Singapore Airlines makes digital agency appointments

Singapore Airlines has appointed TBWA’s Digital Arts Network to revamp its website, Nicholas Ionides, vice president of public affairs, SIA has confirmed to Marketing.The airline recently went on a pitch for its new digital agency. (Read SIA hunts for digital help). TBWA also holds SIA's creative duties.Meanwhile, Dentsu Mobius is tipped to have won the global social media business for SIA as well. Ionides declined to comment on this appointment.The incumbent for the website was SapientNitro, which was first appointed in 2009 for the global relaunch of singaporeair.com.SIA's re-launched site went live in 2011, but faced much turbulence as the new site was plagued with bugs and a slow system, resulting in SIA's call centre being flooded with angry calls.At SIA’s financial results briefing this month, chief executive officer of Singapore Airlines Goh Choon Pong said that the earlier problems the airline went through when it first revamped its website in 2011 was “a heartache”.He said that because of these problems, the number of bookings remained “relatively flat” and it was not able to use the site to reach out to more customers online.“We have taken very concerted efforts to improve the website, and the most recent result shows the improvement,” he said, adding that a new design and site improvements would be launched by next year.“Be assured that what happened then would not happen again,” said Goh.