The latest news in the world of customer experience and customer loyalty.
Buy Me Some Peanuts and Cracker Jack
The Major League Baseball season opens today, which means a bump in awareness—if not sales—for at least one brand: Cracker Jack. AdWeek did an online feature on the popcorn and peanut snack, which it deemed the product a “classic Americana snack” and “the longest-running product placement in the country’s history.” Now owned by PepsiCo and produced under its Frito-Lay flag, the snack still sells well at ball parks, even though baseball food has come a long way since the days when Babe Ruth chowed down on hot dogs in the dugout. Thrillist has a list of the best ball park foods, which range from bacon on a stick in Detroit, ribs in Oakland, crab sandwiches in San Francisco and made-to-order ice cream sandwiches in Seattle. Esquire also offers a list. By the way, the non-sticky molasses coating that covers the Cracker Jack popcorn is a strict company secret—akin the KFC’s secret 11 herbs and spices or Dr. Pepper’s 23 mysterious flavor combination. And Frito-Lay did away with the toys in 2004 and replaced them with a QR code that allows kids to play baseball games on their phones.
It’s a rough day to be…
Facebook. The hits just keep coming. Earlier this week, Playboy deleted its Facebook accounts, prompting CNN to note that “it’s bad when a gentlemen’s mag says your values contradict theirs.” Ouch. Elon Musk also deleted his Tesla and SpaceX Facebook accounts. Meanwhile, during his North American Apology Tour, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he will be testifying before Congress, which should be popcorn-worthy entertainment. And the digital company went old, old, old school and took out print ads in newspapers apologizing for its mistakes. Relish the irony of that—a digital brand taking out print ads. What Facebook is learning, though, is that the key to loyalty is trust, and they lost a lot of it not just by making billions selling the personal data it collected on its users—but selling it to the wrong people.
New Survey IDs World’s Best Airports
Where are the best airports in the world for customer experience? It’s an answer many world travelers would love to know. And now they do. According to an article in Business A.M., a new survey released by the Airports Council International reveals the best airports for customer experience, as part of its Airport Service Quality Awards. The world’s best major airport hubs, which see over 40 million passengers pass through their gates every year, have been named as Mumbai, Delhi, Rome, and Toronto. The survey, which included 600,000 passengers at 343 airports in 84 countries, examines criteria such as service parameters, airport access, check-in, security screening, restrooms, stores, and restaurants. Awards were handed out by region, by size, and by size and region. The best American airport regionally are Indianapolis and Jacksonville, Fla., while Portland, Maine, topped the list for those serving fewer than 2 million passengers a year.