The Travel Bug vs. an Airline Loyalty Program

It’s been a few months since my last trip, and I’m starting to get the travel bug again. Our next upcoming journey is a visit to Napa with friends from college. I’m looking forward to enjoying the food, wine, scenery and company on that trip. Looking ahead, my husband and I have been wondering about exotic travels to Peru, Costa Rica, Thailand, Turkey, Prague, and many other destinations. Only one problem– the frequent flier miles are standing in the way.

I’m a loyal American Airlines flier, but it looks like AA doesn’t fly to some of the destinations on our list, or the travel fees are ridiculously high because they require travel on partner airlines. I’m finding myself changing around my travel aspirations just to rack up more frequent flier miles. As I do my airline travel research, I’m reminded of the recent movie, Up In The Air, where the main character is so accustomed to life in flight that his whole life revolves around getting to 10 million frequent flier miles. And I’m taking a look at my own situation– does it really make sense to change up my dream destinations, once-in-a-lifetime journeys, just to get the extra mileage? Even then, any upgrades or free ticket rewards would be limited to where AA flies.

I love to travel and I do enjoy my loyalty benefits from sticking with one airline. However, I dream big when it comes to these international excursions, and I can’t let one airline determine where the travel bug leads me.

Tags: airlines, Travel

My Necessary Tech in 2010 (That I Didn’t Use in 1999)

In October, I decided to skip my 1999 high school reunion. Now whether I skipped the reunion because  a) I didn’t care, b) I had better things to do, or c) I think reunions are lame, one fact couldn’t escape me: I am a totally different person than I was at 18, and my life is different as well. That got me thinking about some of the things I use every day. There are a number of technologies that didn’t exist or I didn’t use 10 years ago, that I couldn’t imagine my life without today. Since its the beginning of a new decade, I thought it would be fitting to highlight some of them.

GPS. Getting around Chicago is second nature to me. But I do love to travel, and having a GPS has been indispensable in driving around Boston, Miami, and Michigan. It’s been particularly useful when I’ve needed to find the nearest White Castle.

Online Banking. I love knowing exactly how much money is in my account, when checks are cashed, and having control over bill payments. I use checks once, maybe twice a year.

LinkedIn. Networking becomes more important as I near my 30s and with social networking tools like LinkedIn, there’s no excuse to not keep in touch with the people I’ve worked with.

Facebook. I love keeping updated with friends and family. While I can do without constant quiz updates on “What Gossip Girl character are you?”, it’s been a valuable tool to share info with people I’m close with, even if they live across the country.

DVR/Tivo. After work, I often need to meet up with friends for dinner or happy hour, and its nice to be able to leisurely take my time in catching up with friends, instead of rushing home to watch 24 or Lost. I can catch up on all the must-see-TV on the weekend, without the commercials, of course.

University of Iowa Newspaper: “It’s asinine to hire a PR man or woman”

This week, the University of Iowa student newspaper published an editorial that I found to be a bit disturbing. The university is currently in the process of hiring a vice president of strategic communications, which is essentially a head of public relations for the school. The editorial board of The Daily Iowan expressed its disapproval of the hiring for this key position, arguing that the executive post should remain vacant during a time of economic crisis.

As someone that previously worked in public relations for a major Big Ten university for more than two years, this article was really disappointing. Clearly, the editorial board at The Daily Iowan does not understand the value of public relations, especially for an institution of higher learning. I would expect a vice president overseeing strategic communications to build the brand of the university and help influence key audiences. The responsibilities of this position would be to:

1. Drive more visitors and students to the university by raising its profile on a national level as a top-tier educational institution.
2. Improve the university’s fundraising potential by building stronger relationships and persuasive communications with alumni audiences and corporate donors.
3. Help improve the public view of the university’s athletic program, a major source of income for any Division-I school, helping generate millions of dollars a year through basketball and football programs on a national level, and a nationally televised stage.
4. Manage media relations and increase visibility, not by paid advertising, but by securing media coverage with a consistent positive brand image.
5. Explore all avenues to increase visibility for the university at a lower cost, with integrated marketing strategies and leveraging Web 2.0 technologies.

All of these responsibilities are fueled by two goals: To increase incoming revenue, and to contain/lower costs. One of the most ironic points of the article is pretty contradictory:

“The Editorial Board acknowledges that this position would help out in times of crisis, when the dissemination of information is at its highest need. When budgets are tight, however, the solution is not to invest in areas that won’t contribute to our revival.”

PR is more than just the “dissemination of information”, folks. Suffering from tight budgets and pay cuts certainly qualifies as a time of crisis for the university. As the economy shows signs of turning, a VP of strategic communications could help the University of Iowa gain a competitive financial advantage over in-state public universities and over other Big Ten schools in the Midwest. Personally, I hope that they hire a qualified executive to lead the PR initiatives for the university. Hopefully then, the school can start to turn things around, and in the meantime, teach its journalism students about the value of PR.

Tags: Big Ten, Brand, college, economic crisis, journalism, marketing, public relations, university

Bombarded By Lists?

A month ago I started playing with Twitter lists in beta, the newest feature in Twitter. Since I manage my personal account and a Twitter ID for the company I work for, I’ve noticed that I’m sitting on a few lists related to social media, contact centers, CRM topics, and a sports fan list. I’ve started following a few of these lists as well.

These days, I’m not sure if lists have given me an advantage, or are making it even more difficult to manage my key contacts on the Web. I’ve created a few lists in Tweetdeck for my corporate Twitter account to monitor competitor news and analyst posts by hashtags and target audiences. I also try to keep up with some of the local PR and social media Tweeple in the Chicago area. And of course, I watch posts from my friends and co-workers from around the country. I’ve now gotten to the point where I am monitoring close to 20 lists between my two accounts.

This month, Mashable posted a great guide on using lists with some kind of strategy for seeing the most benefits. While I do see the value in monitoring updates for specific groups with similar interests, I’m hoping there will be an easier way to cover these groups rather than constantly checking +20 lists for both of the Twitter accounts that I manage.

How are you using lists? Are you finding them beneficial, or are you overwhelmed in keeping up with all the chatter?

Tags: lists, marketing, PR, public relations, social media, social networking, Twitter