Aerospace eBusiness

This week it was the first time in my career that I did not attend the Paris Air Show in person. But this is also the first time I get to really look at the online coverage of the show from the two dominant news sources in the industry: Aviation Week (McGraw Hill) and Flight Global (Reed Business Intelligence).

Both companies have been long time participants at the show and this year was no different. They both set up dedicated “channels” on their website to bring us all the news and events “quasi-live”. Although the main structure and content of the sites was very similar, each had noteworthy features. Here is my review and rating of both approaches:

• Overall Design: Both sites provide News, Blogs, Photos, Videos, and Show History. AvWeek has all of the content “headlined” on a single page for easy access. Flight has tabbed access at the top requiring multiple clicks but its look and feel is “cleaner.”
  Results: AvWeek 4 – Flight 4
• News, Pictures and Blog Content: Both are veteran news organizations and their content was superb as usual. All the major press conferences and announcements were covered. Some smaller stories were also reported, but with several thousand exhibitors at the conference I would have liked to see an interactive “Post your news” section for them to contribute content in an orderly, labeled, categorized, and searchable matter. AvWeek’s guest blogger from Accenture was a nice idea but I don’t think it added much value.
  Results: AvWeek 5 – Flight 5
• Video Content: With the audience’s attention span diminishing year-over-year, video content is becoming prominent at the show. As of the end of Day 4 but excluding show previews, AvWeek produced 14 videos, Flight produced a massive 39! Flight had numerous interviews and show recaps with on screen reporters which were really professional and engaging. I liked the day recap AvWeek was doing but they quit after day 2! So for content, Flight wins hands down. They both used MacroMedia Flashplayer 10 to deliver the video, but Flight’s default configuration was absolutely unusable. You had to click on the small video thumbnail to even know what it was about and most titles were truncated! AvWeek’s setup was much better with video titles and recap you could browse before deciding which video to watch. Flight should have used the same default configuration.
  Results: AvWeek 4 – Flight 2
• Special Features: AvWeek provided its show guide and its show news in high quality WISIWIG format that made you feel like you were there. Flight provided an Aircraft list with daily updated air display times, as well as a “Discussion” tab which gave it a “real time” feel (more on that below).
  Results: AvWeek 4 – Flight 5
• Social Interaction: Both organizations have embraced social interaction, and this event was a time to showcase it. Flight took the early lead by announcing that it would open its news room to visitors so they could come and interact with their editors and “witness” the creation of the Flight and Flight Daily publications. By all accounts this was a great success. Flight also fielded a team of reporters that used Twitter throughout the show to share their experiences, collaborate with exhibitors and visitors, and drive traffic to their website content. I counted no less than 13 veteran Twitter accounts reporting for Flight. By comparison, AvWeek had 4. (See also Social Media at Paris Air Show by the Numbers) Even though AvWeek employs Benet Wilson, arguably the A&D Social Media Queen, she was inexplicably relegated to re-tweeting blog stories from her office in Washington. She did provide a lot of content and kept the AvWeek FaceBook page up-to-date, but she could not compete with the enthusiasm and energy of the Flight team. In addition, Flight provided the cleverest feature of all. By using a widget on its “Discussion” page to display all the twitter posts from the #ParisAirShow stream, it automatically included AvWeek’s posts in their own pages: brilliant!
  Results: AvWeek 1 – Flight 5

In conclusion, watching the show from my internet browser was certainly not like being there, but it was an enjoyable experience. Both organizations did a good job providing me with the information I was hoping for, but Flight (21 pts) did a slightly better job than AvWeek (18 pts). If Flight had done a better job with their video access page, it would have been a landslide victory. On their side, AvWeek should really start incorporating Social Media in their approach and develop a more interactive relationship with their audience.

There are more major A&D shows coming between now and Farnborough next year, and I think that the idea of news “collaboration” rather than news “publishing” will be the key to success for these two information organizations. I look forward to seeing how they evolve from my browser, my iPhone, and (hopefully) on the ground.