Singapore Airlines seeks budding artists

Singapore Airlines is using "social marketing" to drum up passenger excitement ahead of its first Airbus A380 flight from London on 18 March.

SIA has sent passengers an email inviting them to submit "creative expressions" of the A380 next to a London landmark. Squint hard at the picture to the left and you'll see an A380 in the top left corner. Every week, the submission with the highest number of votes gets the honour of being featured on the main page of the carrier's online A380 "gallery".

Passengers are also invited to submit written articles describing their own experiences on the A380. Examples of previous submissions can be seen here.

This is a good example of "user-generated content", something us journalists are only too familiar with as our profession evolves and changes to take into account the potential to reach and engage with readers in new ways through the web.

Airlines are obviously beginning to incorporate this technique into their marketing strategies, and it will be interesting to see who else jumps on this bandwagon and what methods they will adopt to communicate their message to the masses.