[Leapfrog]

Dear all
I work in advertising and marketing and am researching a new project for a client. When a consumer buys their product we are trying to design a suitable gift with purchae.
We currently have two choices
- frequent flyer points
- a totally free return domestic flight

I am hearing lots of bad press about frequent flyer points through reading these forums and would like to clear the fact from fiction.

If some of you have time, would be great to know your thoughts.

The free flight offer would be any airline including pretty much all airports.
You may have our last promotion on Coca Cola through petrol stations.

As current members of this program, what wquld you like to see as a reward for buying our customer's product?

Thanks in advance for the feedback

Ed Morley

[Lindsay Wilson]

Hi Ed (aka Leapfrog) and welcome to AFF.

We were aware of your first campaign - it was discussed here by some of us.

I'll be the one to say that I voted for frequent flyer points. Being what I consider as a "sophisticated" traveller, I dislike the "restrictive" terms and conditions put on the free flights award - harder than calculus to understand and not to my liking.

However, for the demographics you would be targeting this promotion towards, they probably have had much less contact with airlines and booking flights, so it would be perfect - they wouldn't know where to start. It has to be managd for them, otherwise theymay fail to fulfill the offer (not that you'd be too concerned about that :wink: ).

P.S. Unfortunately, I don't drink your clients product

[johnsmith]

I would buy your product if you gave me free Qantas Frequent Flyer points and i don't care what your selling. When I lived in the UK I got free Air Miles with a case of beer so I bought several cases. Some people go crazy for points and they end up buying things they dont want just to get the points, this is good for your clients. I was not able to participate in the Coke promotion because I live in Western Australia. If I was able to, I would have purchased several hundred cases to get all the free flights. One point will probably cost your client about 2 cents to buy from Qantas and one point is worth about 2 cents to me for the flights I take, so long as I am not paying more than 2 cents per point for my "Free Points" then I am happy.

Originally Posted by Leapfrog

As current members of this program, what wquld you like to see as a reward for buying our customer's product?

flights are too cheap these days anyway;

Points are cool, flights are cool - and BLING TALKS! - screw the flights give me some COLD HARD CASH!

100 posts - I want a free flight.

[Kiwi Flyer]

Originally Posted by Lindsay Wilson

Hi Ed (aka Leapfrog) and welcome to AFF.

We were aware of your first campaign - it was discussed here by some of us.

I'll be the one to say that I voted for frequent flyer points. Being what I consider as a "sophisticated" traveller, I dislike the "restrictive" terms and conditions put on the free flights award - harder than calculus to understand and not to my liking.

However, for the demographics you would be targeting this promotion towards, they probably have had much less contact with airlines and booking flights, so it would be perfect - they wouldn't know where to start. It has to be managd for them, otherwise theymay fail to fulfill the offer (not that you'd be too concerned about that :wink: ).

P.S. Unfortunately, I don't drink your clients product

Agree, except I do drink the product. When is NZ going to get promos like this?

[serfty]

I agree with Lindsay Wilson; many posters on this forum are very cognisent of FF reward schemes and how to optomise any benifit that can be gained.

As for those have had much less contact with airlines and award flights, a free domestic flight would generally be the go.

With us Frequent Travellers, the answer really depends on where the free domestic flight is to. For example, very few would redeem a Brisbane-Sydney return trips using points. We would much rather spend up to $200 and gain a couple of thousand points instead. So in this respect, points would be preferred rather than a short flight. If the free domestic flight was Brisbane to Perth return, you may have more interest as the points levels are higher.

Perhaps you could give the punter's the option: Free flight OR Points.

I did not initially respond to the poll as I feel there are not enough options. If you had "Both Depending on Destination" I would have originally selected that. Given only a choice of the two, I have now selected points, as I would have more control in how such things are used.

[danielh]

Also, not everone in Australia is willing to spend the $75 to join up the QFF program.

Another issue to note is that not everyone is a Qantas fan and so you might alienate some of your market.

That being said, you would be better off giving away free flights instead of points (although i would prefer to get the points myself despite the QFF changes).

I'd like to see an option for flights for points though but you will be setting s dangerous precedent in establishing a non-Qantas link between Points and Flights as well as forcing yourself to stay with Qantas.

You would be getting people demanding something like ?17,000? points as they decided to not take a MLB-SYD return flight for example.

Regards
Daniel

[Alan in CBR]

I have to agree with Lindsay and serfty (and danielh who managed to sneak a reply in while I was typing!) and say that I would rather the points (as long as it is in the 20K-25K range - in other words enough to get a return flight somewhere so that the rewards are somewhat equivalent).

Having said that, I think your results will be skewed here because there are a lot of members who know how to work the system. I suspect that the average non-FF-obsessed person would consider it a much bigger deal to be told they could have a "free flight" rather than "free points" - the former seems much more "real". Consider also that most people aren't even in a FF program.

[semi-related topic]
(I apologise that I have forgotten many of the details, but they don't really matter) In a weekend newspaper there was a story about a company which rewarded their employees by flying them to some island resort for a few days because they made budget (or something). The article made a big deal about how much it had cost (I think around $120K).

The thing is, the cost was only around $5K per employee. Now there are many, many companies whose annual bonus is at least that (ours for instance), but because the reward was more visible (more tangible, perhaps) than just an extra line item on a payslip it seemed much more generous. Enough to make the newspaper, anyway.

I can also imagine that for years staff will be talking about the time they were flown to a resort, whereas cash bonuses tend to be forgotten. Now personally I would rather have the money than have to spend time at a resort not of my choosing with the people I already spend all day with, but maybe that says more about me than necessary!
[/semi-related topic]

Anyway, that's my $0.02 worth.

[Leapfrog]

In answer to some of the questions which were raised - I feel I should clarify some points (pardon the pun)

The choice would be domestic return flights using any carrier but excluding WA

The points total offered would be approx 5000

Would this make a difference to your thoughts?

Ed