The Marketing Mindset

In 2015 a young boy accidentally left his stuffed tiger in the play area of the Tampa Airport. After receiving a call from the boys frantic mother an operations manager took action, showing the “always personal” mission of the Tampa Airport. The manager took pictures of the stuffed tiger in different aspects of the airport, to create a story for his family. In these pictures you can see Tony Tiger in the control tower, by the luggage carts and hanging out with the airport firemen. Taking the story even further, the operations manager took these pictures and made them into a book for the family to cherish. The story of Tonys adventure went viral, reinforcing to the public the airports commitment to customer service. Tony could be seen on the social media platforms of Facebook and Instagram, along with wide spread media coverage locally, Nationally and Internationally. I think this is an amazing story, that took a bad situation and made it into a positive situation. When my son was in Kindergarten we had to do a story on Flat Stanley. He traveled with my son for a week. We took pictures of him going to places like the park and put them into his report of Stanleys activities for the week. I immediately thought about Flat Stanley when I read this article.

The operations manager successfully promoted kindness in a way that reflected the spirit of the gesture. He delivered customer service along with a fun story for the family. By creating this visual story the manager achieved the goal of returning Tony to his family, and showed the community that the Tampa Airport cares about all of their travelers. Creating this story was an effective strategy for getting positive name exposure with multiple outlets.

Tampa Airport has a website, http://www.Tampaairport.com. They are also on Facebook and Instagram. They are engaging in comments ethically, with positive posts of eye catching destinations.