All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd., ANA, flies its way into social entrepreneurship with the help of Ashoka.

ANA is Japan’s leading airline is making a push to become a more global brand. However, when it came to this new Wings For Changemakers website, the emphasis was more on giving back and making change. To create a site that reflects the brand’s commitment to creating a more sustainable society and its partnership with Ashoka, the world’s largest social entrepreneurship initiative, ANA chose Rain Interactive.

Creating a digital experience to inspire brand engagement was a priority for ANA. It wanted its website to reflect the changemakers’ innovative and passionate creation of sustainable solutions for some of the world’s most difficult issues. The airline also wanted to make it easier to learn how each changemaker would benefit from votes from visitors to the website. ANA also wanted each changemaker’s story told through a blog.

What’s more, since ANA is in the process of expanding and launching new routes overseas, the Japan-based airline needed to ensure a global brand experience on its site while also delivering digital content modern devices such as mobile phones and tablets.

“We’re not just flying changemakers on our existing routes, but supporting the costs of where they need to be anywhere in the world,” said Akira Fukabori, Blue Wing founding member from ANA. “We want to be the air carrier that people associate with social entrepreneurship. We want this site to reflect this with the best experience possible.”

 

How they did it

When the time care for it to chose a developer for the website, ANA looked for a new, more flexible studio and platform to better fit its business model. Putting together an all-star team for building its Wings for Changemakers site, ANA chose Drupal for its modular structure, Rain Interactive for site design and implementation, copywriting and consultation.

A key driver was cost. A small group of digital pros manages ANA’s global brand. Drupal and Rain Interactive enabled the team to keep a large portion of site management in-house. This meant the team was able to make changes and updates quickly and efficiently, saving cost and speeding time to market.

 

The results

Thanks to Drupal’s modular platform, ANA was able to have a new site in three months. The airline now has a responsive platform that offers a content management workflow that best aligns with delivering an engaging experience, and is in line with ANA’s continued international expansion.

Because ANA is embarking on global expansion and entering new markets, a product launch was traditionally a huge challenge. Thanks to Drupal and Rain Interactive, ANA can now generate content anywhere in the world and publish it to local markets.

“As we created our new site, we tried to make it as flexible as possible, so we could do most of the work ourselves and we weren’t held hostage by an outside developer,” head of ANA Blue Wing said.

Visitors to the site can now read about changemakers they like, follow them, and vote for them once a week. Anyone visiting wingsforchange.com will find it easy to sign in with their Facebook accounts and help bring about social change.

With Rain Interactive, both Ashoka and ANA will be able to spread word of their positive impact on society around the world.