Heathrow Airport select winner for the DMA Customer Engagement Labs

Today the DMA can announce the winners of the latest Customer Engagement Labs, run in partnership with Heathrow Airport. The one-day event is a hands-on experience where attendees have the opportunity to respond to a live brief from a brand. Heathrow Airport challenged participants to find new ways to maximise brand loyalty, and engagement across the platform and channels it offers, whether before, during, after or in-between their travel experiences with the airport.

The winners received a £50 Amazon voucher each, the pride of having beaten a variety of talented peers, and the experience of helping to solve a key issue for one of the UK’s leading brands. The winning team, with varying positions of seniority from junior executives right up to director level, included Ryan Garratt The Economist, Lauren Prior Arsenal FC, Anil Nighah XCM, Gary Jones Swinton Group, Victoria Delloye Guardian News & Media, and Camilla Goldspink Shell UK.

The day, hosted by Acxiom, required teams to plan and strategise responding to Heathrow Airport’s brief. This included information on the airport’s ambition to achieve effective and relevant engagement with consumers across its vast array of touchpoints, from parking to pre-flight dining and retail experiences. The victorious campaign used a combination of data-driven insight, creative thinking and sound strategy to deliver a comprehensive campaign to Heathrow’s marketing team.

Claire Burley, Loyalty and CRM Manager at Heathrow Airport said, “The ideas and work the teams were able to develop today were really impressive. The decision as to which team should win created some in-depth discussions among the judges, which is a credit to all those that took part, but unfortunately there can only be one winner in the end. The winning team really understood the challenge and complexity of the task at hand. They looked at the objective and found ways to combine creative thinking with effective data use and technical knowledge, which delivered a customer engagement strategy that is clearly actionable for our brand.”

Rachel Aldighieri, MD of the DMA, said: “Great customer engagement is at the heart of the world’s most successful brands. Delivering this experience relies on collaboration between teams, from the data and technology specialists through to the creative and media experts. We introduced the Customer Engagement Labs to offer a new, practical approach to learning – giving attendees the chance to utilise their skills without restrictions or silos. This is now a fantastic platform for them to come up with innovative ideas and forward-thinking solutions to real-life problems.”

The Customer Engagement Labs will continue to encourage cross-discipline collaboration between data, technology and creative professionals, breaking down barriers to understanding and building successful customer engagement across multiple channels. Future dates will work on more, real client briefs and develop new ways to solve problems within the business through better customer engagement.