
Skytrax is an international air transport organization. At the World Airline Awards 2017, they rank all low-cost carriers, showing the top twenty. AirAsia came in first, with Scoot coming in twelfth and Jetstar Asia coming in at thirteenth place and Tigerair coming in seventeenth. Cebu Pacific did not appear on the list. They conduct the world’s largest, annual airline passenger satisfaction survey each year based on categories that include service both on the ground and in-cabin as well as onboard product. Thus, I have categorized the components surveyed into two groups— the quality of products and satisfaction of staff service. All entries were screened to identify each IP information, disqualifying duplicate or negligible entries. Since the survey was hosted online in 3 languages (English, Spanish, Chinese), there was also no geographical proximity bias and language barriers were minimized. 19.87 million people took part in the survey, ensuring the reliability of the results.
With regards to AirAsia, according to Skytrax Airline Quality reviews, the results from 543 reviews indicated that quality of products like food & beverages, inflight entertainment and seat comfort averaged about 2.5 stars while staff service got 3 stars. Customer rating for Scoot from 365 reviews showed that for the quality of their products, they achieved an average of 2 stars and for staff service, they got 3 stars. Jetstar Asia also got similar results to Scoot from 130 reviews, as did Tigerair from 167 reviews and Cebu Pacific from 199 reviews.
Thus, I have placed AirAsia the nearest to the end of high quality products, and then Scoot and Jetstar Asia clustered together, with Tigerair and Cebu Pacific lagging behind. Although in the reviews Scoot, Jetstar Asia, Tigerair and Cebu Pacific seem to be of equal standing, the number of people who did the reviews are only in the hundreds and not very reliable as the number of reviews for each airline is different. Therefore, I have also taken into account the ranking of the airlines at the World Airline Awards when constructing the perceptual map as a large pool of people were surveyed and various precautions were taken to make it more reliable.
c. POE Framework
Scoot ‘Garang for Singapore’ SG50 campaign
The first media and communication campaign used by Scoot was their ‘Garang for Singapore’ campaign held during Singapore’s 50th birthday celebration. Garang means “courageous and enthusiastic” in Malay which is very in line with Scoot’s brand image. The odds were against Scoot at first, with most established airline brands jumping on the nostalgia bandwagon. Scoot could not do the same as it had just turned 3 at that time. Scoot also could not use the 4-day weekend to use its tagline “Get outta here” to encourage Singaporeans to book a flight as Singapore Tourism Board reminded them that encouraging Singaporeans to leave during Singapore’s birthday was not the most appropriate thing to do. Scoot then reached out to Singaporeans using methods that emphasized the spirit of being bold and fearless in expressing their love for Singapore. Firstly, Scoot engaged the help of 2 influencers, Tosh Zhang and Wang Wei Liang who have images that fit in with the garang spirit from featuring in “Ah Boys to Men” to post a humorous Facebook video about how Singaporeans were becoming more open with exhibiting their love for Singapore and ended with a challenge to Singaporeans to show how daring they could be through taking a patriotic selfie, getting a patriotic haircut, or tattoo. The Scoot Garang Hunt was also organized along Orchard Road on 11 July, with hundreds joining in. There were even promotions for Singaporeans overseas, as Scoot flights returning to Singapore were priced at only 50 cents and those flying into Singapore were 50% off (Balik Kampung promotion). The winners then got to attend a 2 hours in-flight party called Garang in the Air on Scoot’s new B787 Dreamliner which was christened Maju-Lah. Performances from singers Jill-Marie Thomas and Benjamin Kheng as well as comedians Munah and Hirzi from YouTube set the party mood. The reach was 4.5 million Singaporeans, with more than 150,000 participants both online and on-ground.
Paid Owned Earned
1. Influencers to film the Facebook video that kickstarted the campaign
2. The celebrities’ social channels
3. Singers and comedians to perform on-board Scoot’s ‘Garang in the Air’ 1. Scoot’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account
2. Party held aboard Scoot’s new plane
1. Media coverage by:
– SGAG
– Channel News Asia
– 8 Days
– Lian He Zaobao
– TODAY
2. Word of Mouth
Scoot ‘The Scoot social matrix’ campaign
The second media and communication campaign used by Scoot is titled ‘The Scoot social matrix’. In 2014, Facebook reworked their algorithms in such a way that brand content was demoted. This meant that if brands wanted to maintain or expand their content reach, they would have to spend more. This also meant that bigger brands with a bigger media budget could buy their way to the top of consumers’ newsfeeds. Scoot, a small airline that had just started out 2 years ago at that point, had no way of competing with the bigger and more established airlines like AirAsia and the like. Added to that, Scoot had their media budget cut by 24% as compared to the previous year. There was also 10 new low-cost carrier launches in the Asia-Pacific region that year, making the already-competitive landscape even more competitive. Scoot conducted extensive qualitative user-experience study from in order to understand their travelers’ behaviour, pain points, motivations and their key trigger purchase moments. From there, they formulated their travellers’ profiles and placed it on a map with their social behaviour, taking note of the intersection points. This allowed them to target more specific target audiences with content they would like, at a time where more of them would see it, as well as listening and reacting to trending topics in a timely manner. They released 1,525 pieces of content from the data they collected from the social matrix, of which over 80 were promotional campaigns on Facebook, launched 3 campaigns for places for Singaporeans to fly to, developed 2 web-content series targeted at young adults otherwise known as millennials and even held ‘Garang In the Air’ for SG50 in the timeframe of a year from 1 year from 1 September 2014 to 31 August 2015. A notable example would be how the campaign called Destination Oz caused a 157% increase in sales in just a short period of 3 months. Scoot changed millennials’ impression of Sydney and Queenland by associating these places with traits that millennials look out for in travel destinations such as wild experiences, experiences that offered snack-able visual treats, shared experience and Insta-worthy places. Scoot even had The Sam Willows, a popular Singaporean band, to help make a series of Sydney promotional videos, which attracted the attention of many of the millennials, which is Scoot’s target audience for the Australia campaign. Another example would be how Scoot took one of the famous quotes from Fifty Shades of Grey and adapted it to fit their brand when netizens were talking about the release of the movie. Instead of the original “ Mr. Grey will see you now” in the movie which has no relation whatsoever to Scoot, Scoot twisted the words to become “ Campbell will see you now”, Campbell Wilson being the name of the CEO of Scoot, and hashtagged it #FiftyShadesOfScoot. They then paired it with a promotion whereby the 50 best entries of people in shades of yellow won Scoot travel vouchers worth $50 each. The participants needed to be following Scoot on Instagram, tag Scoot in their post and hashtag #FiftyShadesOfScoot. This generated a Result-On-Investment (ROI) of $87 for every $1 spent. In the end, their social sales conversion rate had a 360% improvement over the previous year’s and ROI on Facebook media and production had a 140% improvement from the previous year’s.
Paid Owned Earned
1. Influencers hired to entertain in Scoot’s ‘Garang in the Air’
2. The Sam Willows to shoot the Sydney promotional videos
1. Scoot social media accounts that Scoot collected data for the social matrix from and then proceeded to post their promotional campaign videos on
2. ‘Garang in the Air’ plane, Maju-Lah
3. The 2 web-content series developed for millennials
4. Sales promotions 1. Word of Mouth
2. Some media coverage during their SG50 celebration ‘ Garang in the Air’.
d. Brand Idea/Essence & Personality
Scoot’s brand idea is ‘Providing service at an affordable cost for adventure-seekers”. During the second media and communication campaign, the Scoot social matrix, Scoot released over 80 promotional campaigns on Facebook, from which I can infer that they hope to offer their services at an affordable price. As for determining their target audience, in the first media and communication campaign, ‘Garang for Singapore’, many of the challenges issued to Singaporeans to engage them, and for lack of a better word, ‘hype’ them up were excitement-inducing, such as having to take a patriotic picture or get a patriotic tattoo/ haircut as well as the Scoot Garang Hunt for personalities along Orchard Road and ending off with a party in the air, the most exciting of all. From there, it can be seen that Scoot wishes to attract the attention of adventurous people as the challenges to win prizes require a degree of daring and the prize of getting an invite to ‘Garang in the Air’ is appealing to those who seek new and exciting experiences.
Scoot’s brand personality is a mix of excitement and sincerity. As Scoot tends to offer various deals and discounts in relation to things that relate to the younger generation such as the release of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, it can be seen that they are targeting the millennials, those young adults in their early-20s who wish to make exciting memories during their travels to other countries. This is evidenced by the case study of the ‘Garang for Singapore’ campaign, where many of the activities take on a carefree, spirited and youthful tone and even the icing on the cake, ‘Garang in the Air’, was more of a light, fun activity for more open-minded. Whereas in the Scoot social matrix campaign, Scoot is shown taking on a sincere tone as they are thoughtful in the way they gather data of their consumers in order to deliver more appealing, audience-specific content, building an emotional connection between the brand and its consumers. They also responded in real-time to trending topics, making themselves seem more relatable and reinforcing their brand presence in the consumers’ minds.