Company: The Boeing Company
Company background: Boeing is the world's largest aerospace company and leading provider of commercial airplanes, defense, space and security systems, and global services. As the top U.S. exporter, the company supports commercial and government customers in more than 150 countries and leverages the talents of a global supplier base. Building on a legacy of aerospace leadership, Boeing continues to lead in technology and innovation, deliver for its customers, and invest in its people and future growth.
Boeing launched the Confident Travel Initiative (CTI) to lead in the global effort to provide passengers and crew a safe, healthy, and efficient travel experience. This includes working to minimize air travel health risks amid the COVID-19 pandemic, driving awareness of existing health safeguards, the cabin environment, cleaning and disinfection processes, and developing and testing new solutions. We are treating COVID-19 like any threat to the safety of an airplane – by assessing the hazard, understanding the environment, and applying proven aerospace engineering practices and data to find solutions.
Contact: Margaret Aprison & Janelle Bernales
Title: Social Listening & Platform Strategists
Related URLs:
www.boeing.com/confident-travel
http://www.facebook.com/boeing
http://www.instagram.com/boeing
Kudos Category: Keep Calm and Carry On
1. How did your team shift your existing strategy to better engage customers during a crisis?
Boeing’s CTI focused on the safety of passengers and crew amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This included working to minimize the air travel health risks and driving awareness about the existing health safeguards already in place. The CTI team worked with airlines, global regulators, industry stakeholders, flying passengers, infectious disease experts, and behavioral specialists to navigate this public health emergency. A key component of our communications strategy was sharing Boeing’s research and findings.
Boeing's effort built on the industry's enhanced safety approach to combat the pandemic. The CTI team advised operators on approved cleaning and disinfection processes for the flight deck and cabin. We promoted proven safeguards already in place to help maintain cabin cleanliness. One example includes High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters used in all Boeing airplanes. HEPA filters remove 99.9%+ of viruses and particulates from the air.
The CTI team evaluated new technologies to enhance safety, including ultraviolet light, thermal disinfection and an antimicrobial coating for high-touch surfaces. Boeing worked with academics, health experts, and learning institutions worldwide to field studies and facilitate research on reducing the potential of disease transmission on airplanes.
To execute the CTI digital plan, our team utilized a multi-channel approach to highlight the existing safeguards, new research and innovative technologies. We shared content on our owned social media channels, leveraged earned media to amplify messages, activated paid media and smart SEO to expand the campaign’s reach, and crafted new Boeing websites and emails.
2. What operational processes did you create or change to respond in a time of crisis?
We focused on listening. We created queues for CTI content to monitor audience sentiment around our owned content and identify the public’s questions and concerns. This information enabled Boeing’s digital strategy team to tailor our content to address passengers’ most pressing concerns about the risk of contracting COVID-19 during the air travel journey. We used Khoros’ marketing dashboard to measure the CTI campaign’s reach and engagement on a weekly basis. From the campaign’s launch in May 2020 through May 2021, CTI paid and organic social content generated a total of 169.2MM+ impressions, 25.8MM+ video views, and 209K+ likes and shares.
We also launched a CTI website to answer common questions and provide facts for our audiences. Additionally, the site asked visitors for their feedback related to COVID-19 and flying. This feedback loop helped the team craft relevant content, stay up-to-date on shifting COVID-19 concerns, and allowed our teams to shift strategy when needed.
3. What success metrics did you use to determine if your shifts in strategy and process had the desired outcomes? What were those quantifiable outcomes?
Success metrics included:
- Minimizing air travel health risks amid the COVID-19 pandemic
- Driving awareness of existing health safeguards, the cabin environment, cleaning and disinfection processes
- Developing and testing new solutions
We treated COVID-19 like any threat to the safety of an airplane – by assessing the hazard, understanding the environment, and applying proven aerospace engineering practices and data to find solutions. Our team successfully:
- Drove awareness of existing health safeguards, such as awareness of High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filters that remove 99.9%+ of viruses and particulates from air with the volume of cabin air is exchanged every two to three minutes.
- Broadened understanding of the strength of the airplane’s airflow ecosystem. The volume of air in an airplane is exchanged much more often than in other indoor air spaces. In an airplane, the maximum air exchange is 30 times per hour. By comparison, hospital operating rooms have a maximum of 15 air exchanges, U.S. airports have 10, an average office or business is five and a home is one air exchange per hour.
- Approved new cleaning and disinfection processes and proven new technologies are effective against COVID19:
- Live Virus: In a first-of-its-kind series of tests, Boeing and the University of Arizona determined airlines’ current cleaning solutions effectively destroy the virus that causes COVID-19. Boeing teams placed MS2, a live virus that is harder to kill than the virus that causes COVID-19, on strategic high touch points throughout the cabin. The University of Arizona analyzed results, then correlated results to the virus that causes COVID-19. The test successfully shows all recommended products, methods and technologies tested, including chemical disinfectants, ultraviolet light, and antimicrobial coatings, were effective.
- Disinfectant Testing: Boeing teams have evaluated more than 20 chemical disinfectants and approved 9 for use inside the cabin and flight deck.
- Brought new technologies to market, and evaluated others:
- Ultraviolet Light: Continuing years of work with an ultraviolet lavatory, Boeing engineers mobilized to develop a portable UV wand designed to sanitize airplane interiors. Boeing spent six months transforming an idea for the wand into a working model. The technology is now available for airlines to quickly sanitize airplane interiors by inactivating viruses and bacteria. With this technology, a flight deck can be serviced in less than 15 minutes by having an operator scan the light just centimeters away from flight deck surfaces.
- Antimicrobial Coatings: Boeing is looking at off the shelf anti-microbial coatings that provide a hostile environment for viruses and bacteria once they are sprayed on surfaces.
- Antimicrobial Coating Testing: Boeing and the University of Queensland in Australia developed an antimicrobial coating that is designed to fight the spread of bacteria and viruses, including the virus that causes COVID-19. That coating is now being tested aboard the International Space Station.
- Thermal Disinfection: Boeing engineers and experts from the University of Arizona determined thermal disinfection — applying heat to sanitize surfaces — effectively kills viruses on hard-to-clean flight deck equipment.
- Completed original research and modeling work, published research on our CTI website, as well as worked with research partners, proving safety on board the airplane:
- Probabilistic Analysis: Boeing researchers say the design of the cabin and the airflow system create the equivalent of more than 7 feet (2 meters) of physical distance between every passenger—even on a full flight - by using a method of mathematical modeling known as computational fluid dynamics (CFD), that considers airflow, room/cabin geometry, distance and other factors.
- Relative Risk: Based on the best available data, the International Air Transport Association reported that while more than 1.8 billion passengers have flown on more than 25 million global flights, there are fewer than 60 cases of suspected passenger-to-passenger transmissions onboard airplanes, as of October, 2020. This data aligns with the low numbers reported in a published peer-reviewed study by Freedman and WilderSmith in the Journal of Travel Medicine.
- In-flight Transmission: Research led by the U.S. Transportation Command found the cabin environment limits particle movement and quickly removes them from the air. USTRANSCOM validated their findings by working with Boeing, United, and DARPA to conduct live cough modeling inside 767-300 and 777-200 cabins.
- Used Khoros Marketing dashboard to identify and create content about the topics our audiences wanted to learn about most. By measuring total number of impressions and engagements across channels, we determined that content about cabin airflow, HEPA air filtration, and new disinfecting technologies in development, such as an ultraviolet wand, consistently received the highest impressions and engagements. This data allowed us to tailor our content to our audiences’ interests and create posts that generated higher impressions and engagements. From the campaign’s launch in May 2020 through May 2021, CTI paid and organic social content generated a total of 169.2MM+ impressions, 25.8MM+ video views, and 209K+ likes and shares.
