Airline Partnerships With Nonprofits Trickle Into PaxEx
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APEX Insight: Airline sponsorships of nonprofit organizations rarely trickle down to the in-flight passenger experience. However, recent corporate social responsibility initiatives by Delta Air Lines, Virgin America and United Airlines suggest a shift toward a more hands-on, collaborative model – no longer a simple investment – that builds on shared brand values and calls for passenger integration.
Collaborations between nonprofit and for-profit organizations tend to spur skepticism among onlookers and misgivings about motives. Indeed, historically, such deals have had as much to do with marketing initiatives as with social betterment. Airlines have recently flipped the script by adopting more proactive roles in such partnerships, leveraging their direct relationship with the general public to generate social change and inspire widespread participation.
Documenting Lives with Delta Air Lines
Delta Air Lines last week announced a partnership with StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization that aims to foster connections through the preservation and dissemination of life stories. The initial phase of the collaboration consists of recorded interviews with Delta employees from the airline’s head office in Atlanta. The first, a conversation between Ed Bastien and Glen Hauenstein, Delta CEO and president, respectively, sums up the type of stories being told: emotive, intimate and human. Ed remembers growing up and wanting to be a baseball player but not being quite good enough to excel at the sport. For his part, Glen recalls being tasked with making reservations for family vacations in Florida by phone, in a time before Internet booking.
“Instead of a corporation just adding its logo to our website, partnering with StoryCorps allows an entity like Delta to value and present its own voices in [an] authentic and personal way.” €”Braden Lay-Michaels, StoryCorps
In the coming months, the project will expand to include the stories of Delta’s customers, which will be released on Tuesdays on Delta News Hub and preserved at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and on StoryCorps’ weekly broadcasts and website. Julieta McCurry, Delta’s director of Marketing and Communications, said, “with gratitude to [our employees and customers], we share these intimate interviews that show who we are and the culture and values for which we so proudly stand.” For both Delta and StoryCorps, the passenger – the person – is at the center of the story, and it is for this reason that their alliance is emblematic of the move toward more symbiotic partnerships between corporate and nonprofit allies. “Instead of a corporation just adding its logo to our website, partnering with StoryCorps allows an entity like Delta to value and present its own voices in [an] authentic and personal way,” says Braden Lay-Michaels, StoryCorps’ chief external relations officer.
Virgin America’s Democratic Tie-Up
On April 26, 2016, Virgin America announced its official partnership with Rock the Vote, a nonprofit organization with the mission of tempering voter apathy. In addition to contributing $25,000 to the organization to support its voter education and engagement programs, Virgin gives passengers the ability to register to vote on board by accessing Rock the Vote using the carrier’s in-flight Wi-Fi. Passengers can also donate to the organization through Virgin’s “Make a Difference” platform on its Red seatback entertainment system. “We’re thrilled to partner with Rock the Vote, which does such important work in engaging and empowering young people to get out the vote,” said Luanne Calvert, chief marketing officer at Virgin America. “We wanted to make it convenient for any of our flyers who are not yet registered to vote to participate in the democratic process.” The airline prides itself on its commitment to in-flight democracy, which is evidenced by its implementation of fleet-wide Wi-Fi and power outlets at every seat.
United Airlines Spreads the Wellth
United Airlines brings comfort to its customers with its signature amenity kits, which include hand sanitizer, toothpaste, cleanser and more. Now, the airline will extend the comfort to those in need through a partnership with Clean the World, a nonprofit organization that collects unused hygiene products, refurbishes them and distributes them to those in need. Clean the World has already teamed up with thousands of hotels, but United is its first airline collaboration – and, perhaps, soon to be its most valuable.
United expects to collect 60,000 pounds of supplies at its hub airports within the first year of the program. The supplies from United’s global and business amenity kits will be bundled into Veteran, Children and Women’s hygiene kits at Clean the World facilities. The discarded products, which have hitherto been treated as waste, will help in the prevention of millions of hygiene-related deaths and illnesses each year. Of the partnership, Maria Walter, United’s managing director of Product Development and Management, said, “Being a responsible and sustainable airline means more than investing in products and services that reduce our impact on the environment … It means working directly with our employees and partners to improve the lifecycle of those products and the communities we serve.”