Blogging a Dreamliner

by Carlos Menezes

This Sunday past marked the roll-out of Boeing's first new model in 13 years – the 787 Dreamliner. The plane, which focuses on being eco-friendly, makes for a startling contrast when compared to Airbus' massive (and massively troubled) A380 and Boeing's own previous flagship, the 747 Jumbo Jet. While the A380 seems to be following the 747's lead in being the biggest, most visible, most dominant behemoth in the skies, Boeing have taken a very different slant with their Dreamliner.

The 787's main push – the fact that it's mainly built from composite materials such as carbon-fibre allows it to be 20% more fuel-efficient than any comparably sized plane. Consequentially this lets the plane travel distances only previously managed by aircraft in the size category of the 747 and A380. Toss in subtle but significant touches, such at the 787's higher humidity levels to prevent passenger dehydration, and Boeing's positioning of the 787 as a Dreamliner seems spot-on.

And it's telling. With orders tallying up to over 900 aircraft before roll-out the 787 has become the fastest ever selling major airliner prior to entering service. Now compare this to the 174 orders for the A380 that rolled out a year or two ago. True, the Airbus can carry between 520 to 850 passengers, compared with the 787's maximum load of 330 but this doesn't necessarily translate into significant direct revenue for Airbus itself. The unit cost of an A380 currently stands at circa $300 million, compared with the Dreamliner that sells at between $150 million to $200 million.

Do the maths and one instantly imagines Boeing's directors grinning ear-to-ear. This doesn't even begin to mention the wake turbulence problems that Airbus has run into, but I digress. This is a post on the marketing of the manufacturers, not the engineering of the two planes.

So what has made Boeing's latest launch the darling of the airline industry? Well, there's no single answer for this – engineering, timing and execution all unquestionably played a massive role. However we can't deny the rewards that Boeing is now reaping from the Dreamliner's market positioning, and I believe that Boeing's blog has played a large part in getting the company to where it is now.

Randy's Journal was named after its author, Boeing's previous VP of Marketing, Randy Baseler. Through some fantastic pieces such as his Width is Which? and its War of Inches follow-up (one of my favourite corporate posts) Baseler established his journal as a top-notch blog that constantly drew praise from some very prominent voices in the online community.

When it came time for Baseler to move on in April Boeing found themselves in the fortunate position of having a similarly named successor to the vice-president and blogging position: Randy Tinseth. The appointment of Tinseth allowed Boeing to do more than just maintain the name of its blog. The new Randy appears just as keen to follow in his predecessors footsteps and use the company blog to maximum effect.

“Now hosted by Randy Tinseth, the blog continues as a place to find inside stuff about the commercial aviation world - scoops about new airplane programs, marketing insights, or cool new images or videos.” This little snippet is taken from Randy's profile page and with the blog nearing a million visits in over a little more than two years of existence one must say that the Randys' approach is paying some significant dividends.

How much is of course open to question, but I doubt anyone would say that it's insufficient to warrant the effort involved in getting up a blog post every three or four days.

If a blog can act as such an effective branding device for a company as far removed from its end users as an aircraft manufacturer, imagine what a properly executed blog could do for an airline that, as a service company, occupies a lot more of the end users' share of mind.

P.S. While we're on the topic you may also want to take a look at Southwest Airlines' blog: Nuts about Southwest.

2007/07/12 | permalink | comments (2) | trackbacks (0)

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