Marketing Peer Briefing - Apr08

Speaker           Rosalynn Tay

Title                Chief commercial and marketing officer

Company         Tiger Airways

Date                13 March 2008

If you weren't there, here's what you missed:

"If we put an ad out today, I bet you my bottom dollar our competitor will come out with a lower price tomorrow. That's how competitive it is in the aviation sector".

Everyday we tracked sales and it was so important for us to bring in the cash which is a challenge I don't think marketers like but we were faced with it and we just had to do it, says Rosalynn Tay, chief commercial and marketing officer for Tiger Airways while speaking at Marketing's Peer Briefing in March.

Tay joined Tiger Airways over two years ago and one of the challenges the brand, born in December 2004, faced was a result of not being first to market.

According to her, at Tiger Airways, the marketing department, besides doing the standard run-of-the-mill marketing functions, is driving a lot of strategic initiatives from product, to inflight, as well as coming up with sub-brands such as the up-sizing of check-in luggage for example. The marketing ideas have also had to be a "bit different" to help the brand stand out amongst the sea of low-cost airlines while still staying true to its business model. Taking the example of when Tiger Airways converted a water tower into a beacon to announce its entrance into the Melbourne market, Tay said when you have humble budgets and you enter a market where you're not first in market, you have to be bold.

"We measure success with passenger numbers as well, and today we've already achieved four million passengers and very shortly, will hit our fifth. In no small measure the marketing function has ensured people are using our product," she said.

One of the key differences between Tiger Airways and competitors such as AirAsia is, according to Tay, its unadulterated approach to its business model and coming up with creative ways of answering a need rather than offering a hybrid solution.

"It takes a special type of person who wants to work in a startup, it takes a special person to dream of greatness... how many marketers out there get the chance to write the first chapter," she said.